Încă o dată, Spinrad îmi confirmă că e un autor fix pe gustul meu: personaje puternice, lumi sumbre, dure, acțiune din belșug, ritm alert, morală sfărâmată, idei provocatoare, suspans. Recomand. ( )

Hum...well, it was readable--interesting idea, I s'pose, with AIDs as the modern plague, and the concept is good, there's action, the (ironically) 'usual' disparate allies thrown together by some common cause/enemy to save the day in the 11th hour...all that. As I finished reading, for a bit I felt like it was maybe 4-star material...then, as the climactic ending, the warm fuzzies of all's-well-that-ends-well, started to fade from immediate memory, it slid down to more of a solid 3.

But there are some major issues that, on reflection, knock this book down to a 2, maybe a high 2 but still a 2, in my estimation.

First off, there's the problem faced by many--most, really--sci-fi/dystopian/futuristic novels written years ago (1988, in this case), that, after a certain future date, when the predictions and projections have not come to pass as imagined (though, obviously, taking events/trends of the present and imagining their progression to an extreme future situation is a time-honored, and effective, device in s/f), the action loses immediacy and force, becoming more of a commentary on certain themes or musing on what might have happened rather than a possible reality. Not that the world that Spinrad writes of is completely irrelevant to the world of 1988 or of 2014--. But in 1988 AIDs was, it seems, a greater source of uncertainty, and thus fear, than today (not to say we're totally cool with it now, but at least me know more) making it an effective topic for speculative fiction, plenty of what-ifs to play with. But an introduction from someone who lives on the Moon in 2143 seems a bit much, unnecessary--and surely there are better places to aim for than that, if we're going to leave Earth. (Like Mars, I guess?)

Anyway, okay, that's not my main problem. One of the obvious, unavoidable weaknesses of speculative fiction, unless it is extrapolating only tentatively from well-established facts--which is rarely very exciting, so what's the point then--is that it will eventually be disproved by actual events, or if the predictions are fairly accurate, they will go from possibility to mere history, which is interesting in its own right but has lost the element of...suspense, you might say. But that's just how this genre works, and so to some extent you have to look past whether the prophecy was or seems likely to be correct given present knowledge, and just appreciate the ideas, the reflections of society and humanity, the author's imagination, and its significance/value/whatever at the time it was written.

So, yeah. My main problems were more author/book specific. So, all spoilers from here, basically. Firstly, the part where Dr.Richard Bruno, having infected himself with the cure for the virus (only concocted after he cheated on his wife with an supposedly uninfected stranger and got HIV himself), first off gives this "dreadnaught" to his son (no, no, it's okay, he does it via a HIV-positive prostitute, thereby curing her, and then she has sex with the son to transmit the immunity). Then, when the Sex Police pick up the son for the second time with the certainty he's had sex with black-carders and is surely infected, Dr. B drunkenly spills the whole story to his wife, who understandably decides he's a raving, disease-riddled lunatic and declines to have unprotected sex with her. He's running short on time--and sobriety--so "If there could be such a thing as loving rape, now was the time for it." Yup. This is definitely the best way to demonstrate his sanity and the fact that he's found a cure. So...yup. He rapes her, "knowing I was doing the right thing even as she fought...convinced that she was fighting to keep herself from certain infection with the Plague. ...I loathed myself...even as I knew full well that it was ultimately right. And left her there sobbing while I reeled off into the night to retrieve Tod from the SP."

Niiiice. So, yeah, I have a problem with rape, especially when explained on the grounds of "the end justifies the means." Y'know, he had no choice, it was for her own good. Which...well, kind of, but...no, not really. After all, he has to forcibly kidnap her anyway to bring her with to the SF Quarantine Zone, because apparently his rape-strategy didn't inspire her trust. But it's all right, he never has to deal with the seriously messy problem of patching things up with his wife and son, as both conveniently drown on the way to the SFQZ. Problem solved.

Then there's the Bible-thumping, God-fearing, ignorant and dogmatic and not terribly intelligent President of the U.S., who is in his mind fighting a personal battle against Satan and his forces of evil. Ohmyshit. But then at the end he's convinced by the serial rapist he sent to bring back Dr. B and ex(?)-prostitute Linda Lewin that they've actually got it handled, the scientists were lying about the dreadnaught's actual purpose, and he can cancel that atomic bombing.

So yeah, misogyny and 2-D characterization/character about-faces aside...not too bad a read. It's engaging, and I got to the end before the major judgment kicked in. ( )

Loin d'être un genre littéraire mineur pour adolescents gavés de jeux vidéos, la science fiction (SF)passe toujours et encore comme étant peu crédible au yeux des autres genres dits « sérieux ». Il faut avouer que le pire y côtoie bien souvent le meilleur, mais reconnaissons que ce n'est pas non plus l'apanage du genre. Certains écrivains ont gagné leurs lettres de noblesse avec la SF (Franck Herbert et son cycle de Dune, Isaac Azimov et Fondation)et en ont fait une tribune pour porter sur nos futurs possibles des regards dévastateurs.

Parmi les nombreux auteurs de SF, Norman Spinrad est un cas à part. Toute son œuvre porte sur les Etats-Unis, vus sous un angle qui lui a attiré tellement de foudres qu'il préfère vivre à Paris. La lecture d'un seul de ses ouvrages fait tout de suite comprendre au lecteur les causes de son statut de persona non grata. De « Rock Machine » à « Jack Barron et l'Eternité » en passant par "Rêve de fer", Spinrad met en coupe réglée toutes les images que l'Amérique souhaiterait se renvoyer à elle-même. Ses ouvrages ne sont pas dénués de parti pris ni d'exagérations ou de facilités, bien au contraire. Cependant, ses propos sont là pour dénoncer, provoquer, interpeller au moyen d'un langage d'une crudité qui peut être rébarbative à la longue et d'une ironie mordante.

