Out on Blue Six

by Ian McDonald

In the Compassionate Society, a totalitarian future society where happiness is law, cartoonist Courtney Hall finds herself a fugitive from justice when one of her political cartoons runs afoul of the Ministry of Pain

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1989

About the author

Ian Neil McDonald was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He used to live in a house built in the back garden of C. S. Lewis's childhood home but has since moved to central Belfast, where he now lives, exploring interests like cats, contemplative religion, bonsai, bicycles, and comic-book collecting. He debuted in 1982 with the short story "The Island of the Dead" in the short-lived British magazine Extro. His first novel, Desolation Road, was published in 1988. Other works include King of Morning, Queen of Day (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), River of Gods, The Dervish House (both of which won British Science Fiction Association Awards), the graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, and many more. His most recent publications are Planesrunner and Be My Enemy, books one and two of the Everness series for younger readers (though older readers will find them a ball of fun, as well). Ian worked in television development for sixteen years, but is glad to be back to writing full-time.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A playful romp and the onset of rebellion among the citizens of a utopia run by computers. It is about 500 years since the big “Break”, when most of humanity destroyed itself in some war or ecological disaster, and one city, Yu, was preserved and nurtured by the AIs and now comprises about 1.5 billion people. In this sort of Brave New World, people are channeled into various castes with daily life managed to maximize happiness. There is a Polytheon of gods to worship, and the Love Police and the Ministry of Pain work to assure that those who commit the crime of causing pain to others are humanely reconditioned. But this is no dark tale of dystopia. The AIs tolerate a multicaste cadre of performance artists, the Raging Apostles, who believe they are taking radically creative steps against the hollowness of this “Compassionate Society”. And it turns out they are tired of babysitting humanity and wish they would take over their own fate so they can pursue a more interesting endeavor elsewhere in the Multiverse. They conceive of a way to assess the human’s readiness.

We spend a lot of time alternating between two characters. One is a man who awakes one day with no memories of his own, who adopts the name of one of the arcologies, Kilaminjaro West, and ends up joining the Raging Apostles. Through him we get a fresh view of this strange world. Our other hero, Courtney, gets shaken out of her comfortable life as a cartoonist. She becomes effectively homeless through an accidental destruction of her home in an arcology by a Love Police raid that crashes the wrong address. As she takes a tour looking for the boundaries of this world, she gets in trouble in a waste zone taken over by discarded bioengineered pets and is saved by a former government leader, who calls himself the King of Nebraska. With a race of computer enhanced raccoons, they assume a quest to get beyond the mile-high walls of their world through the tunnels and abandoned underground food production facilities of the DeepUnder. They are aided by a “cybernetic anarchist” and his sister, who can teleport over short distances. Despite the talent, they run up against warring societies of the old world order, the “Democrats” and the “Communists”.

Here is a bit of the flavor of McDonald’s prose:
Chiga-Chiga Sputnik-kid, Captain Elvis in neon skin-hugger and power-wheels, rides the high wires in the wee wee dawn hours when the cablecars sleep in their barns, when four A.M. TAOS gurls call the Scorpios from the high and low places; silver-maned, forgotten samurai in a world with honor without swords; out on blue six through the vastnesses of Great Yu. …If the Love Police ever catch Chiga-Chiga, he will be seeing the remainder of his yearlong walkabout from the inside of a Social Responsibility Counseling Center learning that words like “danger” and “thrill” cannot be allowed to have any meaning in the age of the Compassionate Society. But Chiga-Chiga Sputnik-kid is too fast, too young, too shiny for that, isn’t he?

