Book Review:
Ersatz Nation by Tim Kenyon
reviewed by V.T. Borger
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"His stomach grumbled loud enough to hear it. Dinner was all Dolan could think about as he waited in an endless line of cars, still blocked by a paver slowly pressing a fresh layer of tar onto the road. He looked out over the dashboard, then turned off the engine. There was no point wasting gas; the traffic wasn't going anywhere. The pudgy man to Dolan's left leaned on his SLOW/STOP sign and yawned, the pole buckling under the man's weight. Dolan smiled, but the man seemed uninterested, distracted by whatever turmoil filled his private little world. It was tough, but Dolan tried not to make the man's problems any of his own concern. The people on Earth dealt with their internal lives personally. Mother was not here to direct them. The troubles eating at this guy was nobody's business but his own. What a lucky bastard.." Opening paragraph of Tim Kenyon's Ersatz Nation. |
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First time novelist Tim Kenyon pens a gripping tale with his science fiction novel, Ersatz Nation. From the opening chapter, where the reader learns that Patrick Dolan is stuck in traffic with a body in his trunk, to the satisfying ending, Kenyon's writing compels the reader to keep turning the pages.
Job dissatisfaction is the catalyst for change for the main characters in this novel. Patrick Dolan is your average Joe who is just doing his job on present day Earth. The problem is, his occupation is just a little off-kilter: abducting designated people from Earth and bringing them to an alternate universe, the Unation, which is ruled by an omnipotent Mother. He deals with the increasing stress of his job by pretending that the reality in which he finds himself on Earth is merely a virtual reality game. The deaths don't matter - or do they?
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Be sure to read the March 1, 2004, issue of Ultraverse for Tim Kenyon's original story, "The Everything Machine." |
Place an order for Ersatz Nation |
Kenyon poses some interesting questions in his book. What is reality? What is a dream? Which is the ersatz nation, Earth or the Unation?
Patrick is forbidden to form contacts with the world in which he finds himself, leading a desperate, lonely life. One day, Mother reverses her decision and orders him to get close to an Earth woman, leading to a budding romance in what he thinks is a virtual game. Patrick's world as he knows it comes to an end with his recall to the Unation.
Reminiscent of the universe created in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, the people of the Unation must share their thoughts daily with Mother via an implant in the base of their brain. This leads to some increasingly paranoid actions on everyone's part, but then, paranoid people have all the facts.
Job dissatisfaction strikes again in the Unation with Selmar Rayburne, whose father led a futile rebellion years earlier against Mother. The results of that failed coup d'état resonates a generation later for the hapless Selmar, who is plagued in his Kafkaesque world by his inability to move out of a McJob coupled with a lack of communication with his distant and disaffected wife.
Selmar finds himself taking increasingly bizarre risks with correspondingly strange consequences when his wife takes a "job" with one of the Unation's top leaders, then disappears.
The two protagonists meet in the bowels of the Unation, and are thrown together as Selmar seeks his wife and Patrick searches for the the Unation leader who absconded with her. They find out that their petty concerns are merely reflections of a struggle over not just the totalitarian leadership of the Unation, but also the future of the Earth.
Published by the recently defunct Big Engine, copies of the book can be ordered from the author's Web site. The first chapter of Ersatz Nation also is available on the Web site.
Due to its readability, clarity and occasional lyrical passages as it portrays a paranoid universe where Big Brother is always watching, I give this book a rating of three alternate universes up.
V.T. Borger has been a journalist for a number of years, and currently teaches English and journalism at Miami University. Borger has written one novel, "Running Amok," a very famous unpublished (as yet) thriller, and is working on a second novel and a screenplay. The author's spare time is devoted to hobbies, such as perfecting a warp speed engine and transporter, walking Neo the wonder dog, photography, and answering e-mail at: vtborger@yahoo.com.
© V.T. Borger
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