Ebook367 pages11 hours
Elvissey: A Novel
By Jack Womack
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
A young Elvis Presley is kidnapped into the future to be the new messiah in this “jarringly potent” novel from the author of Ambient (William Gibson).
Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award
At once a biting satire and a taut sci-fi thriller, Elvissey is the story of Isabel and John, a troubled couple who are sent through a “window” from the year 2033 to a strangely altered 1954. They are on a desperate mission to kidnap a young Elvis Presley and bring him back to the present day to serve the powerful conglomerate Dryco as a ready-made cult leader. But when Elvis proves to be a reluctant messiah, things do not work out quite as planned.
With his distinctive prose, Womack has combined “serious sociological extrapolation, high and low comedy, pulp adventure, pop iconography” and more in this highly original novel (Omni).
“Nazi flying saucers over an alternate 1950s Memphis, your basic cross-time godhead abduction of Elvis Presley, and what must surely be one of the flat-out weirdest Fisher King inversions yet perpetrated in American literature. Achingly sad, downright alarmingly funny, and just about as serious as any of us can presently afford to be.” —William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
“Jack Womack is another of the heirs of cyberpunk, one of science fiction’s most interesting new writers” —Los Angeles Times
“Womack’s book is different in tone and content from anything you may have read.” —Financial Times
“Womack astounds and entertains. . . . Though the plot suggests the ridiculous, this is, in fact, a deep, often theological, reflection on love, betrayal and commercially inspired nihilism.” —Publishers Weekly
Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award
At once a biting satire and a taut sci-fi thriller, Elvissey is the story of Isabel and John, a troubled couple who are sent through a “window” from the year 2033 to a strangely altered 1954. They are on a desperate mission to kidnap a young Elvis Presley and bring him back to the present day to serve the powerful conglomerate Dryco as a ready-made cult leader. But when Elvis proves to be a reluctant messiah, things do not work out quite as planned.
With his distinctive prose, Womack has combined “serious sociological extrapolation, high and low comedy, pulp adventure, pop iconography” and more in this highly original novel (Omni).
“Nazi flying saucers over an alternate 1950s Memphis, your basic cross-time godhead abduction of Elvis Presley, and what must surely be one of the flat-out weirdest Fisher King inversions yet perpetrated in American literature. Achingly sad, downright alarmingly funny, and just about as serious as any of us can presently afford to be.” —William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
“Jack Womack is another of the heirs of cyberpunk, one of science fiction’s most interesting new writers” —Los Angeles Times
“Womack’s book is different in tone and content from anything you may have read.” —Financial Times
“Womack astounds and entertains. . . . Though the plot suggests the ridiculous, this is, in fact, a deep, often theological, reflection on love, betrayal and commercially inspired nihilism.” —Publishers Weekly
Read more from Jack Womack
Random Acts of Senseless Violence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ambient: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Whisper of Blood: Stories of Vampirism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLet's Put the Future Behind Us: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoing, Going, Gone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Elvissey
Rating: 3.392857142857143 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
42 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A complete and total mindfuck, but not just for the plot, which involves two time-travelers from a future based around Elvis Presley going back in an attempt to abduct the young King and bring him back as a Messiah. Language in the future has evolved and mutated to an almost alien level, making the vocabulary of the two would-be kidnappers as much a challenge for the reader to decipher as the Scottish patois in Trainspotting was.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Womack was recommended to me as being a good writer, and this is the first book of his I've attempted, so I can only imagine that it must not be one of his better books. An alternate-universe, alternate-history, cyberpunk-themed book in which the protagonists often talk in a dreary newspeak and in which, despite reaching near the top in a corporate hell, they are too stupid to realize that they are being taken advantage of in ways that the reader notices immediately. I can see that Womack has talent, but this book, despite occasional moments in which he shows what he can do, is a failure.
Book preview
Elvissey - Jack Womack
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