Imago (Alan Rodgers Books) [Hardcover]

Amy Sterling Casil (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2002 | Series: Alan Rodgers Books

There's a pig man at your window, and he's hungry. This is the world of Imago. Something has gone very wrong with this world. Changed freaks, victims of the Human Mutational Virus, roam California's streets. DisLex, the entertainment utility, monitors everyone's lives; yet few know that DisLex not only controls life, it has created it: perfect virtual constructs who can never die -- the Imagos.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Detailed descriptions of her many characters' internal thoughts weigh down Casil's debut novel (after 2001's story collection, Without Absolution), in which underdogs battle a corporate giant headed by a madman bent on "improving" the human race. There's no cure yet for human mutational virus, or HMV, which transforms people into half-animal viral "freaks" reminiscent of the beasts in Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau or Cordwainer Smith's underpeople. DisLex chairman Harman Jacques, secretly infected with the virus and so evil even his grandmother despises him, creates the PerfectTown a computer-generated world inhabited by changing, growing people, constructs known as imagos as an attraction at the Magic Kingdom to model a cure. But Harman's reasons are anything but altruistic. In a eugenic experiment, he seeks to rebuild humans as imagos, but without what he considers errors or mistakes. His assistant, Julie Curtez, and her husband, Frank, discover that Harman has been running a death camp of HMV-infected freaks, drugging them and using them to help run secret unlicensed software. A crescendo of events leads to imagos of Julie and Frank working within the DisLex mainframe to discredit Harman, aided by an imago of Richard Nixon, in a dramatic good-versus-evil showdown that offers Nixon redemption. However, the plethora of points of view diffuses the emotional impact, while the origin of HMV remains inadequately explained. (Feb.)Forecast: Blurbs from such formidable names in the field as David Brin, James P. Blaylock and Mike Resnick should help, but it will take strong word of mouth to overcome the disadvantages of the high price and, possibly, of a publilsher known primarily as a reprint house..

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Borgo Press (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587153793
• ISBN-13: 978-1587153792
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,845,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Inspired by a lifelong love of nature, endless curiosity, and a belief in wonderful things, the author, writing as Amy Sterling Casil, is a 2002 Nebula Award nominee and recipient of other awards and recognition for her short science fiction and fantasy which has appeared in publications ranging from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to Zoetrope. She is the author of 20 nonfiction books, about a hundred short stories, primarily science fiction and fantasy, one fiction and poetry collection, and two novels. She lives in Playa del Rey, California with her daughter Meredith and a Jack Russell Terrier named Badger. Amy has worked since 2005 as a nonprofit executive for the progressive charitable organization Beyond Shelter in Los Angeles, and she also teaches writing and composition at various Southern California colleges, after receiving her MFA from Chapman University in 1999. She is currently the Treasurer of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and a co-founder of the internet author's cooperative, Book View Cafe.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read It for Tricky Dick, January 3, 2012

By 

Randy Stafford (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Imago (Alan Rodgers Books) (Hardcover)

In the future of this 2002 work, the vast corporate giant DisLex, provider of entertainment and utilities and some government services, and its psychopathic CEO, Harman Jacques, not only round up victims of the Human Mutational Virus (HMV) and put them in de facto work camps but have also developed a vast, miniaturized simulacra of the world. In this PerfectTown, duplicated living and historical personages, the imagoes of the title, exist including Harman and his secret assistant, a little side project in complex personality simulation - one Richard M. Nixon, Harman's personal hero.

I feared, initially, that we were in the world of implausibly rationalized fable and another tired tract on the evils of the white man and his power structure. After all, HMV is a biologically improbable disease which renders most of its victims human-animal chimeras or, in rare cases, clown-like figures complete with huge noses. Also, Casil is not the most consistent in the prophylactic measures needed to prevent infections. These "freaks" are seemingly not only inspired by early fears of AIDS victims but are stand-ins for all kinds of social outsiders. And they are oppressed by white, powerful Harman. And Harman has a bizarre, creepy plan to infect his new assistant, Julie Curtez, with the disease. Her and hubsand Frank, who, as a district attorney, is trying to nail DisLex on drug trafficking charges, look suited to be our non-white heroes.

