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    Sensation
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    Sensation
    Unavailable
    Sensation
    Ebook239 pages3 hours

    Sensation

    By Nick Mamatas

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    When Julia Hernandez leaves her husband, shoots a real estate developer, and then vanishes without a trace, she slips out of the world she knew and into the Simulacrum—a place where human history is both guided and thwarted by the conflict between a species of anarchist wasps and a collective of hyperintelligent spiders. When Julia's ex-husband Raymond spots her in a grocery store he doesn't usually patronize, he's soon drawn into an underworld of radical political gestures where Julia is the new media sensation of both this world and the Simulacrum. Told ultimately from the collective point of view of another species, this allegorical novel plays with the elements of the Simulacrum apparent in real life—media reports, business speak, blog entries, text messages, psychological-evaluation forms, and the lies lovers tell one another—and poses a fascinating idea that displaces human beings from the center of the universe and makes them simply the pawns of two warring species.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateMay 1, 2011
    ISBN9781604865530
    Unavailable
    Sensation
    Author

    Nick Mamatas

    Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including The Last Weekend and I Am Providence. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, and many other anthologies and magazines. Nick’s previous anthologies include the Bram Stoker Award-winner Haunted Legends (co-edited with Ellen Datlow) and The Locus Award nominees The Future is Japanese and Hanzai Japan (both co-edited with Masumi Washington). Nick’s editorial work has also been nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy awards. He resides in the California Bay Area.

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    Reviews for Sensation

    3.5/5

    21 ratings3 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Tiresome and smug. Wouldn't have finished it but I didn't have anything else to read while I was on jury duty.
    • 4/5
      Sensation's average rating is 3.5+ stars. Statistically, at least, the evidence indicates that, if you consider reading Sensation, you're likely to enjoy it.I won't speak to the plot other than to say that its conceit involves the revelation that all of human history is the result of a proxy war between other lifeforms. The plot isn't really what's important here; it's the setup that those readers who enjoy Sensation will appreciate: It's the skewed mechanism by which Mamatas delivers his critiques of contemporary American society.At least one reviewer (elsewhere) referred to Mamatas' writing as “smug.” I'd by lying if I denied that. But Mamatas isn't selective in his choice of targets; he mocks everyone equally and one gets the sense, at least, that he's including himself (or his “type”) among those he lampoons. Of course, certain stereotypes receive special attention: The “hipster,” the academic, and, yes, he makes fun of performance artists. Easy targets, perhaps, but I enjoyed Mamatas' handling of them.Sensation suffers from a number of weaknesses. The plot meanders and, short as the book is, feels as if it's been stretched too long in spots. Philosophical implications abound and, irony deficient as I am, I'm not sure if Mamatas was striving for depth or adding another layer of mockery atop his characters. On a technical level, I read the Nook version of Sensation, which was poorly formatted and suffered from numerous errors and typos. I forgive Mamatas the points above because of the uniqueness of his concept (to me, anyway), the ways in which he captures what so many of us think and his occasionally surprising turns of phrase. “I eat murder,” says one character, “and I poop ideology,” a statement that can't fail to bring a smile to my face. There is no huge payoff at the end of Sensation. It won't change your worldview or awaken in you the urge to engage in some sort of social justice work. It's not serious. It's not literature. It's entertainment, and that's okay. I recommend that readers able to accept a book on that merit give this (short) book a chance.
    • 4/5
      Hard to classify Sensation by Nick Mamatas without describing the work like some obscure underground internet radio station. It definitely falls within the parameters of contemporary urban science-fiction, a more American counterpart to the British labyrinthine imaginings of China Mieville, while faintly echoing the finer philosophical musings of The Matrix movies. On the other hand, it confluences in wild absurdity, paralleling a strange hybrid of The Hitchhiker's Guide with Woody Allen's New York state of mind.The story doesn't have much of a center as it's more a series of falling dominoes, beginning with an atypical breakup between lackluster couple Raymond and Julia, and the subsequent societal fallout both monitored and controlled from forces unforeseen. Such forces reveal themselves as the interplay between two warring super-intelligent species of spider and wasp, molding our reality as omnipresent observers of "indeterminate ethnicities", policing society's actions in their own war of survival.Mamatas frequently references the butterfly effect in this work, using timely and humorous popular social references to illustrate the torrential effect of the small actions people collectively take, whether they be defacing newly constructed mega-stadiums, driving buses into the United Nations, or enacting "Plan Z" through the perfected strategy of web-based, pseudo-bourgeois "mutually assured confusion". With all these accumulated acts, Mamatas eagerly invokes the free will argument, whether in this highly controlled universe or that of the interweaved, yet nebulous "Simulacrum" in which our players occasionally encounter themselves.There's a lot going on in Sensation. With creepy subtlety and detachment, Mamatas brilliantly narrates from the view of his hyper-intelligent spider species; his interweave of our reality and that of the Simulacrum is too underdeveloped for my taste though, as he focuses on the plight of an overeducated, insipid Raymond and his ubiquitous Julia. More time could have been spent on the hive-mind of his wasp species, for it too, was left wanting in relation to his spidey sense. The absurdity emanating from and surrounding his characters in an ever insane New York is quite enjoyable though; Mamatas deftly strangles our sense of self-importance, adding a much needed humility to our unquestionably mindless endeavors. It's also an unquestionably worthwhile read.