Customer Reviews

I-O

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first read about Simon Logan's collection "i-o", with its "cyber-goth" blend of horror and
science fiction, I felt immediately drawn to it...and immediately curious as to how its approach
might resemble the blend of horror and SF in my own collection, PUNKTOWN. However
dystopian the two books might be, however, Logan proves to be a powerful stylist with a distinct
vision that sometimes makes my future city of Punktown seem cozy by comparison. Logan's
future is a bleak, half-rusted wastescape of factories and warehouses where little else seems to
exist, each story related in the first person by significantly nameless protagonists, burnt-out lost
souls in an industrial hell. Only the last story, AKIN TO INSECTS, takes place in a very near and
more familiar future, but in a kind of mythically heightened version of Seattle, and reads like a
Poppie Z. Brite story on acid. The nihilistic IGNITION presents the intriguing character Shiva,
an artist of mechanized destruction not unlike characters in Kathe Koja's SKIN, and a blend of
both FIGHT CLUB's anarchist Tyler Durden and self-destructive Marla Singer. This story, like
PRISM, PARTOFIT and others, conveys a sense of disconnectedness, loneliness and a haunting
yearning beyond the characters' expression or comprehension. All eight stories are intensely
visual, even in cinematic terms. PARTOFIT could easily be a stop-motion film by the Brothers
Quay. This is gorgeous word art, and as such, the best stuff to come along since China Mieville's
vividly imagined PERDIDO STREET STATION and Michael Cisco's darkly surreal THE
DIVINITY STUDENT. As striking as the literary imagery are the book's brilliant cover design
and interior digital collages, rendered by the author himself. A proofread and final polish would
have tidied up the book's typos and erratic tense shifts, but one can envision Logan as having
welded this collection together out of jagged shrapnel in a delirious fever of creativity. Simon
Logan's "i-o" paints a dismal, desolate future of alienation and emptiness in a mechanized world
where humans are little more than cybernetically assimilated drones. But the terrible beauty of
its visuals and the dull ache of its characters connect with the reader. The scariest thing about "i-o"
is how readily we might see a distorted reflection of our own lives in its cold metallic surfaces.

logan pulls off an amazing stunt here---combining mad descriptions and metaphors which would seem so nonsensical when naked from its surroundings, but completely genius together. all stories are set into a futuristic setting, where machines have hearts and humans can divide into two beings---absurdity and absolute beauty.
truthfully, i cannot wait for his next production.

Simon Logan's 'Industrial Fiction' style is very original. The stories in I-O are unlike anything I've read before. Simon creates a very moody atmosphere in his fiction that is a little depressing (in an enjoyable way, not in a slash-your-wrists way!). His unique writing style draws you deeply into his strange and dark little world. You'll be glad you don't live there, but you'll want to go back and visit him again.

-Paul Fry, Peep show magazine

The hum and grind of machinery, throwing glittering sparks into polluted darkness. The sizzle of telegraph wires, cobwebbed skeletons against a backdrop of acid rain. The roar of white noise. The bone-scraping wail of electric guitar feedback.

Welcome to the future of Simon Logan's _I-O_. It's David Bowie's _Diamond Dogs_ as imagined in HR Giger's fever-dreams; Surrealist cult cartoon _Aeon Flux_ as filmed in black-and-white live-action by Shinya Tsukamoto, with a throbbing industrial soundscape of alienation, violence and longing courtesy of PJ Harvey's _Is This Desire?_ LP.

If all of the above comparisons tend towards the visual rather than the literary, that is because _I-O_ is truly like no other book. A collection of stories loosely connected by theme, style and setting, it is intensely cinematic in structure and vivid visual impact (if any film-maker out there is brave enough to take on the challenge, it would make a wonderful, _Sin City_-esque anthology film). To read this book is to make a journey to a place that exists within and beyond the ticking clockwork heart of urban life - totally alien, yet unsettlingly familiar.

Perhaps the strongest story in the collection, "Ignition", is a darker-than-sour-chocolate romance between Shiva (a recently released mental patient turned chaos devotee and urban terrorist) and an unnamed narrator (a young would-be suicide who, for reasons unexplained and unimportant, cannot die, and subsequently finds himself the object of Shiva's existential curiosity). A painfully emotive meditation on acts of love, acts of selflessness, and acts of annhilation, the story, by its end, assumes the proportions of epic - dare I say, Shakespearian? - tragedy.

