3.

0 out of 5 stars He Walked Among Us by Norman Spinrad, May 21, 2010

By The Alternative (Southeastern Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
This review is from: He Walked Among Us (Hardcover)
He Walked Among Us
Norman Spinrad
Tor Books
2010
Hardcover
540 pages
ISBN: 0765325845

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep
all its eggs in."
-Robert A. Heinlein

Imagine for a moment that the future existence of the planet balanced on
your ability to travel back in time and explain the costs and concepts of the
depletion of the ozone layer to a subsistence farmer in rural Mesopotamia.
Could you do it? Enter Ralf, stand-up comic from about as far up the time-
line as you can get. And he comes bearing terrifying news. The future planet
is in disarray, biodiversity is as extinct as the carrier pigeon, the air is thick
and un-breathable, almost unusable without heavy filtration scrubbers and to
make matters worse, the last generations of humankind have taken refuge in
pressurized shopping mall domes. Humanity clings to the last remnants of
life on a scourged planet that could not be saved.

Now take an aging Science Fiction writer named Dexter D. Lampkins who is
a flawed but intelligent individual (and Spinrad's pseudo- literary double)
with designs of writing the next great social Science Fiction Transformation
of mankind, mingle with Amanda Robins, a New Age Wunderkinds seeking
total Zen spiritualism, and mix in a whole lot of Ralf "the comic from the
future." Blend them all together on the same late-night television show and
what do you get? Well, Monkey-Men, let's just say that you may want to
read this one yourself to discover all the gory details.

Ralf's message is simple and crude. Start cleaning up the environment right
now or the future world is going to suffer. Quit mucking up Mother Habitat
so the deprived people of the future can take a break from living in constant
fear of complete extinction.
Whether by accident or design Spinrad does reveal a plethora of Science
Fiction Convention lore, anecdotes, behavior, and attitudes. And surprise,
the Sci-Fi geeks are no less real than you or I. For some reason the Cons
were the most enjoyable scenes in the book for me. Though Spinrad served
up many unflattering and sometimes harsh depictions of Science Fiction
conventioneers his descriptions lent realism to the story that may have
otherwise been lost. Perhaps I felt so close to those scenes because, like
Lampkin, I too identify with the weird and geeky, slightly askew, adoring,
star-struck fans. I'm one of them!

Spinrad's prose and dialogue is superb, humorous, enticing, and real and
scans with perfect pace. If there is any real flaw with the story it is with the
character known as Loxy Foxy and her strange companion the "machine-rat-
from-the-depths-of-the -subway. Not so much the content itself but how long
and drawn out it became in the middle of the book. It seemed like we
revisited the same scenes over and over again which cluttered up the story
line and served no real purpose. I suspect the novel would have stood well
on its own in the absence of those characters. [I'm still unsure of what the
confrontation between Loxy, the rat, and Ralf meant! Perhaps someone
would care to enlighten me?]

Much like James Cameron's "Avatar" Spinrad's "He Walked Among Us" is
social commentary with a message concerning the current state of our
eroding world and until we can, as Heinlein eschewed, figure out a way to
distribute our eggs more evenly someone up the stream of time is going to
suffer. We need to learn to sustain what we have and become more pro-
environmental. Stories like "He Walked Among Us" and "Avatar" can only
make us more socially aware of our actions and surroundings. If civilization
collapses due to resource depletion we'll have only ourselves to blame for it
and our children's children will be made to suffer. Can our collective
conscience survive that burden?

3 ½ out of 5 Stars

The Alternative
Southeast Wisconsin