From Booklist
The novel in verse is up-and-coming nowadays, what with the late Anthony Burgess' Byrne , Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red , and now Pollack's take, in free-verse quatrains, on a classic sf setup, the utopia. By means of an anomaly of physics, a wall exists between a leftist paradise and a limbo to which the really bad actors--those who won't accept equality, science, and all that--are consigned. Commandos led by the protagonist-narrator seek out people incompletely adapted to the new world order and either fix them for life in utopia or zap them to the other side of the wall. Masterminding the enabling physics experiment is Stephen Hawking, who, thanks to it, is able-bodied. But the anomaly starts to fail, and the protagonist makes like Luke Skywalker if Star Wars' plot were run backward, from triumph to retreat. Sf encourages poetry (see the annual Nebula Awards volumes), and perhaps more sf novels in verse are in the pipeline. Ray Olson
From Kirkus Reviews
This novel in free verse quatrains develops an odd and choppy style, with a jagged syntax, to tell its 32 episodes, set after an apocalyptic revolution. Pollacks strange utopia results from a time-space inversion engineered by Stephen Hawking, an ally in the leftish revolt. A wall arises, separating the world we know from the new Ardena, where all incorrect behavior is transformed by the Avengers of Wrong, a hit squad of the righteous that heals the sick (from AIDS to acne) and punishes the oppressive, though sometimes theyre irradiated with/knowledge and redeemed. We follow the squad as it also gives ghetto kids a critical language to understand their false consciousness (sounds suspiciously like Maoist self-purges) and watch the avengers banish recalcitrant abusers and misogynists. The enemy also includes anti-abortionists, religious fundamentalists, and racists. After War Crimes Trials airs on TV, executives are made to shovel toxic waste, and the new art is Stalinist without the lies, though Pollack doesnt see the oxymoron in this. Just as each character begins to enjoy lifethe fat are skinny, the stupid made smartthe revolution falters, the Wall collapses, and Pollacks dream-time vision turns to nightmare. This utopia built from desire cant help but reveal its fault-lines, which include confusingly truncated verse. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
