Customer Reviews

O-Zone

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Another surprise from a writer who keeps reinventing his art, O-Zone is a book about the future we fear, but filled with characters we know and can relate to. Theroux's greatest talent, it seems to me, is the authority with which he creates the various worlds he presents in his novels. From the jungles of the Amazon, to big city melodrama, to the fantasy tale of Millroy the Magian or the harsh reality of The Family Arsenal, he presents characters and situations that seem too real to be mere inventions. In O-Zone he tackles the SF genre and does it in style. An almost picaresque tale of a journey into a forbidden desolate 'outback', by charaters unfitted by wealth and easy living to deal with what they find, Theroux's story deals with a range of social and human issues with both excitement and humor.

This book, like so much of Theroux, can be read strictly for fun or delved into for deeper meaning. All in all, another very satisfying fiction from one of our best contemporary writers.

O-Zone is a rather unusual book for Paul Theroux, a drama in a futuristic setting rather than the contemporary setting of his other novels. Reading O-Zone brings to mind Huxley's Brave New World, both for the portrayal of the world in which it is set, and for the inevitible comparison with another noted novelist who wrote a single book set in a futuristic world.

I've noticed that Sci-Fi fans as a group don't much care for O-Zone, as it violates a lot of the accepted rules of the genre- as does Brave New World, for that matter, and Huxley has never been that popular with hard core SciFi readers either. Both books use the future world as a setting to explore relationships between people, and to make certain plot developments possible, but neither gets into much detail regarding the technology.

Like Brave New World, O-Zone explores the alienation of modern man in this world of the future, and the consequant attraction to the primative and atavistic world that is found on the reservation (Huxley) or in the contaminated lands of the O-Zone. And in both books, some of the protagonists go in search of amusement and entertainment from the primatives, but find something disturbingly similar to themselves.

Despite the strong parallels, O-Zone owes nothing in the way of plot of development to Brave New World. The story is as original as anything Theroux's written, the characters are fully developed and well motivated, and the story compelling.

I've never read any other books by Paul Theroux, who seems to get compared to Updike a lot, but I've enjoyed his longform journalism and he is as good at writing dystopian, near-future sci-fi as anyone I've run across. The book captures a society ruled by xenophobia perfectly, as well as the viciousness of people to whom mob mentality is a sort of hobby. The small cultural/sartorial/technological details of the book are mostly pretty good, with ideas that are often believable (e.g., women go to brothels where the masked sperm donors have sex with them, and people can sort of accept this because it's done for the sake of having super-smart children). The contrasts between the isolated, tiered cities and the stone-age countryside is done skillfully and unnervingly, and the sense of dread the city dwellers seem to have when out of their cities is conveyed with genuine tension. Life among the "aliens" in the O-Zone as a flipside shows people that are as complex and multifaceted as anyone, not simply played off as noble savages or outlaws. The characters, from a murderous posse member, to a stern tribal leader, to a precocious social misfit, to a wealthy business and the teenage "alien" whom he becomes infatuated with and abducts,are all believable; Theroux doesn't show us people at their best, but rather driven by familiar and often conflicting urges and traits. Dialogue is fairly bizarre but works within the book's social context and is handled well, with offhand remarks and observations often being intensely insightful. A very good book if you don't mind it being a total freakin' downer and have any interest in near-future sci-fi.

It is hard to say why this novel so affected me. True, it is sci-fi and it has a tremendous plot that winds back on itself, the characters are some of the quirkiest and most interesting in literature...maybe it is a combination of all these elements.

One pet peeve I have with futurists is their depiction of the Earth as an environmental disaster as hordes of free-roaming sub-humans terrify the countryside. YET, scientific progress seems to continue unabated. That aside, this tale is a gem!! From the genius teenager to the searching mom to the innocent gal - from locale to locale - Theroux has assembled a cast and story that resonates long after one finished the last words.

Innocence in all its many forms is an underlying theme with almost every major character - from the mom to the son to the roamers to the gal and even to the long lost (?) male donor - involved in some type of sudden awarenenss that the world is not as benign as they once thought. The coming of age of the young teenager is perfect in its perplexity and complexity.

Get this book and lock the door!!