And the fantastic trappings aren't that new either. Communities simulated for nefarious ends go back to at least Frederik Pohl's "Tunnel Under the World" and Andrew D. Weiner's "The News from D Street". Simulacra of historical personalities go back to at least Philip K. Dick's We Can Build You and were popular in the 1980s with Robert Silverberg's shared world Time Gate. And the logic of how these characters interact with their cyber environment is even shakier than that series. The nature of the struggle between the characters that mainly takes place in PerfectTown in the book's final third reminded me of one of those dream worlds where people symbolically fight in some person's unconsciousness.

Yet, the book has one great strength, the only thing that kept me reading besides a mild curiosity about Julie's fate: Richard Nixon. Casil spends so much time with him, seamlessly drops in so many details about his life, gives us so much of the thoughts of this flawed but, if not truly decent, not hopelessly flawed man, that his fate, his journey kept me reading. Like the above Time Gate series or some of Harry Turtledove's alternate histories, I got the sense of coming into contact with some version of a real, historical person.

The constantly shifting viewpoint characters with their detailed thoughts reminded me, as did the presence of an Abraham Lincoln simulacra (a character in We Can Build You), of Dick. But the similarities are more stylistic than thematic and, frankly, this novel is plotted better than a lot of Dick's novels were.

In short, read this for Casil's style and her great achievement in Nixon, not for the technological trappings or story novelty.

It should also be noted that this is the third and final installment in the story of Gyla, a wolf-woman victim of HMV.

[Review based on copy provided by author.]

2.0 out of 5 stars Fails to Deliver on Interesting Idea, January 16, 2012

By 

Aeries (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imago (Alan Rodgers Books) (Hardcover)

It was an interesting concept, but a bit overwritten. There were sections that were filled with either exposition or abstract language, which ground the story's progression to a near standstill. Reading it on my Kindle, I couldn't believe that when the story arc seemed over, I still had about 25% of the book left to read.

The most interesting character (to me) was the antagonist, Harmon Jacques, but he was mostly faded out in favor of Richard Nixon in sequences which bordered on bizarre.

I can't say I enjoyed the book enough to justify suggesting it to anyone. I read it in a little over a day, but I was driven as much by just wanting to finish it as the slim hope that it would improve at some point.

Most of all, I was disappointed by the relative lack of depth portrayed for what seemed like an interesting concept in the form of the "Imagoes." In the end, it seemed like a fairly superficial title for a way that a dead character can interact with the living.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, unique, thought-provoking story, January 14, 2012

By 

C. M. Wilson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Imago (Alan Rodgers Books) (Hardcover)

Imago by Amy Sterling Casil is a fascinating and incredible story set in a futuristic world, where Disney ("DisLex") not only provides entertainment but also provides most of the US's infrastructure and vital services like communications, power, and credit. This world has been infected by the Human Mutational Virus (HMV), which causes people to be disfigured and take on animal-like attributes. The infected "freaks" are feared and despised, with the uninfected running the country, lead by the CEO of DisLex, Harman Jacques. Harman is a complicated, damaged man who reviles, experiments upon, and segregates the infected; his fear is based upon the fact that he himself is secretly infected. Fascinated with imperfection, he creates a model "PerfectTown", populated with virtual constructs of real people, based upon personality, personal history, and memories; these virtual people are called "Imagoes" and assume lives of their own.

Into this crazy world stumbles innocent & naive Julie Curtez, newly appointed assistant for Harman. Julie fears the "freaks," but slowly comes to understand that not everything is as presented by DisLex. With the help of her district attorney husband Frank and Imago Tricky Dicky (Richard Nixon), she embarks on a journey to learn the truth.

This all sounds a bit too far-fetched and crazy, but it works, primarily because the characters are so well done. In particular, Richard Nixon is incredibly fascinating, realistic, and complicatedly human and it is a treat to get know him and all his contradictions. Imago gives him a chance to redeem himself, and this is perhaps the best part of the book, though the entire world with the "freak" sub-cultures is intriguing and well-done. I would like to read more about this world.

All in all, Imago by Amy Sterling Casil is a unique story, completely different from anything which I have ever read before. Initially, I found it difficult to understand the setting, because Ms Casil plunges you directly into the world without explanation, and it is so completely foreign and strange, almost cartoonish (being Disney-based). However, I am glad I persevered through the first chapter, because it is a fascinating and incredible setting which quickly made perfect sense and raised thought-provoking questions about honor, redemption, prejudice, and life. Well worth reading.