This book is a re-publication from its first appearance in 1989, which pre-dates the Internet and our current splurge of epic fantasy and post-apocalyptic scenarios. It reminds me a bit of the playfulness of Gaiman’s underworld of “Neverwhere”, the heroic quest in Mieville’s “Railsea” to scope out a future civilization’s boundaries, and the human revolt against the smothering utopia controlled by AIs in WALL-E. I was glad to experience some the roots for McDonald’s talent that wowed me with his recent “River of Gods” and “The Dervish House.” Ultimately, the humor didn’t ever send me over into laughter, and I was disappointed in how much he resorted to spelling out all his messages instead of just showing you through the plot. It doesn’t quite achieve the fun and excitement of Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”, though it seems to have a comparable ambition. Fellow sci fi author Cory Doctorow, in his introduction, puts the book on a higher pedestal in terms of its historical context:

It’s important because it does to all the Sf that came before it what a Coltrane solo did to the musical conversation that had taken place among all his peers before he picked up his horn. This is a book that shows the unexpected connections between the high and the low, the serious and the frivolous, the sacred and the profane. It’s a novel that marks the end of the Cold War and the start of a too-short techno-optimistic period, and it is prescient in its shrewd guesses about where all that optimism is likely to end.

This books was provided as an e-book loan by the publisher through the Netgalley program.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s always a great feeling to find a cyberpunk dystopia that I’d somehow overlooked.
Reminded me – just slightly – of Melissa Scott’s ‘Dreamships’ and ‘Dreaming Metal,’ – mostly because the story focuses on transgressive artists in a future, cyber city with strict caste rules.

Here, Courtney Hall, yulp (it’s the ‘yuppie’ caste), a successful cartoonist, wants to do a bit more with her comic strip, and introduce some social satire into it. She’s given a warning – but when she resorts to using a hacker to get her forbidden cartoon out to her readers, she suddenly finds herself a wanted criminal, on the run through the underground tunnels that she never knew existed.

Meanwhile, the Raging Apostles, in the chaos of a police raid, have picked up a new member. The Raging Apostles are a street performance art group, illegally made up of members from different social castes, that plans ‘flash’ style events. Their new member is Kilimanjaro West – a seeming amnesiac who picked his ‘name’ off the side of a building.

I have to admit, I’ve had mixed reactions to McDonald’s work. I loved his ‘Dervish House,’ but didn’t like (at all) some of his more surreal, absurd material, such as ‘Desolation Road.’ I further have to admit that I requested this book thinking it was a new title – it’s actually a rerelease; first published in 1989. There are bits here that I could do without – I’m just not a fan of the gene-modified talking raccoons, for example. However, many of the more ‘fractured’ elements here do eventually get pulled in – some of them very effectively. I do still feel that McDonald has improved as a writer over the past 20-odd years, but there’s a brilliance and originality on display here that makes the book more than worthwhile.

And hey – I totally agree with his message that art, and a bit of anarchy, are necessary for a vibrant, free society.


Copy provided by Open Road Media, through NetGalley. Thanks!

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

A squishy, literary science fiction story about a band of folks who lead humanity out of a computer mediated totalitarian utopia of the great city of Yu.

Full disclosure, I'm a fan of this author. However, I’m not a slavish fan. Some of his books really shine, and others don’t. For example, New Moon (Luna #1) (my review) is an excellent story. I never did finish Desolation Road . This book is more like the later. It’s well written and richly detailed. It was also funny in places. It reminded me a lot of something that China Miéville might write. The computer god element also reminded me a lot of his River of Gods (my review) written 17-years later. However, the story did not coalesce for me. It was entirely too derivative. It reminded me of: V for Vendetta , Stand on Zanzibar, 1984, Brave New World et al. Along with many other, newer science fiction tropes mulched in. At some point I wondered if this wasn’t the author’s attempt at magical realism?

My version of the book was a modest 320-pages. It had a 1989 copyright. Some of these pages went fast and others very slowly.

Ian McDonald is a British author of more than ten adult and YA science fiction novels. This was his second novel. The last book I read of his was Moon Rising (Luna #3) (my review), the end of his Luna series. I recommend the first book of this series (linked above) highly.

Writing was good. This includes: dialog, descriptive and action scenes. The author intentionally used a large and baroque narrative playing with words using snippets creating humorous dialog, neat alliteration; all to achieve atmosphere. As the book wore on, this became increasingly more difficult.

