Homunculus [Paperback]

James P. Blaylock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2000

In 1870s London, a city of contradictions and improbabilities, a dead man pilots an airship and living men are willing to risk all to steal a carp. Here, a night of bangers and ale at the local pub can result in an eternity at the Blood Pudding with the rest of the reanimated dead.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Few writers dare attempt a historical fantasy in an effort to best Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and Robert Louis Stevenson at their own game, but back in 1986 - long before the current alternate history craze - James Blaylock not only tried, but succeeded brilliantly. Homunculus was awarded the Philip K. Dick Award.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Owlesby's Memoirs

"I'm posessed by the evil aching of the head - such that my eyes seem to press down to the size of screwholes, so that I see as if through a telescope turned wrong end to. Laudanum alone relieves it, but fills me with dreams even more evil than the pain in my forebrain. I'm certain that the pain is my due - that it is a taste of hell, and nothing less. And I can feel myself decay, feel my tissues drying and rotting like a beetle-eaten fungus on a stump, and my blood pounds across the top of my skull. I can see my own eyes, wide as half crowns and black with death and decay, and Narbondo ahead with that ghastly shears. I pushed him along! That is the truth of it. I railed at him. I hissed. I'd have that gland, is what I'd have, and before the night was gone. I'd hold in my hand my salvation ... "

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Babbage Press (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930235135
• ISBN-13: 978-1930235137
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,091,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Homunculus is a Roller Coaster..., April 17, 2001

By 

M. Schmidt (Watford, Herts, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Homunculus (Paperback)

Homunculus is a roller coaster of excitement. I think Blaylock may have lived in 18th century London, and might actually know the secret of the carp bladder himself.

I have a theory, in fact that James P. Blaylock is none other than his own character Ignacio Narbondo, and these books are simply his own autobiography. Of course he threw us off his trail when he killed himself in the "Digging Leviathan".

This book, and series is excelent (I'm half way through Lord Kelvin's Machine). However, it's not as good as "The Elfin Ship", "Disappearing Dwarf" and "The Stone Giant". I don't know if these are available any longer, I may have the last copies on earth, but if you can find them, do read them...

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So What !!!???, November 30, 2005

By 

R. Benardes "www.maquinariodanoite.blogspot.com" (Bahia - Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Homunculus (Paperback)

Ok.It's not an easy read.
Ok.It's digressive.
Ok.The plot is convoluted and complex as hell.
Ok.The characters don't feel "realistic"or "believable"
Ok.He is not Tim Powers

So What !!!???

HOMUNCULUS is undiluted quintessencial Steampunk.Blaylock's prose is stylish, intricate and labyrinthine.Sometimes witty, sometimes dark and blackly humorous, and like Joe Lansdale
and Norman Partridge, he has a fine eye for vivid comic book imagery and absurd situations that sometimes verges on the surreal.
To give you a taste of Blaylock magic, here is some samples picked at random:

There was no room in the world of science for mediocrity, for half measures, for wet cigars.

And another:

I'm posessed by the most evil aching of the head - such that my eyes seem to press down to the size of screwholes, so that I see as if through a telescope turned wrong end to. Laudanum alone relieves it, but fills me with dreams even more evil than the pain in my forebrain. I'm certain that the pain is my due - that it is a taste of hell, and nothing less. And I can feel myself decay, feel my tissues drying and rotting like a beetle-eaten fungus on a stump, and my blood pounds across the top of my skull. I can see my own eyes, wide as half crowns and black with death and decay, and Narbondo ahead with that ghastly shears. I pushed him along! That is the truth of it. I railed at him. I hissed. I'd have that gland, is what I'd have, and before the night was gone. I'd hold in my hand my salvation ...

HOMUNCULUS is a celebration of the absurd and a triumph of the imagination, a little masterpiece of humour and atmosphere.

Here is a short list of authors, books, movies, Tv Shows and comic books that I think share the same Blaylockean (non) sense of invention and absurdity:

Authors and Books:

R. A. Lafferty (Nine Hundreds Grandmothers; Lafferty in Orbit).

Robert Sheckley (The Mask of Manana or another collection, Journey Beyond Tomorrow; Immotarlity Inc etc.).

Steven Millhauser (Some novellas and short stories in The Barnum Museum and The Knife Thrower)

Norman Partridge (The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists; Bad Intentions; Mr Fox and Other Feral Tales)


Graphic Novels/Comic Books:

Ruse (Mark Waid)
Starman (James Robinson)
Sebastian O; Doom Patrol (Grant Morrison)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Alan Moore)
Top Ten (Alan Moore)
The Airtight Garage (Moebius)



Movies:

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Time After Time
That Magnificent Man and Their Flying Machines
Young Sherlock Holmes
Fearless Vampire Killers
Robur the Conqueror
Young Einstein




TV Shows:

Wild, Wild West
Bisko County Jr
The Avengers
The New Avengers

4.0 out of 5 stars Over-the-Top Steampunk Lunacy, October 29, 2007

By 

rampageous_cuss (Under Billy Penn's Hat) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Homunculus (Paperback)

This book is sort-of an absurdist parody of steampunk thrillers. Don't expect this to be anything like Tim Powers' "The Anubis Gates" or, IMHO, the work of Alan Moore or Grant Morrison. Think of the Firesign Theater doing Fu Manchu, or an epic version of one of Michael Palin's "Ripping Yarns," and you'll just about have it. I'd say if you loved "The Life of Brian" or "Time Bandits" you'll enjoy this loony nonsense from the end of Blaylock's whimsical period.

A techno-mystic airship is orbiting the late-19th-century earth; aboard may be an imprisoned extraterrestrial. When it crashlands in Victorian London all hell will break loose since its secrets are sought by the Royal Society, a fraudulent evangelist and his reanimated mother, a fiendish vivisectionist and his corrupt assistant, an evil millionaire, and a team of (other) assorted eccentrics led by the square-jawed scientist-adventurer, Langdon St. Ives. Can St. Ives and his super-competent valet Hasbro keep the alien homunculus out of the claws of the villainous Ignacio Narbondo? Can they help poor Jack Owlesby receive his long-delayed inheritance? And can they rescue Jack's beautiful fiancee from the monstrous fate implied by the dreaded Marseilles Pinkle?!? Well sure. The question is, how crazy are things going to get?

Perhaps a little TOO crazy for some folks. Blaylock has, IMHO, a tendency to pull his punches and here he throws a lot to compensate, keeping us off-balance with reanimated corpses, a lost starship, longevity serum, an exploding rocket silo, secret sewers, bizarre brothels... The plot isn't so much complex as distracted with subplotting! If you love lively lunacy, however, you'll like this.