John Barnes, Gaudeamus

Gaudeamus

John Barnes

Tor, Nov 2004, $24.95, 320 pp.

ISBN: 0765303299

Private detective Travis Bismark visits his college friend, science fiction writer Professor John Barnes in Gunnison, Colorado, after the writer spent time on the Internet with a cartoon, Gaudeamus. Travis spins some wild tale about "goddies" pills that enhance sex and telepathy and also describes a baffling technology called Gaudeamus that people are killing one another to gain control.

Not long afterward, Travis vanishes while a cyber elk attacks John. Travis keeps appearing and disappearing over the next few months, but at each visit he provides a weirder tale starring exploitive alien businessmen and grunge musical clowns traveling in flying saucers that make even Mr. Barnes' novels seem so mundane. Soon John realizes that the clock is ticking and that the Earth has less than seven years to learn how to fully use Gaudeamus technology to convert energy from one form to another without space or time restraints.

Mindful of a fabulous Eerie, Indiana, episode, GAUDEAMUS is a wild tale that breaks the wall between autobiography and science fiction as John Barnes provides insight into himself and his wife in an over-the-top, out-of-this world (but on this planet) satire. The storyline goes from seemingly impossible to sublimely impossible as Mr. Barnes furbishes an insane, yet entertaining, satire that ironically even takes shots at the author. Though SF fundamentalists will take exception (not portrayed too highly), fans of way-out craziness will enjoy the Gaudeamus tale and would want a prescription of goddies (of course the FDA would declare them as harmful because people might have fun).

Harriet Klausner