Theroux often bends genre's, such as with his My Secret History which he refused to label fiction or non-fiction. (Plausibly deniable non-fiction?)

But Theroux is a well traveled guy and has been through Africa's most treacherous bureaucracies as few other men have dared. See Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown.

In the O-Zone he writes a what appears to be a Sci-fi novel that is actually a sarcastic extrapolation of present political trends towards a truly unique anti-utopia too bitter to ever be made a movie. (His comparatively light hearted Mosquito Coast was successfully adapted to the silver screen, enjoyable only if you had read the book.)

The O-Zone features a class of overlords called "Taxpayers" flying around in armored helicopters fighting off the welfare classes in the Reclamation Corps. The architectural novelty of the book is what brings it to mind-- giant asphalt pyramid artificial mountains have been constructed ostensibly to collect rain water. (But in reality as corporate welfare.) Theroux paints a picture of America with an efficient kleptocracy such as you find in the non-developing nations. As if we had 20 years of Bush and the ethics of "Greed is Good, Corruption is Opportunity" ran their course.

I rarely reread books these days, but this one is worth it. It says so much about how kleptocracy works and where we are headed if we don't guard our democracy from the evils of "Decidership".

Only Paul Theroux could write "Brave New World" better than Huxley. (As if Huxley could write.) The basic thematic structure of "Brave New World" (a journey into primitive unknowns) coupled with Theroux's talent for character, description, and satire make for a fantastic novel

All the characters are developed well and become familiar to the reader. I read this book in Panama and bought a second copy to carry with me for the rest of my journey in Latin America. At times I found myself laughing in the middle of the day thinking about things the characters had said!

Paul Theroux's Ozone shows humanity for all its flaws and imperfections. It is a novel about a group of privileged, sheltered, and egotistical members of the upper echelons of society and their confrontation with the unchartered wilderness and inhabitants of Ozone. Throughout the novel the characters find themselves asking the question what does it mean to be human and what separates the humans from the `aliens'? As the novel progresses the answers become more and more blurred and the idea that nurture and luck factor more into one's quality of life versus innate intelligence prevails. As well as critiquing class and superiority complexes, the novel critiques corporate greed and the willingness to sacrifice the environment and people's lives to make a profit. Hardy's job is to find places in impoverished, undeveloped nations to build artificial thermal mountains in order to use up surplus oil; he does not care how many people die or what the repercussions are on the land. The job appeals to his ego because it allows him to play God--by creating thermal mountains he can alter and control the weather; meanwhile the company is using him to keep the price of oil high and in demand.

Another idea being critiqued is the idea of a hyper-secure, privacy-violating police state. Because of the unrationalizing fear of the other, the Owners of Cold Harbor waive all their rights and go through intense security checks in order to obtain safety. However, as the book progresses we see how unsafe, despite all its security checks, Cold Harbor really is. Godseye flies over the city every night and attacks anyone who displays fear or seems suspicious; on one of these hunts a female mistaken for an `alien' is murdered and the murderers are not only unprosecuted, but encouraged to continue their nightly massacres. And as we later discover, many aliens are masquerading as Owners, showing that the security measures are all a farce.

The book--though set in the future--deals with many of the problems of today, including: immigration, oppression of the poor to sustain the high quality living of the developed world, corporate greed, political cover up (the government hides information about Ozone's contamination by Nuclear waste), fear leading to a police state, etc. When I first started this book, I detested the characters and found the book a little dry, but as the story progresses one begins to understand the characters psyches and it is fun to watch their transformations. Theroux shows how the primitive often are the most civilized of us all. Theroux writes an entertaining, suspenseful novel that warns us of a future that might come to fruition if we do not alter our current course.

This book is good. It made me think better of Theroux whose train travel books I have read.

This book took a lot of creative talent and intelligence. The 15 year old nerd Fizzy is particularly well done. He is a character you will never forget.

The science fiction part was quite well done. The cynical humor of the whole thing is unsurpassed. This deserves 5 stars.

Set in a future society where the dividing line between the haves and have-nots is a deep rift dividing society into the super-affluent and the destitute. Powerfull commentary on trends that are shaping the world we live in