Note that this story includes: sex, drugs, and music references. The sex scenes were not graphic and of the fade to black in the breach category. Some of the sex referenced in the dialog and narrative is non-heteronormative. Substance abuse involved alcohol and futuristic pharma. Alcohol was consumed by some characters in mass quantities. There was pot smoking. Future pharma included both hard and soft core drugs. Music was woven into the plot lines. However, in this far future only classical music survives.

The ensemble cast was small and posed no problem to me. (I dislike large ensemble cast novels.) There are a lot of characters. However the two main POVs are: Courtney Hall and Kilimanjaro West. Hall is a political cartoonist who goes on the run for publishing a subversive cartoon. The reader never finds out why the cartoon was subversive. West is Jesus. He’s the incarnation of the sentient computer(s) running the great city of Yu, because the computers don’t know what it is to be human. These two have separate epic quests through Yu and its environs.

Plotting was good, but not excellent. This was a literary novel. The two POVs that drove the plot threads forward were well done. Switching was well handled. Hall, West, and the others quest in, on, under, and over the city of Yu. The story has a 1980’s ending. The computers judge humans ready to be released from their dystopia-- and the singularity takes them. Humans in Yu (a part of which was likely New York City) carry-on to fulfill their destiny.

The world building was in places excellent and others 'good'. I am always impressed by McDonald’s work at creating a credible future from snippets of foreign culture, history and science fiction. In modern times, the Tech was a little more problematic. For example, the author would bait ‘n switch you at every opportunity. A plot object might look to be grounded in science or science fiction, only to be quasi-magical. (Yes, yes, Any technology significantly advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic-- I get it.) Yet, I thought this was some of the best sheer variety of world building tropes I’ve read in a while.

At this point I should admit I don't like the author's literary science fiction, but do like his hardish science fiction. After this and one more book in his Desolation Road series the author's science fiction became less literary in nature. My thought is that literary science fiction doesn't pay the rent as easily as other verities? I only kinda liked this book. Reading it reminded me of my first reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . The story was both science fiction and fantasy written in a strange lyrical style. However, I was unprepared for a literary novel. There was too much hidden meaning for my eggshell fragile mind. I continued reading it for the clever language, and the plethora of ideas, some quite outrageous and others now antique tropes. I think this is a novel only a McDonald fanboi can love.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had this from NetGalley aaaages ago, and finally got round to reading it now. It's something very much in the vein of 1984, with some aspects clearly riffing on that, and it gives me really major déjà vu about something I've read before (but which I suspect was published since). It's one of McDonald's earliest novels, published in the year I was born, and yet I don't think it's gone out of date as speculative fiction so often can.

In a way, I found it predictable: once you know the roles of certain characters and how they fit into society, you can see how it's going to end. That doesn't diminish the fun of the ride, though: this is a quicksilver, frenetic book, a strange new world. I love the concepts here, filched from mythology and jumbled back up to make something new: Lares and Penates, household gods, mixed in with stuff straight out of 1984.

While I didn't like this as much as I liked The Broken Land, and the writing style isn't always entirely for me (too disconnected, jumbled, like an abstract painting), I think it's worth a look, particularly if you enjoy dystopian stories. The last chapter or so is all a bit of a rush; a lot suddenly happens in a few words, and I could've enjoyed seeing it unfold more completely, but I like what's sketched in for us as the result of the climax of the story.

[Molly]

A curious book that invites a conservative and a radical reading, but I’d label this an anxious rather than a predictive dystopian fiction

[zxvasdf · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a teeming city of arcologies and love police, the only illegal thing you can really do is disrupt the happiness of others as mandated by The Compassionate Society, a governing body composed of seven benevolent AIs originating from ancient corporate bodies.

Welcome to Yu, where the manswarm walk rain soaked streets the neon and gray of noir Korean films. Yu is where you live in buildings, veritable cities in themselves, that thrust into the monsoon sky where wire runners slide on the cables with feet on wheels. You can see the sparks from afar.

