By request from Jim, some comments on Jonathan Lethem:

I became interested in Lethem when one of my interesting internet buddies sent me an article Lethem wrote about the science fiction ghetto. The article started by remembering the national book award Philip K Dick won for The Man in the High Castle. Oh wait, he never won an award for that (BTW, there's a subtle joke in there for those who know the plot of that book). In any event, Lethem made some comments about the sci-fi writing world and its relationship to mainstream publishing, all of which I've now forgotten. He struck me as thoughtful and humorous though, so I made a mental note.

Lethem's first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, is very much a hard-boiled detective story, but set in a somewhat ridiculous future america, one populaed with "evolved" animals, no television to speak of, nearly the entire poplation on drugs to keep them happy and forgetful, and news told in abstract format--events are represented by musical motifs.

Lethem's style is intentionally satirical of the hard-boiled genre, but yet follows it pretty faithfully. The main character comes up with some absolute howlers for metaphors. Plot twists abound. The ending caught me by suprise ("NO WAY, don't tell me HE did it!" I said to myself). As the folks who write book jackets and reviews for newspaper movie ads would say, "A delightful romp."

Amnesia Moon, I believe Lethem's second novel, is in a differentgenre, but picks up on a few of the same themes. This time around it's a post apocalypse story. The twist, and it's a big one, is that no one can remember what the apocalypse was. All they no is that things are different now. Thinking about the story from a little distance now, it seems to talk to the role of community in maintaining memory.

A wouldn't want to walk you through the plot of this one, first because it would sound like it wouldn't work, and second I wouldn't want to spoil it. But I'll just say there are lots of memorable places and characters, including a community where people can only see green. Highly recommended.