Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2016
160 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future - by an iconic visionary writer.
Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you.
There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: Foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geoengineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.
For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the abyss gaze takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest.
When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Adam uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future - and the past, and the now.
"Deliciously perverse ... Readers will root for Adam as he struggles to discover what is actually going on in Normal, who is to be trusted, and what happened to Mansfield." - Publishers Weekly
"A crackling, funny, and frightening horror story from a unique voice in genre lit." - Kirkus
"A seriously good writer with a seriously wicked imagination" - New York Times Book Review
"Warren Ellis is a twisted genius." - Lauren Beukes, author of Broken Monsters
"A beacon of brilliant irony and sardonic satire." - Sir Patrick Stewart
"Normal is abnormal, fascinating, and terrifying. Deceptively compact, it contains multitudes. Great stuff that still has me thinking." - Jeff VanderMeer
"Normal is hectic and smart and brutal and funny, and queasy-making, too. Like William Gibson and Margaret Atwood, Warren Ellis is one of those writers who seem to have an all-access backstage pass to the total weirdness of the now." - Lauren Beukes
"Normal is funny, creepy, perceptive, and surprisingly personal. If you, like me, are an avid consumer of what-ifs and what-nows, you probably have a responsibility to read this book." - Robin Sloan
This information about Normal was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Warren Ellis is the author of FSG's first digital original, Dead Pig Collector; the New York Times bestselling novel Gun Machine; and the underground classic Crooked Little Vein. He is also the award-winning creator of a number of iconic, bestselling original graphic novels, including Red, Ministry of Space, Planetary, andTransmetropolitan, and has been behind some of the most successful reimaginings of mainstream comic superheroes, including the Fantastic Four and Iron Man. He has written extensively for Vice, Wired, and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and is working on a nonfiction book about the future of cities for FSG Originals. He lives on the southeast coast of England.
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