In Yu, you are born into a slot as determined by the psychological profiling of the Compassionate Society; no man or woman is out of place for they are always perfectly placed within compatible castes. No unhappiness is tolerated in Yu, where high technology has become mundane accessories to the facts of life so you can be the best you can be, as long as you be the designated you.

An infant’s impression of the world is tabula rasa: a man wakes in a room, filled with language, but none of the associated experiences. The language pours forth as the rain fills him with ecstasy, constructing his reality with words that define alien senses and impressions. Within that dichotomy the man exists, filling that void with a self that thrashes within the amniotic fluid of identity. He wordlessly words the world with meaning.

He falls through the manswarm, a fool for all he knows of the world, until he is adopted by Kansas Byrne and Co, in the form of the anarchic performance group Raging Apostles who bear him up and up above the sprawl coming and going on their mundane day to day businesses babbling reassuring inanities whose collective whispers waft to fill his infinitesimal self with the roar that is Yu’s heart and soul. They pump that heart and soul with the adrenaline of mischief.

Courtney Hall, pencil-slinger, free-thinker,finds herself at odds with her life and plunges into the chaos to unwittingly spearhead a decision that will forever decide the course of mankind. Ian McDonald has dipped into world religions (Out on a blue six smacks of an existential species-long Rumspringa) and multiple ideologies and dream worlds to create a chaotic near-hallucination which seems as an impossible but extremely optimistic vision of the future. Here, protean McDonald sprays references and allusions and metaphors in his exuberance, and you see this ability tightened and honed in his subsequent novels, especially that of Desolation Road, the novel most similar to Out On Blue Six.

This is the ride of your life, of seizure-inducing anime injected with comical realism, of derring-do in the name of Why Not and Wake Up People, of Jesus complexes deep in artificial intelligences and ancient technologies buried under newer ancient technologies, of dreams that are electric blue and out of there.

[Brenda (aka Grandma) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brave New World falls down a rabbit hole and goes on a techno-based acid trip. That's honestly how I'm going to remember this.

I might recommend it to someone wishing for more creative science fiction, but I needed to care about a character or a plot.

[David Willson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first became familiar with Ian McDonald from his first novel Desolation Road, published in 1988, and since have always considered him one of the best writers in science fiction. When I saw Out on Blue Six offered at an e-book discount I grabbed it. Even though new to me, it was another early novel in his career (either two or three, based on some rather incomplete bibliographies out there).
McDonald has a definite propensity for putting visual and performing art at the forefront of his stories. Out on Blue Six is wildly inventive, both in plot and language. Its environments and characters are surreal and stretch the boundaries of conventional science fiction. And yet, at its culmination, it is pure science fiction. In fact, considering when it was written, it should be considered first generation cyberpunk. Not only that, but it is extremely prescient about the effects of networked computer technology on society and therefore very timely and pertinent to the issues we face in the near future with the advent of artificial intelligence.
At times, McDonald's exuberant exploration of language and storytelling requires work on the part of the reader, but it is rewarding. I highly recommend it, and consider it a science fiction classic.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life in a future city is stable and happy all thanks to the Compassionate Society. Every thing you do is dictated by your genetics. Stray for the path and the Ministry of Pain is there to keep you in check. Courtney Hall is a satirical cartoonist who finds her self outside the norm and escapes the city to the underground, where she finds a group of people who may have the key to the survival of humanity. Shades of Vonnegut, Gibson and the Matrix. Weird but fun read.

[Kat Hooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally posted at Fantasy Literature. http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

Courtney Hall is a cartoonist because that’s the job she’s been assigned by the tyrannical government agencies that dictate all of the details of everyone’s life — where they live, who their friends are, who they marry, what job they do. The goal of the government, which consists of such agencies as the Ministry of Pain, the Compassionate Society, and the Love Police, is to analyze every citizen’s genes and personality so that they can be assigned to the lifestyle that will minimize their pain and maximize their happiness, thus creating a populace that is obedient and compliant. The government assures that its dictates are adhered to by monitoring all activity and censoring criticism.