Les « années fléaux », dont Gallimard assure la réédition, regroupe trois nouvelles « apocalyptiques » de Spinrad. La première, « chair à pavé » décrit un New-York transformé en jungle urbaine sans foi ni loi dans une Amérique en proie au chaos économique et à des inégalités sociales exacerbées. La ville est devenue le théâtre permanent d'une lutte sans merci pour survivre. C'est désespérant. La seconde nouvelle « les années fléaux » évoque une Amérique dévastée par un avatar du virus du Sida, le Fléau, où les malades sont parqués dans des zones de quarantaine, où le sexe virtuel a remplacé l'amour physique, où les dirigeants du pays, baignant dans le fondamentalisme chrétien de la Bible belt, voient dans la maladie un signe de Satan. C'est dérangeant, noir et « hénaurme » tout à la fois. La dernière nouvelle, « la vie continue », se déroule à Paris, loin des foudres de la censure américaine qui ont poussé le protagoniste de l'histoire, lauteur en personne, à s'exiler. C'est caustique mais peu convaincant.

Trois visions d'apocalypse, qui peuvent dater un peu par leur contexte car écrites dans les années quatre-vingt, dans lesquelles Spinrad règle des comptes personnels avec les Etats-Unis. Cet acharnement ne peut se comprendre que dans le contexte de l'œuvre globale de l'auteur, qui se veut un exposé permanent des craintes et des doutes face aux potentialités corruptrices du pouvoir, autant politique qu'économique et médiatique. L'Amérique est son seul sujet car, explique-t-il dans sa préface, « le reste du monde a, vis-à-vis de l'Amérique, un complexe et des relations émotionnelles ambivalentes comme n'en engendre aucune autre nation ». Elle est donc, de ce fait, aux yeux des autres peuples, toujours une sorte d'Eldorado, un rêve qui en fait le sujet parfait pour une œuvre de science-fiction. « Si la démocratie et la culture américaine survivent et prospèrent, il y a un espoir pour un avenir transnational stable. Si l'Amérique se détruit de l'intérieur, cet avenir sera assurément bien triste. En un certain sens, les peuples du monde regardent l'Amérique et, pour le meilleur ou pour le pire, y voient leur devenir propre ». Schématique et naïf, certes mais aux yeux de l'auteur, l'Amérique a cessé d'être un modèle pour le monde au moment de la guerre du Vietnam. Pourtant la fascination du monde pour ce pays continue.

Les écrits de science-fiction sont sans nul doute des prophéties de papier qui s'annulent parfois d'elles-mêmes, qui montent des sentiers sur lesquels nul ne souhaiterait s'engager. c'est leur principale vertu. Car, conclue Norman Spinrad, « si la science-fiction nous apprend quelque chose, c'est bien qu'il n'existe pas un seul futur possible. Nous façonnons collectivement nos futurs, chacun d'entre nous, heure après heure, minute après minute, décision après décision, et ceux qui ne méditent pas sur les futurs possibles sont très certainement condamnés à vivre le futur qu'ils n'auraient néanmoins pas pu éviter de façonner ».

En résumé, ce genre de récit apparaît comme étant ce que les navigateurs connaissent biens, des amers, ces repères visuels sur la côte que l'on voit du large. La saveur qu'on tire des « années fléaux » leur fait bien mériter ce nom. ( )

Norman Spinrad has written some disturbing books. Don’t get me wrong – great books. But some books that have really bothered me. (I read The Iron Dream – a science fiction book he created that is supposedly written by Hitler – in college and, while recognizing it is an incredible piece of writing, have been unable to get up the gumption/nerve to re-read it.) Journals of the Plague Years is right in there with the good but disturbing.

Obviously written with the AIDS epidemic in mind (Spinrad says as much in the afterward), the population is being destroyed by a sexually transmitted disease. The solutions to this problem include quarantine areas (San Francisco is the threat to anyone who is found to carry the disease), card-carrying evidence of purity (or, conversely, “the black card”), sex machines, and the Sex Police. The lives of four people are followed through their diary entries – a soldier who has the plague and is wreaking havoc on a path to his death, the man charged by the government to keep us all safe, a woman who feels that sharing the plague may be the solution, and a scientist who has actually found a cure.

In the Afterward, Spinrad admits that this was originally meant as a 20-page treatment for a full novel. But the treatment would not be contained, and this 100+ page more than novelette but less than novel is the result. While it is does contain all it needs, it does still feel like fleshing it out would not have been a bad idea.

But, it is too easy to dismiss this work because of its length. Too short or not, it is still incredibly disturbing. Yet, disturbing in an effective way that makes us take a second look at our reactions to AIDS, drugs, religion, and the sexual revolution (if I can use an old 60s term for a new situation.)

Previous to publication as a separate novel, this piece has been included in various collections including reprints in foreign languages, and has been used in AIDS education programs. It has become an “important” piece. But more to the point, it is an excellent example of an excellent author’s good work. It will be tough for me to read again. It is graphic, and it is scary. But I am glad I read it once. And, if I get up the nerve (maybe after re-reading The Iron Dream), I’ll read it again ( )