Dead Astronauts

I don't know if this book and I were ever going to get along. I'm a huge Jeff VanderMeer fan, but didn't initially realize this was set in the Borne universe. Borne wasn't bad, but I just didn't end up loving it. From what I read, the connections seem pretty loose – same universe, different characters. There is just so MUCH going on here that at 27% in I had no idea what I was reading. The prose was gorgeous, but I struggled to follow the plot. This book is going to make you work, and I cautiously recommend it to those who are up for the challenge.

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER OF THE AUTHORperG.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE”

Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) kind of called the shot with this book, a complicated, difficult, arcane and puzzling tale about . . . something. It's never really clear what the point of this sequel to the enviro-disaster novel Borne actually is other than, perhaps, to provide some sort of outlet for the assorted notes and sketches Jeff Vandermeer accumulated while writing it. Where it fails, for me, is in the hazy narrative which takes a variety of perspectives but can't quite focus on anything. The dead astronauts of the title, first seen in Borne, are some kind of shape-shifters capable of moving through time and space. Ostensibly human, they are apparently the creation of The Company, a sinister, nebulous entity that tinkered with biotechnology and (I guess) interdimensional portals. Their creations, both dangerous and innocuous, fill the landscape through which the astronauts move on a mission to . . . do . . . something. Then there's Charlie X (a name deliberately or innocently nicked from a classic Star Trek , episode about a young boy with godlike powers (so, maybe it wasn't as innocently used as I first thought)) who seems to have been responsible for the creation of some of the worst/most dangerous biotech creatures like The Blue Fox and the Behemoth, both of which cast menacing and dark shadows over the story as they . . . do . . . something. Again, the beams lose their coherence.
Vandermeer's fiction is called Weird for good reason. It is not just that the subject matter is strange and exotic; it's not just that the story (for lack of a better term) is elliptical and indirect; it's more the whole premise of a world gone to hell (cue the old sci-fi trope of Misused Technology Gone Bad) filled with bizarre new creatures. In a sense, he has turned traditional science fiction inside out: instead of elaborate stories about interstellar space travel to new worlds with bizarre alien life, he has centred the story on earth and put all the expensive gadgets and toys in the service of creating wacky biotech. No need to leave the planet when we can have the monsters here. And what could be a worse “alien invasion” story than one in which the monsters are of our own creation. Frankenstein meets the 21st century with predictably dire results. On a side note, I recently read Margaret Atwood's Madadam trilogy and have to confess that the worlds of these two series are so similar that I kept expecting characters from Atwood's books to appear in this one.
So Vandermeer can write, there's no doubt, but it's not always clear in this book what it is he's writing about, or even for. I imagine his poor editor, sitting across from him all headachy and confused, saying “ok, Jeff, I get what you're saying, but what the hell is going on here?” The book is kaleidoscopic and vivid but ultimately it's devoid of anything resembling plot, structure or narrative. Maybe that's Vandermeer's point: in a post-human, fragmented world the stories are equally distorted, fragmented and incoherent.

i like new weird
i like vibes-based writing
i liked borne well enough to pick this up
i do not like when one sentence has no connection to the next
i do not like when descriptions are so detached from a grounded reality that i cannot even guess at what information the author wants me to take away from any given scene
dnf'd after 2 chapters

don't can't won't stop try again fail again it you they glitch it you they can't won't mustn't stop live the anger live the joy live resist

Decent first draft.

Best book of the year.

Dead Astronauts was my first Jeff Vandermeer read. I'm not familiar with his style(s) of writing and haven't read the predecessor novel Borne.

This is experimental literature — a term I picked up from researching this book midway through reading it. I connected somewhat with the story but not the delivery. It's written in a poetic style that seems intended to paint a picture with phrases, fonts and literary devices rather than using prose to take the reader on a journey or to a conclusion.

So much attention was paid to the mood and styling of the book that it neglected to go places raised by the story itself. Three astronauts are time traveling (or skipping between universes) to fight the Company, which we later learn created all or part of them in some way. Are they alive? Are they dead? Are they existing outside of time? How do these various iterations of the same place connect with each other? What's this number sequence we see repeated through different storylines?

Raise existential questions and I can go off and think about those answers myself. But raise plot questions posed in the story itself and I'd appreciate answers. Otherwise, I'm left wondering why I should care.

My least favorite aspect of the book is the use of various devices to present the story. It's written as poetry in the form of a novel. Sentences. Don't flow. Normally. This made me pay more attention to the format rather than the content. And it has lots of “It's a book. Not a book.” phrasing. Huh?

And the final few chapters include two or three sections that are nothing but the same few sentences repeated dozens or hundreds of times on the following pages. Maybe that's an effective technique to demonstrate how something begins to cycle until it becomes mechanical. But assuming the author wrote the book using a word processor, he likely wrote those first sentences and then copied and pasted to make the next several pages. If he's not going to take the time to write something, should I take the time to read it? Is the idea for me to simply skip through those pages after I “get it”?

There is a story here but it's not getting told. The author is instead trying to make it felt. Enthusiasts of poetry or experimental literature will likely appreciate this book far more than I did. I prefer a writing style that doesn't get in my way of comprehending the story.

I will spare everyone an attempted plot summary as Dead Astronauts cannot be tidily synopsized. Just know that it features a messianic blue fox, a giant immortal fish, and human-ish characters seeking to end the reign of an evil organization across multiple dimensions...I think.

I had been frustrated by Borne's lack of penetrability, so I recalibrated my expectations before reading this one. That was the right move. This book is trippy, oftentimes incoherent, but all sorts of enthralling. There is an apt quote in the earlygoing which references “things that could pull a mind apart if examined up close.” That was a good encapsulation of this book for me – you'll lose your mind if you get bogged down trying to parse every tiny detail. Let the words and passages wash over you. The writing itself is quite mesmerizing with VanderMeer spinning some real poetry on each page.

Dead Astronauts is certainly not for everyone, and I don't even think it's for me, but I did like it? Maybe? Perhaps it's just fun to see what oddities VanderMeer can think up and bring to life. Not to mention, this may be the best book cover I've laid eyes on. I wasn't sure that I was going to read this, but the dust jacket really sold me.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.