Most people seem content in the Compassionate Society because they like being pain-free, doing a job that they love (even if they’re not good at it) and being married to people who they’re compatible with (even if they don’t love them). But some people, including Courtney Hall, think there must be something more to life than avoiding pain and conflict. If she voices her opinions, or opposes the government’s decisions for her, she’ll be called in for reprogramming and have her mind wiped. When Courtney creates a satirical comic and finds herself on the run, she discovers a group of dissidents living under the city and joins their fight for freedom.

So far Out on Blue Six sounds like a typical dystopian novel. You’re probably expecting something like Nineteen Eighty-Four or Fahrenheit 451 but, to stick with the number-in-the-title theme, Out on Blue Six has more in common with Slaughterhouse-Five than either of those dystopias. It’s bizarre. Really bizarre. In fact, it feels much more like something Philip K. Dick would have written, except that Ian McDonald is a far better stylist.

The story is strange all the way through, but the weirdest part is when Courtney spends time with the underground rebels. Their “expedition to the end of the world” is surreal and filled with all sorts of oddities such as a six-breasted goddess, a man with no memories, the King of Nebraska, a group of performance artists who call themselves the Raging Apostles, a race of cyborg raccoons, and a computer program that might be God. Through her travels and interactions, Courtney begins to realize what is wrong with her “compassionate” society and how the experience of pain underlies morality and creativity.

Out on Blue Six is wildly creative, beautifully written, often funny, has a clear message, and ends on a hopeful note. Yet it feels disjointed, frenetic, and over-stimulating, like an acid trip (or, at least, what I think an acid trip must feel like). Thus, while I admired the novel and found it fascinating, I didn’t always enjoy it. There were no characters that I cared about and I never felt grounded in McDonald’s world because there was something new and bizarre around every corner. I love weird, but this was weird overload. Still, I’m glad I read Out on Blue Six and some of its language and images will stick with me forever.

I listened to the audio version produced by Audible Studios and read by Jeff Harding. I suspect that narrating this book was extremely difficult. The narrative voice is intrusive, frenzied, chaotic, repetitive, and full of neologisms and sound effects. There are plays, sportscasts, committee meetings, official letters from the government, and talking raccoons. Jeff Harding managed it all brilliantly. It is an impressive performance.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an electronic copy of this from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is one of the most intoxicating, wild, and imaginative science fiction novels I've had a chance to read. The introduction by Cory Doctorow compares it in terms of broad thematics to 1984 and Brave New World, with good reason, and I understand why Doctorow would return to this novel to reread again and again.

McDonald writes this following two protagonists who are fighting to exist outside of the Compassionate Society, but the third person narration is almost a character unto itself, one that you can imagine speaking in a voice over to impart the mysteries of this strange universe to you as you read. That voice is above all flowing, with poetics and melody that adds meaning to this story far beyond each of the individual words on their own. This is impressive writing. However, it also requires intense concentration while reading, it is not straight-forward and simple, and the plot veers into bizarreness at each turn, though frequently with bits of humor and zeal.

The text of this story is an example of literature at its purest, as a representation of the universe which this story is set, in all of its nature grandiose, yet always seeming artificial, a veneer of shine over something hidden and more base. The flowing complex structure of McDonald's latinate prose is thus peppered throughout with brief moments of Anglo-Saxon coarseness, and punctuated with repetition of simple sounds or ideas.

Beyond the impressive nature of the writing, the characters are not too finely developed, they instead serve to bring schism into the Compassionate society of the story in order to bring highlight to the themes of McDonald's tale. In this respect it reminded me somewhat of a Heinlein story with its almost Messianic heroes, such as "Stranger in a Strange Land". As alluded above, the themes of this book deal with dystopia, a society that values attainment of comfort and happiness to any sort of freedom or risk. In its totality "Out on Blue Six" has interesting things to say about the nature of pain and the role of discomfort in driving things of value, art, and beauty.

