Aaron's Book of the Week :: 334 by Thomas M. Disch

Continuing our tribute to the late Thomas M. Disch, the Book of the Week is 334, probably Disch's most influential science fiction novel. This is the 1974 first paperback printing and first American edition of 334 (previously published in hardcover in England in 1972).

334 is set in a future New York City, where the welfare state has successfully (sort of) addressed most material needs, but has utterly failed to provide its citizens a fulfilling lifestyle. The story is told through several interrelated novellas. The title refers to the address of the housing project where the primary characters live, as well as to structural aspects of the book. In addition, the title hearkens back to the year 334, which one character visits in a drug-enhanced role-playing game (even though 334 appeared two years before Dungeons & Dragons, which popularized role-playing games), suggesting a parallel between modern America and ancient Rome's period of decline. 334 was a Nebula nominee for best novel, losing to Ursula LeGuin's classic The Dispossessed.

As an aside, beware the 1999 reprint edition of 334 released by Vintage Books. Some dunderhead editors at Vintage ruined many of Disch's ironic uses of language; for instance, in Disch's future America Marines wear black masks and are called "gorillas," which Vintage changed to "guerillas," eliminating the intended pun.

Next week, we will complete our Disch tribute with a hard-to-find gothic novel published under a pseudonym but written in collaboration between Disch and another of my favorite authors.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Fun with Your New Head by Thomas M. Disch

Continuing our tribute to Thomas M. Disch, his collection Fun with Your New Head was the Book of Last Week. (I didn't get around to it last week, but I can't just let everything slide because we have to finish our Disch tribute before the Hugo Awards are announced August 9.)

This is the 1972 first paperback printing of Fun with Your New Head, cover art by Gene Szafran. Disch was a prolific author of short fiction early in his career, and Fun with Your New Head was Disch's second collection of short fiction, appearing just after One Hundred and Two H-Bombs and shortly before White Fang Goes Dingo, Getting Into Death, and The Man Who Had No Idea -- and doncha love these titles? (Never mind that Fun with Your New Head first appeared in England under the humdrum title Under Compulsion.) Fun with Your New Head contains some of Disch's most memorable short fiction, such as "Descending," in which a department store escalator only goes down . . . and down and down and down, and "The Roaches," a rather darker version of the scene in the film Enchanted where the princess magically summons help from some cockroaches.

The Book of This Week will be a signed copy of one of Disch's early novels.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

The Book of the Week is the first paperback printing of The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. This is to honor Mr. Levin, who passed away last week at the age of 78.

Ira Levin was a successful novelist and playwright. Notable among his nine plays are the thriller Deathtrap (1978), one of the longest-running plays in the history of Broadway, and the comedy No Time for Sergeants (1956), which launched the career of Andy Griffith and inspired the television show Gomer Pyle.

Most of his seven novels involve elements of science fiction or horror, although it is often ambiguous in the story whether these elements are real or imagined. His most important novels were Rosemary's Baby (1967), in which a pregnant woman comes to believe that her child is the Antichrist (note that both the novel and the Roman Polanski film predated William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist); The Boys from Brazil (1976), about a conspiracy to clone Adolf Hitler; and The Stepford Wives (1972).

The Stepford Wives follows Joanna Eberhart, who moves with her husband and children to the sleepy suburban town of Stepford, Connecticut. She begins to suspect that there is something very wrong with the too-perfect wives of Stepford, and that this has something to do with the secretive Stepford Men's Association. Levin uses the premise to frame some very interesting social commentary (fitting right in with our recent theme of social science fiction). The Stepford Wives was made into an effectively creepy movie starring Katharine Ross in 1975, and into a bad comedy starring Nicole Kidman in 2004. For thoughts on what a wasted opportunity the recent film was, see my commentary on the book group's web page for The Stepford Wives