Veniss Underground

by Jeff Vandermeer

Bantam Spectra Books, 278 pp, $14.00

Finally, a Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication of a novel that gets it exactly right! The indicia page nails it perfectly: Civilization. Subterranean. Regression (Civilization). Animal Experimentation. Genetic Engineering. Underground Areas.

Let me connect the dots: centuries in our future, government has collapsed, leaving cities like Veniss with their own separate precinct authorities. All the advances in biology have left a menagerie of hybrid animals, including the mistakes that live only to suffer. This creation occurs in the underground levels, true hell on earth. Cities are separated by polluted wildlands of marauding mutants.

Insert one mythic story of Orpheus’ journey into the underworld to rescue his lover Eurydice. The Orpheus is named Shadrach (told in third person), the Eurydice is named Nicola (told in second person), and her twin brother is named Nicholas (told in first person). Shadrach’s journey is full of wonders, technological and biological, combining to make a setting that seems almost a fantasy instead of science fiction.

The novel is followed by four stories also set in the Veniss world, which show a progression in time. In the last one, the advanced meercats have organized from servitude to conquest, and are attacking humanity with gigantic dogs. You may never look at dogs and cats in the same way again. And I start to think that maybe the new biology won’t solve all of the world’s problems after all.

But what a way to come to such questions, in the grip of a mythic story beautifully told. Shadrach’s journey to rescue Nicola also resembles the archetypal private eye on a mystery quest into the criminal underworld. Not exactly a mixing of genres, or is it? You can see on Wikipedia that Vandermeer is considered one of the “New Weird” writers, who aspire to the creativity of the old pulp magazines. This confirms it. - Mike Griffin