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Only Forward

by Michael Marshall Smith (Goodreads Author)

4.31 of 5 stars 4.31 · rating details · 1,702 ratings · 143 reviews

When Stark fixes a problem, a lot of other things get broken. Now he's assigned to finding a missing VIP. But there's something about this job that makes Stark wary. It can't be just an ordinary kidnapping. It seems too easy. And unfortunately, he's right. The author's other books, "One of Us" and "Spares", are headed for the big screen.

Paperback, 310 pages

Published 1998 by HarperCollins Publishers (first published 1994)

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Jan 16, 2013 Kelly-Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone should read this. Not everyone will like it, but they should read it.

Shelves: i-haz-dis, this-makes-meh-happeh, six-stars-bitches, high-levels-of-swoon

I think I'm going to have to write a proper review for this because I love this book so much.

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May 12, 2010 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: award-nominee-british-fantasy, award-winner-british-fantasy, multiple-award-nominee, multiple-award-winners, award-nominee-philip-k-dick, award-winner-philip-k-dick, 6-star-books, all-time-favorites, love-those-words, cyber-punk-prep-and-post, science-fiction, 1990-1999

6.0 stars. On my list of "All Time Favorite" novels. I really enjoyed the two other books I have read by Michael Marshall Smith, Spares and Straw Men and so had fairly high expections going into this book. They were SIGNIFICANTLY exceeded. I loved this book from the opening page to the very last word.

This book is defintely a "mind trip" where reality is not always what you think it is and you are never sure what is going to happen next. However, unlike other books like this, the author does a s...more 6.0 stars. On my list of "All Time Favorite" novels. I really enjoyed the two other books I have read by Michael Marshall Smith, Spares and Straw Men and so had fairly high expections going into this book. They were SIGNIFICANTLY exceeded. I loved this book from the opening page to the very last word.

This book is defintely a "mind trip" where reality is not always what you think it is and you are never sure what is going to happen next. However, unlike other books like this, the author does a superb job of never losing his audience. You always have enough of an understanding to follow the story and, most importantly, you know that the explanations are coming. That is always a big issue for me when I am reading a story like this. If everything is not clear enough to follow the story line, I get distracted by finding myself asking, "Did I miss something" and wondering if I need to go back a reread the what I have already read. That usually leads to frustration and lack of "immersion" in the story if it goes on for too long. That does not happen here where the author does a great job of having his main character, Stark, basically tell you "look you are not going to understand this now, but I will explain it to you later if its necessary so sit back and just trust me for the moment...." By doing this he let's you know to enjoy the ride and everything will be made clear at the appropriate time, which it eventually is. I thought this was brilliant.

In addition to having an incredibly original, mind-blowing plot, this book has some absolutely amazing characters starting with the protaganist, Stark, who is a private investigator handling very "unique" matters. Add to that a couple of psychotic, but well mannered brothers, Ji and Sneed, a couple of sarcatic "home applicances" and cat that gives any dog a run for its money as "man's best friend" and you have the makings for a dark, funny and, in the end, very poignant story. Stark's narration throughout is brilliant. He is both very funny (I laughed out loud more than once) and yet is able to grab you when the emotional aspects of the story become more serious. His tone was just perfect.

Anyway, as you can tell from my comments above, I LOVED THIS BOOK. It receives my HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!

Winner: British Fantasy Award
Winner: Philip K. Dick Award (less)

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Nov 08, 2008 Ann rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Ann by: Stefan

Shelves: sci-fi, futuristic

First part: funny but confusing. Second part: even more confusing, and not so funny anymore. Third part: bittersweet and beautiful. I still don't know what to make of this book. Many people don't seem to like the ending, but I loved it. Only then do the first parts make sense. You get bits and pieces of the back story throughout the book and can guess what's important and what different things have to do with each other, but only the end "explains" it all, and I'm one of those people who need th...more

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Feb 06, 2012 Donovan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

A mind trip!!! If you want something that is off the wall, then this is it.

Plot ***Spoilers***
Only Forward opens with a small boy left on his own in a flat. The boy answers a knocking on the front door of his high rise flat to find a man with no head standing on the doorstep. The man cannot speak, but the boy knows he is asking him for help. Upon hearing the 'ping' of the lift door bell - indicating the return of his mother - The boy apologises and explains that he cannot help him, he closes th...more A mind trip!!! If you want something that is off the wall, then this is it.

