Sisyphean by Dempow Torishima
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply put, this is an exasperating, difficult, gorgeous, horrifying, and to put no finer point upon it--a UNIQUE work of fiction.

I'm not even slyly suggesting that it's in any way bad.

Indeed, I think it's a work of genius.

It is NOT for the squeamish or the casual. It is, simply, one of the densest far-future bio-punk body-horror Hard SF stories I've ever read. Or rather, the novel is comprised of four entirely different novellas set in this far future post-human towering imagination.

Frank Herbert once wrote, "The best art imitates life in a compelling way. If it imitates a dream, it must be a dream of life. Otherwise, there is no place where we can connect. Our plugs don't fit."

In this work, it's possible to dig down deep within our own psyches, with horror intact, to jury-rig a plug--but it's awful, shocking, and very often... sublime.

In other words, pick this up, friends, if you want a mind-blowingly brilliant imagination to rummage around in your brain. This is the equivalent to bench-pressing 600 with your grey matter. SO WORTH IT. But it ain't gonna be easy. At all.


This being said, and if you're still reading this wondering if I might bring up theories about what I had just read in the novel--and oh my god I have many--my favorite interpretation is that we are NOT reading four different vignettes regarding a space-faring bio-nanotech-teeming spaceship full of shattered shards of preserved consciousness endlessly shuffled through new incarnations of "people". I think we're reading everything backwards. I suppose the biggest hint was in the "parent" and "child" order of things--made pretty easy to follow with the consciousness seeds, the fragmentary nature within the first novella--and the progressively larger encapsulations of consciousness and how things got closer and closer to baseline humanity as we progressed through each novella. So the last one is the genesis. A far future genesis, perhaps, but still recognizable as the wild, wild broken universe of the last of humanity. Of course, "last" is subjective, and the wild explosion of all different kinds of forms of biomass and "humanity" is just as subjective. But I like this theory a lot.

The writing never lets me down. I absolutely adore everything about this novel.

BUT--I admit to screaming in frustration, putting the book down almost every other page, mulling and seething, before staggering back to the pages in sheer horror and curiosity.

It's a challenging book. It's also extremely rewarding.


You will NOT want to know what my synesthesia experienced as I read this. Think living in a Cthulhu's belly. Now add a fever dream of regular reality. And then have a deadline to meet.


Personal note:
If anyone reading my reviews might be interested in reading my own SF, I'm going to be open to requests. Just direct message me in goodreads or email me on my site. I'd love to get some eyes on my novels.

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