This novel is a fantastic find, and this edition is a very cheap option to introduce yourself to an important piece of science fiction.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, wild, whimsical. Ian McDonald is quickly becoming a fave author. Imagine John Bruner and Dr. Seuss writing a story like Big Trouble in Little China. On audiobook, Jeff Harding really captures the music in the language of this book. And listening at double speed was fun just to hear the rhythm of the whole thing.

If you like weird science fiction, this is the story for you. If you don't like weird, stay away. It will lose you right at the beginning. Actually, the book was better at the beginning when I didn't really understand what was going on. Still, a good book.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

His first novel, I believe. All of his interests are there: super intelligent computers, AI or as near as, the multiverse (although only referenced here, unlike Brasyl), the 'god' who knows all and nothing and a sweet romantic streak. A little shaky in parts but that seems to stem from lax editing and this being an early effort. Read this if you are a completist of Mr McDonald's work but you are better off reading River of Gods and Brasyl.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've not read anything from Ian McDonald before, but if this book is typical of his skill, Imma fix that right away.

Take Douglas Adams, William Gibson, and Ogden Nash, blend them together and strain them through Lewis Carroll, and the result might vaguely resemble Out On Blue Six. Excellent, poetic, and zany as hell.

[Jaime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imaginen un remake de 1984 escrito a seis manos, por George Orwell, Terry Gillian y China Mieville, después se le entrega a Philip K. Dick para que lo reescriba y a final William Gibson lo rehace en clave cyberpunk.

[Roberto · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love science fiction set in the not-too-distant future, so I was drawn to the setting of this book: planet Earth after the (impending?) economic and environmental collapse.

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, a tightly controlled Compassionate Society is subsequently established, ensuring happiness and stability become law. Exploitation of others (in any form) is not allowed - with this state of affairs strictly enforced by the Ministry of Pain and the Love Police.

The Compassionate Society ensures people’s genetic predispositions and aptitudes - rather than random choice - guide their lives, with individual happiness as the most cherished value. Consequently, anything that can cause frustration, longing or grief - ie. pain of any kind - is outlawed. This naturally includes competitive sports, space exploration, entrepreneurship - yearning and striving of any kind. If it can result in unhappiness, it's not encouraged and very often illegal.

When I first arrived from South Africa, to me the UK appeared to be a type of 'compassionate society'. I was astounded at how hard the State worked to keep citizens safe and protected, particularly in terms of welfare and health & safety legislation.

Yet is such a 'utopia' necessarily a good thing for human beings?

Out on Blue Six explores this subject with a rich band of characters who form part of a dissident underground network fighting against the stagnation imposed by the Compassionate Society. They struggle to regain for humanity the freedom to grow and innovate and ultimately, survive.

I guess I enjoyed the book mainly due to the over-arching themes described above. Many of the details of the story were a little too outlandish for my liking. Were it not for the way it was professionally read (I listen to audiobooks while driving), I think I may have enjoyed it less.

[Ted Pikul · Rating 4 out of 5]

More a play on Zamyatin's We than 1984, lighter with an overarching and occasionally present but not constant cyberpunk element. 5 stars if it spent the whole story focused on the cyberpunk dreadlocked cablecar wire runners which the title refers to (just personal preference. Mcdonald kinda revives this with the parkour kids in Luna). with them, the dirigibles, archologies, 20km high underground dome oasis, grungy streets and biolamps of the megacity, roving anti authority performing arts group, these colorful passages of worldbuilding are great, and the rest of the mystical adventure story is sometimes quite out there but overall a worthwhile read.

[BobA707 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: Interesting, Interesting, Interesting ... The premise didn't quite work and I found it hard work to understand the basics. But an interesting and convoluted plot with an unexpected ending. Overall very imaginative

Plotline: Plot seems to go in many strange directions, but it all makes sense in the end

Premise: Slightly weird and not somewhere I would like to be

Writing: Imaginative but the writing didn't really flow for me

Ending: Unusual

Pace: Never a dull moment!

