'This is the real thing,' said Caroline. 'It's the deepest, the profoundist. It's the big bazonga, it's really existential.'

"OK," I said, watching a distant sweeper with a faulty program banging again and again into the information kiosk, 'just don't tell me it's a metaphor, OK?"

A beautiful short science fiction novel, from a Master of the art of the difficult, the arcane, the mythic, the timeless ... and the metaphor. In 180-odd pages (some of them, be warned, very odd pages), Hoban weaves the story of Fremder Gorn, sole survivor of a "flicker drive" accident that resulted in the disappearance of the deep space transport Clever Daughter and seven of its crew. The eighth, Fremder, is left tumbling in the vacuum of space, with no space suit, no oxygen -- and he survives. This alone would be enough to pique the interest of Sheela-na-Gig, the Corporation responsible for flicker drive, which has opened up deep space for human colonists, entrepreneurs, and a lot of profit. When we learn that Fremder is the son of Helen Gorn, the troubled young woman who (long story short) invented flicker drive -- well, let's just say, the plot thickens.

"Fremder" means "stranger" in German. And "Gorn" is an abbreviation of grandfather Elias' original name, adopted to disguise the family's Jewish heritage when he escaped to London from Nazi Germany. "'Gorn today, here tomorrow,' he's quoted as saying ..."

The novel is dense with word play, allusions to Jewish mythology, Biblical references and a stream of musical and poetical hooks. (A mix tape of the music Hoban refers to, both in-text, as as chapter headings, would have been very interesting.)

Beautifully written. Just a random example: "Lots of noise but behind the hiss of purple rain the silence is cruising like a shark." Now, that's a sentence.

The dystopian world of the 2020-2050s that Hoban uses as the background to Fremder's search for answers feels frighteningly plausible, and darkly funny.

Short as it is, it's not an easy read -- I am looking forward to reading it again, one day, after giving it time to mature in my mind. How many SF novels can you say that about? (There are a few. This is one of them.) Perhaps on a future reading, I'll understand some of the physics. Perhaps I'll make that mix tape, and listen as I read. ( )

I decided that it was about time I took a look at some sci-fi, a new genre of fiction for me. I picked this up the other day at a charity store based entirely on the cover and the blurb on the back. I didn't know what to expect and came out pleasantly surprised.

The story has some nice twist and turns throughout and remains engaging. Its only a short book at 180 pages but that feels about perfect, anymore would just be filling. Strangely after reading it feels as though there is so much more to the whole story though, almost like this episode 1 of a series.

Apart from that, there isnt a lot more I can say, I enjoyed the story and the writing evoked a lot of good imagery in my mind. I thought that the use of classical music and paintings was a little overdone but not to the detriment of the storyline. I will certainly be hunting out some Hoban in the future. ( )

Hoban has a mind that is unusual, to say the least, and Fremder lives up magnificently to his reputation. His flights of fancy are always highly literate, and they are therefore stimulating to the reader, whatever the reader may perceive as the subject of the book. Fremder is superficially that bastard of a concept, science fiction, but that is a form of set-dressing that is essential to encompass Hoban's wild imaginings. Here we have a thoroughly Jewish combination of concepts that manages to treat Elijah in the same breath as Vermeer, popular song and – above all – Bach's intricate fugues. It explores the concept of reality – What is truth, indeed? - in the context of a thoroughly dystopian world in which consciousness, even time travel, is passionately examined. It's a book of wonders and wondering that invites multiple visits, but isn't that what one expects from Hoban. Wonderful! ( )