Good reviews for High Aztech keep coming in! The latest is in Strange Horizons, written by Dara Downey, who lectures at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. And I'm delighted that there are some quotes that I can exploit for my nefarious purposes:
Ernest Hogan’s High Aztech
is in many ways a hybrid creature—a mixture of the hard-boiled
cyberpunk associated with William R. Gibson and his ilk, and a
reasonably optimistic fantasy about the end of religious intolerance.
***
. . . the emphasis on globalisation, on
post-secularism, and on a riotous celebration of cultural relativism
also feels very relevant, even urgent, in a world seeing the return
of far-right sensibilities and serious back-pedaling on environmental
and socially progressive issues. The book is therefore both very much
of its time and remarkably prescient, not to mention really very
enjoyable . . .
***
Like Victor Frankenstein’s creation,
High Aztech is a queasy patchwork of genres and ideas that
combine to make something radical, unsettling, and quite possibly
monstrous, but by no means in a bad way.
***
For this reviewer at least, this
linguistic and stylistic labyrinth is a large part of the book’s
ideological thrust—and indeed its charm.
***
Displaying as it does a real knack on
Hogan’s part for packaging progressive politics in imaginatively
lively and entertaining ways, I’ll certainly be looking for more.
So, ticmotraspasarhuililis, nenatzime!
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