[John Ostwald · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, imagine getting buffeted around in a blender with several sci fi novels, a dystopia, a few children's books, a radio dj, a beatnik poet and a generous handful of mind altering substances. That's a reasonable approximation of this book. And yet it hangs together pretty well and is, on the whole, quite enjoyable. Works well as an audiobook.

[kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

God, I've read so many disappointing books recently. This book had so much potential but McDonald just ruined it with excessive additional vocabulary. On the first page alone we find:
- Arcologies
- Co-habs
- Caste
- Yulp
Why is this necessary? Any form of world building would be appreciated before throwing us into a dystopian world.

I love the concept, but the execution killed me. DNFed

[Bohdan]

ok, after a long time a book I wasn't able to finish - don't get me wrong it might be a good book for some or most people but I simply could't get over dingy-dongy tidlity-doo nursery rhymes style. Oh well maybe one day...

[AnnMarie Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recall loving this as a young adult. I found it very difficult to finish as a somewhat older adult. :(

[Toomas Nipernaadi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have loved this one in 1989.

But what I seek in fiction has changed and the world is different place today, so I forced myself to finish it just so I could be aware what I missed.

[Kyri Freeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the it's not you, it's me pile. I *know* this and a whole stack of similar books are considered classic SF.

I just personally don't do whimsy.

[Roberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a bit of a hard time finishing the book. At a certain point around 2/3rds of the way in the language got just too flowery and psychodelic.

In any case, it's pretty good!

[Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital copy of Out on Blue Six!

To say that Out on Blue Six is an impressive novel that thoroughly creates and intensely presents a City run by the Compassionate Society 450 years after the Break in mid-21st century in such utter horror and clarity to engulf one's psyche in a language that flows without any particular meaning in every word, yet forces a whole new consciousness when each word joins the flooding river, well, to say that would be an understatement.

Perhaps what is most unique about Ian McDonald's novel compared to other futuristic, dystopian sci-fi novels is the chaotic language he deploys without any hesitation or restraint. If you are familiar with starting to watch a season of The Wire, when one is thoroughly lost in names, words, places that make no sense, and one has to watch three episodes in a row just to get what might be happening to whom, then you can expect a greater sense of disorientation at the beginning of Out of Blue Six. But surely, if you exercise patience and flex your thinking muscles, soon enough you will "get it." Interestingly, the words still baffle, even after 200 something pages, but they form a whole that makes sense in such a deranged way that every twist and turn is a revelation in its own right.

The story follows two main groups of people as they live in/outside the City run by several higher organizations, some godly in their functions, though mere computer programs in essence. The Kafkaesque absurdity of absolute laws and rules are rigged eternally to maximize each person's happiness without harming others and avoiding pain of any kind. Everyone has test results, which determine a caste and a profession that will fit their happiness needs. Regardless of whether or not they are good at their job or not, regardless of where they come from or feel that they belong... They have no choice.

In this regard, Ian McDonald's novel is very American in its one fixation: choice. And the liberation, the proof that humans can once again be trusted with their own destiny (rather than supercomputer deities that have transcended AI ruling their City), means having choice again. I thought, despite myself (since I know McDonald is not American), how American! Strange, that. Liberty as freedom of choice is certainly a long-lasting fixation of the American psyche (and it rears its head in many different and strange places, like the current debates about the future of the American healthcare system), and the ending, as well as the frontier the new humans decide to explore, gave the novel a very "America during the Cold War" feel for me.

As with most, the journey is worth as much, if not more, than a beginning and an end, and this is absolutely true for the journey from the intensity of language in the beginning of the novel to the liberation in the end. The two groups travel through strange territories and create/witness even stranger events to finally converge in a way that has several "Ah!" moments, and it all starts to make more sense. In this regard, the first half of the book is rather surreal, while the second half is less so, and the latter half has more action and adventure in the page-turning sense. McDonald's language does not lose its intensity or crispness throughout, and it is a marvel to see how he stretches this invention of his to express the surreal and the real in a harmonious blend.