"Akin to Insects" might be best introduced as a female (though not exactly feminist) take on _A Clockwork Orange_; a gang of psychotic young women known as the Electric Diva Initiative make it their business to hunt down, seduce and brutally murder individuals who look to be on their way to attaining godlike states of being. A warped combination of new technology and ancient religion permeates the tale; the narrator, one of the Divas, is a postmodern Fury, taking the suggestion that one should kill one's idols to a blood-soaked extreme.

"Prism" and "Coaxial Creature [Above]" share similar protagonists: a lonesome engineer whose life is both blighted and uplifted by a fleeting encounter with an unattainable object of beauty and terror. The protagonist of "Partofit" finds himself in a Kafkaesque nightmare of unending bureaucratic callousness; while, on a more wistful note, the young (younger than you think) female narrator of "Foetal Chambers" merges physically with her mad-scientist mentor, yet cannot ever find it in her heart to do so emotionally. And, in perhaps the most strikingly Gothic tale (in the old-fashioned, Horace Walpole/Ann Radcliffe sense of the term), "Iron Lung", an elegant and paranoid man known only as the One Who Hides sequesters himself, and his beautiful and utterly unwilling female paramour, beneath the earth in an attempt to avoid the monsters that may or may not be stalking the skies above.

Ultimately, and perhaps surprisingly, all of _I-O_'s tales are love stories. Whether that love is found in the arms of another person, in the cold embrace of technology, or in the search for the untouchably transcendent, the book's protagonists are constantly reaching out - hungry for a connection.

Simon Logan has set out to do something audacious here: to create his own niche genre. And to a great extent, he manages to pull it off: He has created his own literary alloy. Any fan of industrial music, fashion, and lifestyle will be spotwelded to these works of uniquely into-the-abyss storylines and post-apocalyptic cybermechanistic infusions. While the volume could have used a more determined copy editor, it shines, nonetheless, for what it accomplishes. And for a cop-out justification on my four-star rating: I'd give the tale he included in Punktown: Third Eye five stars in a heartbeat; this collection is, in total, around the four and one-half mark.

I-O by Simon Logan is an eclectic collection of techno noir stories, verging on the surreal and psycho-technic. Set in some distopian reality where only technology exists, it is a commentary on the integration of technology and culture, and culture becoming part of technology. Each of the stories presents a differing picture and story about technology, a dark, unreassuring account of what could and might be - reminding me of the chaotic vortex on the surface of the world where the matrix was set. A good read, and excellent commentary on technology gone to far.

What Simon Logan seems to be doing here with io is attempting to create a genre all of his own, just like William Gibson with Cyberpunk - and no doubt his 'Industrial' style will be imitated just as much in years to come. It's not exactly horror and it's not exactly science fiction; it has a certain indefinable quality that makes it unique. The futures - or even alternative realities - he envisions here are grounded in fact and extrapolate the everyday to make them believable. Metallic scrapyards, polluted cities and surging electrical grids built like giant spider's webs are his settings, and while influences like Tetsuo, Blade Runner and Hardware are obvious, Logan takes these a stage further, mixing and matching until the originals cease to exist. The stories are cerebral and intriguing, but are never less than accessible - touching on emotions and situations we can all relate to. I'm looking forward to the next collection already.

This is the third simon logan title i have read now and i have to say it is an epic collection of amazingly written short stories... all of which independently stand out and leave you wanting more in their own way. This is my favorite book so far that i have read by Simon Logan and it will most definitely not be the last.

Sometimes when reading simon logan i swear that i can relate to what he is talking about and visually see and understanding the in depth visions that he is creating through his writing and it is priceless ...

5 stars amazing collection, i wish that more books were like this one but there is only one Simon Logan out there ; } READ IT NOW!!!

Dark and brooding stories of people, and their fractured lives. Playing out under the soft glow of television static while rotting cabling ensnares them, drawing them closer together into the undercurrent of forbidden subcultures. Wildly descriptive, the harsh environments mold the characters, creating new patterns of survival, and explorations of self destruction. Wielding a dark edge that most genre work strives for, these stories provide that glimpse down the dark alley-ways that many authors quickly push the reader past.
Highly suggested for anybody that wants to explore the ghettos of the brightly lit cyberpunk fiction that is all too common

lots of energy, with a side of bizarre, and plenty of ice..don't forget the side of lemon