334 : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: 334
Review: Thomas Disch takes us through the lives of people living in building number 334 on 11th street in New York. But this is no ordinary story, and it isn't in ordinary times. It's set in 2020, giving the reader a glimpse of the future that may have been, if the government watches over our every move. In a time of test tube babies, real food displayed in plastic form in a museum, and tests determining whether or not a person can have children the reader gets to know many different characters who live in the same building, but lives are far apart. Learning about these people can be confusing, because Disch jumps back and forth between them very quickly, but other than that, this book offers a good fictional look into the future, that left me wondering if the predictions will ever come true. I recommend 334 to anyone interested in science fiction, and/or looking for a challenging book that kept me captivated the whole way through.

Rating:
Summary: An SF masterpiece about people--sad people
Review: Thomas Disch's 334 has got to be the most depressing book I have ever read, an SF novel about people more than ideas or plot. The book (more a series of inter-related stories than a novel) is set in a future New York City (mis)governed by technocratic socialistic regime which enforces eugenics, attempts to radically redefine gender roles, and placates citizens with drugs and televised pornography. The focus of the book is the lives of several ordinary tenants of an overcrowded and decrepit public housing project, people whose lives range from unfulfilling to abjectly miserable, flawed people whom the soulless welfare state is incompetent to help, or people unable to meet their potential in the inhuman society that that inefficient bureaucracy has, by accident or design, created. Disch skillfully never strays into condescension or preachiness and always shows and never tells, depicting people and events that are never spectacular or maudlin, but are instead utterly quotidian and horribly believable. 334 is much better than Disch's earlier novel, Genocides, and more on a par with his impressive Camp Concentration, which shares with 334 forays into experimental (and generally successful) story structures and techniques.