The journey slowly unravels the many layers of obvious and subtle satire McDonald so strangely engineers, and one can easily go deeper and deeper into the symbolism to analyze who and what and when and where and how. Surely, there is something for everyone, whether it be a Messiah, or time travel, or bioengineering, or communists and democrats flinging sentient raccoons at each other in an underground rain forest. Throughout, McDonald maintains a melancholic mood that is dystopian, yes, and yet strangely hopeful, like a melancholic drunk who is singing an upbeat drinking song of gulag torture. This suits the plot very well, since hope is as important to the novel as is choice.

I would give the novel a full 5/5, if it weren't for the ending, which was too optimistic and neat for my liking. Overall, Out on Blue Six is a surrealist triumph of language and the sci-fi genre itself.

Recommended for those who like raccoons, satire, and performance art.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

After my review of McDonald’s short story collection, Speaking in Tongues, several people, among them Michael Sumbera, recommended to me what they felt was McDonald’s best novel, Out on Blue Six. There was also some attention focused on the novel on rec.arts.sf.written, because of its similarity to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. The comparison is not misplaced, although McDonald has a different agenda than Gilliam. Both stories feature a huge government that relegates people’s lives, in which a small mistake can wreak human lives. That is, both stories are satires on present governments and governmental ideas. But whereas Gilliam plays the satire to the hilt, and goes beyond simple governmental poking, but also poking at individuals within it, ultimately ending on an extremely cynical note, McDonald still feels there’s hope to be had. Out on Blue Six is an extremely pyrotechnic novel, full of unknown words and weirdly impossible SF ideas; again, like Snow Crash, this isn’t a hard SF novel, but rather a novel of adventure and philosophy. Neal Stephenson pulls it off slightly better, mainly because he isn’t concerned with wrapping things up in a denouement, which McDonald does with his story.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

As has been mentioned, it calls to mind Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil which came out a few years before. But, other than the general environment and atmosphere, there's really very little similar. It's like comparing Last Exit to Brooklyn and City of Glass. Yeah, they're both set in New York, but that's beside the point and it doesn't diminish either of them.

I have to admit that, while I knew Ian McDonald, I'd never even heard of this book. I really wish I had so I could have read it earlier. I really enjoyed it.

If I'm going to armchair write anything it's that the ending to just too explicitly hopeful. I mean, in the first place, it's a trite to imply everything will be OK now that the artists are in charge, because that's what we really needed from the start. That would have been OK, though, if it had ended with them taking the reins and having their Oh-shit-what-do-we-do-now moment. But, it goes on for another chapter or so to explain exactly how they make it better. Honestly, I'd rather supply my own hope to the end of the story.

Anyway, small complaint. It's a good book to take a chance on.

[Fantasy Literature · Rating 3 out of 5]

Courtney Hall is a cartoonist because that’s the job she’s been assigned by the tyrannical government agencies that dictate all of the details of everyone’s life — where they live, who their friends are, who they marry, what job they do. The goal of the government, which consists of such agencies as the Ministry of Pain, the Compassionate Society, and the Love Police, is to analyze every citizen’s genes and personality so that they can be assigned to the lifestyle that will minimize their pain and maximize their happiness, thus creating a populace that is obedient and compliant. The government assures that its dictates are adhered to by monitoring all activity and censoring criticism.

Most people seem content in the Compassionate Society because they like being pain-free, doing a job that they love (even if they’re not good at it) and being married to people who they’re compatible with... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

...Out on Blue Six is a marvelous trip though a dystopian future but in the end I think McDonald doesn't manage to put all that creativity in the service of novel as a whole. That being said, there are people who absolutely adore this book. Author Cory Doctorow, who wrote the introduction to this edition, among them. For some readers this novel works, but I suspect it has a quite modest following. Creatively, McDonald pushed the style of his earlier work as far as it would go in this novel. So far in fact, that it feels erratic at times. I would advise people to try some of McDonald's other early work to see if it suits them before tacking this one.

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