Reviewed by: Arthur Graham
Genre: Bizarro
Approximate word count: 13,000-18,000 words
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Author:
On his
Goodreads profile, Martin Gibbs claims to be a big fan of authors Robert
Jordan, George R.R. Martin, and R. Scott Bakker. He enjoys Ellery Queen
mysteries and books about Arctic survival. As if reading and writing didn’t
keep him busy enough, he is also an avid cross-country skier, mountain biker,
and cook. He knows exactly three chords on the guitar.
Description:
From the
intro:
“Do you
sometimes sit there, in your chair, wondering what it all means? Why are we
even upon this planet? What insane person decided to place us here and give us
these meaningless, hopeless, idiotic chores to complete? As if we were blind
rats in a maze of corn. This story will not answer any of these questions. The
following is a bizarre story about Voltaire before he sat down to write
Candide. I hope that it will at least take your mind off the screaming hell
that is reality.
Warning:
The following contains material that is harmful to the sane.”
All
Voltaire wants to do is finish writing his book, but somehow he keeps getting
distracted. After flying to Mercury and getting hitched to Princess Wonkie-Do,
he spends some time in an insane asylum, takes a detour to planet Zendor, and
returns to Earth where he joins a traveling circus. Events continue to unfold
in this vein.
Appraisal:
Balls to
the wall, methodically random madness.
When he
isn’t busy crashing his spaceship into giant asteroids, Voltaire enjoys a
series of comic misadventures involving a meat cleaver (which he did not have
in 1484), Plutonian psychiatrists, and the galactic communist conspiracy. At
one point early on, he realizes that he still has a book to write back home.
And then,
After
looking at a blotch on Mercury for twenty minutes, Voltaire gave in to free
will and started skipping and singing in a girlish voice. There was nothing
left to do. Nothing. As he skipped and danced, his song took on a very high
pitch, and he started squealing about the little goblins and his long-lost
friend, the Earl of Doncaster.
Naturally,
after a time I came to doubt Voltaire’s oft-expressed desire to return home and
resume working on his book. Still, since this is Voltaire’s Adventures Before Candide we’re discussing here (and not
its sequel, Candide), I was eventually
able to forgive him.
If only to
discover WTF happens next, we follow the protagonist on a quest marked by
eruptions of incidental violence and stream-of-consciousness happenings. On his
excursion to Zendor, “two men knifed Voltaire in the gut forty-eight times
before he found the courage to knee them in areas that stung quite a bit.”
However, while attempting to make his escape, “more pressing matters were
pushing themselves to the forefront, especially the presence of a giant goat’s
spleen on the main control panel” of his miraculously still-intact spaceship.
And so it
goes. It therefore comes as no surprise when:
Our great
author sped off to Pluto and left the priest with the psychiatrists. They were
so intent on the strange man gurgling; they did not notice Voltaire inside of
his mongoose costume. ‘I am the Scarlet Pimpernel!’ he screamed to no one.
Smiling, he went squealing off for Earth.
This book
boasts one of the silliest storylines ever, but the style in which it’s written
is nevertheless quite engaging. While it reads more like a rough-cut puree of
fever dreams, science fiction, and boyhood fantasies of destruction than
anything I’ve ever read, it all congeals together rather nicely despite its
decided lack of form. Perhaps this sentiment is summed up best by Eddy Baby,
another main “character” who shows up about two-thirds of the way through:
Is
your veal...in her attaché case? Do you really believe, that even in your
wildest dreams, I would understand those jellyfish lies you feed to me with my
Kippers? Do you think that I could actually drink that chalk? Do you like me?
Why is the room spinning...? ...Good...good...now I understand why the planet
has wings...Ha! Ha! I love this game, don't you? Don't you like to eat those
little cream puffs? Why not? YOU BASTARD!
If this
passage doesn’t appeal to you, the rest of Voltaire’s
Adventures Before Candide probably won’t either.
FYI:
I’d heed
the author’s introductory warning if I were you, especially if you’re one of
those finicky readers who value something so overrated as your sanity.
Format/Typo Issues:
Nothing
significant.
Rating: **** Four stars
