Customer Reviews

A MOUTHFUL OF TONGUES: HER TOTIPOTENT TROPICANALIA

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

 

 

Paul Di Filippo is highly regarded by his fellow science fiction writers; one of the finest practitioners of the subgenre popularly known as "steampunk". Here he steals a few pages from Delaney and Dick, crafting a splendidly well written erotic near future fantasy that is as well told as any from these other great science fiction writers. It is one of the finest erotic tales in science fiction I have come across, rich in the magical realism that I found prevalent in works such as those by Borges and cyberpunk fiction writer Lucius Shepherd. Di Filippo is as skillful a stylist as William Gibson in "A Mouthful Tongues", and has created female characters as memorable as any of Gibson's. Yet please note that this may not be a fine book for everyone since some may be disturbed by the intense erotic content prevalent through much of the novel.

Kerry is an average girl -- working as an assistant/secretary in a biotechnology job, supporting her boyfriend ill with something like AIDS, getting hit on by her boss -- when she releases the benthic, a top-secret project at her firm. The benthic is a force of living energy, with a magical ability to transmute any matter it touches. Given shape by Kerry's emotions at the time of the release, the benthic travels to Bahia, a tropical resort island, where its sexual hunger rampages uncontrolleable and unstoppable.

Delany has "Hogg," and Di Filippo has "A Mouthful of Tongues." The explicit sexual content comprises all of the book, resting in a thin frame of a story as summarized above. It's impossible to open a random page and not be in the middle of something explicit.

Given that I'd started reading this as a science fiction and not an erotic book, I was disappointed that there wasn't more explanation and elaboration. What is the benthic? (My little description above is pure conjecture.) What drove it, why was it so hungry, and what did it want? To what original purpose was it designed, and on what scientific or at least philosophical principles? Was it erotic in nature, destruction and creation, kindness and cruelty - all expressed through sex, or was that only one possible expression? How did it reason? I also would have liked to read more about the near-future world Di Filippo briefly sketched (80% of the book takes place in a tropical jungle).

Perhaps it was the author's intention to leave these questions to us. The writing and the prose are excellent, but the overall impression is less than satisfying.