Ambient

by Jack Womack

Book Overview

Combining the nightmarish vision of J. G. Ballard and the linguistic brilliance of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Ambient is Jack Womack's stunning first novel. Set in a decaying and violent... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555840825
• ISBN13: 9781555840822
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
• Length: 259 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Splendid Mix of Anthony Burgess and William Gibson

"Ambient" is William Gibson's cyberpunk vision cloaked in a future English quite akin to Burgess' in "A Clockwork Orange". Womack's daring, original prose is coupled with his stark, bleak vision of a future United States in which New York City has virtually succumbed to urban rot and environmental degradation, resembling a vast maximum security prison under martial law by the United States Army. Overseeing most of the economy is Dryco, a private firm run by Thatcher Dryden, an avaricious, insane version of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. The story is narrated by Seamus O'Malley, Dryden's security guard, who lusts after Avalon, Dryden's girl Friday. This is a provocative, difficult novel to read, but one which brilliantly shows Womack's ample literary talents.

Circling the Drain

In a world that sleeps as soundly as this one, Womack assails the capitalist *carnivora* with a feral eye and acid pen, beating on the reader's sensibilities as one would a Hitler pin'ata. Jack the world! Jack it up, hombre! Let's see, how to describe Womack's prose style.... A bomb laced with nails? A mechanosphere of vision-forming events? A neuro-syphilitic bundle of cliches? How about crash-compatible? Or a blast of heat from the pavement grate? Or a purling sewer rich with the gastric sludge of readerly motion-illness? "Experimental" is perhaps the wrong word here. Gamblers don't gamble, after all, and Womack knows the stakes of writing a novel in "Ambientspeak" this late in literary history (after Burgess, after Russell Hoban, et al.), as the bathos of dialogic exchange in the Dryco universe runs through its formulae, a dismal screech of hackneyed argot like fingernail on slate. I swear that once Mr. Womack learns how to balance his jargonautical neologisms with a subtler knowledge of myth and narrative (like a Hollywood with better acting), he may very well attain the eminence of a Don DeLillo, or a Cormac McCarthy, both key influences on the Dryco novels.... Yet out of all the writers who've made a habit of predicting and inventing the future, Womack is certainly the most charming, possessing a dashing narrative charisma that generates moments, images, elbow-nudging good times, on nearly every page. Very reassuring when we take into account his inevitable subject matter, the madnesses of socioeconomic inequality and exploitation.... Capitalism's predatory agenda to protect corporate interests at all costs, ambitions which entail the humiliation of the underclass (a group that is easy to identify, dislike, and control), cash cows that never see the light of day and are fed on gov't distillery slops; a society terrorized into stupidity by the commodified and the superficial. When Womack informs us that our corporate-owned U.S. Army has been waging a 20-year campaign against the citizenry of Long Island, the reader is compelled to chuckle, then sigh, then consider, then shudder. To what length would our gov't go to protect its commercial interests, whether they involve petroleum, narcotics, arms, or the minds, souls, and yoked bio-power of its starved-out citizenry? "It's true, do you think?" "Only the craziest parts." We let a world like this happen.... Add this novel to your shopping cart, friends, savor and enjoy it, all the while praying for Womack's future development, that he may one day stand in the square where martyrs are made.

Like "Clockwork orange" with a cyberpunk feel.

This is not an easy book to read. It contains a lot of violence, both physical and moral, combined with a very poetic language, which makes it reminiscent at times of mr Burgess great "Clocwork orange". However, you shouldn't expect a copy of that. "Ambient"'s hero is concerned with different subjects to those of Alexander de Large, and this story will be enjoyed by those who feel there's a certain amount of cliches in most cyberpunk novels nowadays and want to read something new. This is a book which makes you think, and that altogether makes it both dangerous and seductive

Ambient puts the PUNK back into cyberpunk!

A shocking and sobering view of urban decay taken the whole way into the future. One of the best Womack books there are! Right up there with 'Random acts of senseless violence'

A wry and confronting future tale about buisness.

Jack Womack's first book is an introduction into his future vision of the United States. In the wake of a massive sharemarket collapse and currency re-valuation most of everything is owned by one massive corporation, Dryco.The position at the top of Dryco is fought over by the Old Man, Thatcher Dryden, who founded the emipre, and his middle-aged son. Family security guard Seamus O'Malley is caught in the middle of their machinations and is hopelessly in love with one of his employer's mistresses.Womack is at his best when he writes casually about the atrocities that are an everyday event on the streets of New York, where all the action takes place. Language, culture and the importance of life itself have all been turned upside down and Womack brings it to life with color and black humour.