FEBRUARY 2017 - AudioFile
Humorist and former “Daily Show” correspondent John Hodgman narrates the latest techno-dystopian thriller by Warren Ellis. Adam Dearden has been admitted to Normal Head Research Station, a secluded rehab facility for futurists and intellectuals who’ve suffered mental breakdowns. After Adam’s arrival, another patient mysteriously vanishes, leaving behind only a mass of writing insects. Amid the threat of a complete lockdown, Adam and his fellow patients investigate the disappearance themselves. Hodgman grabs listeners with the surreal opening line—“Hand over the entire Internet now and nobody gets hurt”—and infuses an appropriate blend of sarcasm and bemusement throughout. It’s not all played for laughs, though. Hodgman also captures the sinister atmosphere bubbling just below the surface. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
09/05/2016
Adam Dearden, the hero of this fascinating near-future thriller from Ellis (Gun Machine), is one of the people monitoring an intricate worldwide surveillance system as part of an effort to save the world from a looming cataclysm that could bring financial ruin. When Adam suffers a breakdown while attending a conference in Rotterdam, he’s taken to Normal Head, an asylum in Oregon. The next morning, awakened by loud banging, he leaves his room and sees orderlies in an uproar. Another inmate, Mr. Mansfield, is missing from his room, his bed covered with a couple hundred pounds of bugs. There’s no evidence on the surveillance tapes of Mr. Mansfield leaving or being taken from his room, which was locked with its windows sealed. The institute is put into lockdown with all Internet connections severed. Though all inmates and staff are suspects, Adam, as the new arrival, is the primary one. Readers will root for Adam as he struggles to discover what is actually going on in Normal, who is to be trusted, and what happened to Mansfield. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"Fantastic . . . A crackling, funny, and frightening horror story from a unique voice in genre lit." —Kirkus Reviews
“Normal is abnormal, fascinating, and terrifying. Deceptively compact, it contains multitudes. Great stuff that still has me thinking.” —Jeff VanderMeer
“Normal is hectic and smart and brutal and funny, and queasy-making, too. Like William Gibson and Margaret Atwood, Warren Ellis is one of those writers who seem to have an all-access backstage pass to the total weirdness of the now.” —Lauren Beukes
“Warren Ellis has been conjuring futures for years, and now he asks the question: at what cost? Part futurist anthropology, part locked-room mystery, Normal is funny, creepy, perceptive, and surprisingly personal. If you, like me, are an avid consumer of what-ifs and what-nows, you probably have a responsibility to read this book.” —Robin Sloan
"A seriously good writer with a seriously wicked imagination" —Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
"Warren Ellis is a twisted genius." —Lauren Beukes, author of Broken Monsters
"Warren Ellis's work shows a knack for mad hilarity, merciless action, dark cynicism, and incorruptible bravery." —Wired
“A beacon of brilliant irony and sardonic satire.” —Sir Patrick Stewart
“Deliciously perverse.” —Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Review
Aug. 31, 2016
After a futurist has a nervous breakdown in Rotterdam, he’s taken to a secret hospital in rural Oregon that may not be what it seems on the surface.This is a fantastic digital-first novella by multimedium writer Ellis (Gun Machine, 2013, etc.) that will also be released in print. It follows up on Ellis’ previous digital FSG Original, Dead Pig Collector (2013). This book may be the perfect way to sample Ellis, drawing on his fascination with futurists and the threats imposed by ever faster technology and offering a story that employs his profane poetry to a degree that may inspire cackles from fans. The book’s protagonist is Adam Dearden, a brilliant man whose mind came apart following a confrontation in Namibia. He’s been secreted away to the “Normal Head Research Station,” a recovery facility for those like him. “He was a futurist,” Ellis writes. “They were all futurists. Everyone here gazed into the abyss for a living. Do it long enough, and the abyss would gaze back into you.” They’re a divided bunch: on one side, foresight strategists who work for charities, nonprofits, and universities (glass half full). On the other, strategic forecasters, the spooks who think all the water has dried up and the glass is shattered. Some patients yearn to go to “staging,” a promise of a sort of halfway house to transition the mad geniuses back into society. After one of his fellow patients disappears under a mass of writhing black insects, the inmates are warned that government investigators are coming to get to the bottom of things. Adam must form a ragtag alliance with his fellow prisoners, who include an urbanist with a little cannibalism challenge, a mad economist, and other allies who gazed too long into the abyss. Ellis even manages to bring his damaged hero to an epiphany, although it’s one that will scare the living hell out of anybody who truly ponders what the world is becoming. A crackling, funny, and frightening horror story from a unique voice in genre lit.
