The Gone-Away World

Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy , Staff Picks , Fiction

Don’t stop reading when I say this one’s science fiction.  It’s for all of you who loved Catch-22, The Three Musketeers, Hunter S. Thompson, P. G. Wodehouse, Russell Hoban, and, well—hard to say what else.  It’s a larger-than-life war story, a scathing satire told in laugh-out-loud-clever wordplay, and a postapocalyptic tale of friendship in the best buddy pic tradition—The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway.

The Haulage and HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company is as usual gathered in the Nameless Bar when they see on TV that the Jorgmund Pipe is on fire. 

It can’t be on fire.  It’s the only thing that’s holding back the strangeness that has swept the world since the recent war.  The very unusual war in which Gonzo Lubitsch and his pals performed various raucously heroic and occasionally unspeakable acts, and formed their mercenary gang.

Naturally, they suit up to go to the rescue.  And our narrator, Gonzo’s best friend and sidekick, fills us in on how the Pipe came to be, what the horrors are that it keeps at bay, and why this particular band of friends is the only hope to set the world at right again.

To say much more about the plot would be to reveal too much.  Not that you’ll ever see coming the head-wrenching plot turn that happens about two-thirds of the way through and makes you want to reread the whole first part of the book.

It’s clever, clever fun, with somehow a big sense of heart, too.  Amazing.