Plot ***Spoilers***
Only Forward opens with a small boy left on his own in a flat. The boy answers a knocking on the front door of his high rise flat to find a man with no head standing on the doorstep. The man cannot speak, but the boy knows he is asking him for help. Upon hearing the 'ping' of the lift door bell - indicating the return of his mother - The boy apologises and explains that he cannot help him, he closes the door and returns to playing games like most children.

The first chapter opens with the main character Stark accepting a job from actioneer Zenda Renn. Stark is a private detective in The City and is charged with the task of retrieving missing actioneer Fell Alkland from the hands of kidnappers, Alkland is a high ranking Actioneer in The Action Centre, his disappearance is causing concern for the whole Centre.

Stark uses his contact Ji, a ganglord in Red neighbourhood, to discover that Alkland is being held in Stable. Stable is a closed and heavily guarded area of the city whose residents believe they are the only survivors of a nuclear war. This is an ideal place for the kidnappers to hold their victim as no-one can get in or out. The neighbourhood is zealously guarded by its authorities to perpetuate the inhabitant's belief that there is nothing beyond the city walls but a radioactive wasteland.

After some initial difficulty entering Stable, Stark locates Alkland easily. Together they escape the hotel that Alkland is staying at just as the Stable police arrive - presumably to arrest Alkland and find out why a non-resident had suddenly appeared in their city. Stark and Alkland make their way to the roof of Stable, escaping from the police on an antique heliporter, with the help of a friend of Stark's named Shelby. During the escape Alkland explains to Stark that he wasn't kidnapped, but left the Action Centre of his own free will. He was able to enter Stable with the help of a contact, by hiding inside a weather control computer provided to Stable by the scientist neighbourhood of NatSci.

They make their way back to Stark's flat in Colour to find Zenda Renn waiting there. She discovered a bug in her office at the Action Centre and was frightened enough to leave and ask Stark for help. Stark notices that Alkland has been looking ill since he left Stable, and in particular seems to be suffering from bad dreams. After ordering some pizza and deciding what to do, an explosion from a proximity bomb in the flat's kitchen is set off by the pizza delivery girl. Stark, Zenda and Alkland leave the flat - Zenda returning to The Action Centre with Spangle (Stark's cat) and Stark and Alkland escaping the ACIA (the Action Center police unit), who arrived on the scene after the bomb they planted exploded.

Stark and Alkland make their way through Sound and onto a monorail to Eastedge, where Stark thinks that he can cure Alkland of a 'something' which has been causing Alkland to suffer from bad dreams, and get progressively sicker. With the help of another friend in Eastedge, Stark and Alkland are able to enter Jeamland by walking off the beach and onto now solid ground where the sea was. Stark explains that Jeamland is a kind of collective unconscious where it's possible to reach the place which your dreams come from, and in Alkland's case find the 'something' that is causing him to have bad dreams. Within Jeamland, Alkland meets and faces down one of his monsters - a giant tiger-like animal from the depths of his nightmares. After encountering the tiger, they reach the relative safety of a castle. Whilst taking the opportunity to relax and recover, Stark is tricked into waking up, and does so - reappearing on his sofa in Colour and leaving Alkland behind in Jeamland.

After waking up, Stark decides to look further into Alkland's history, trying to find out whether there is anything that could be causing Alkland's 'something'. He discovers a former schoolfriend of Alkland named Bellrip, now a scientist within NatSci and presumably the contact that was able to get Alkland sumggled into Stable inside the weather computer. Stark travels to Natsci to pay Bellrip a visit but finds only a bloody corpse with its skull punched out from the inside. Recognising this as the MO of one of an old friend named Rafe, Stark pays Ji another visit in Red. Rafe was a childhood friend of Stark's and together they both found Jeamland. Ji also knew Rafe and explains to his brother Snedd that Rafe had to be killed because he was too dangerous to be allowed in Jeamland. Ji goes back to The Centre to fetch Zenda and Stark heads back home to Colour, falls asleep and enters Jeamland.

Stark wakes up and finds himself in the castle where he left Alkland, several hours have passed and it becomes clear that Alkland has already left and the atmosphere has changed. Instead of the welcoming friendly place the castle was when they arrived, things have taken a darker turn. After a disturbing encounter in the main hall, Stark wakes up elsewhere and is chased across the landscape by two frightening police officers. He escapes them and discovers that he has wandered into Alkland's dream. He finds Alkland collapsed on the ground in a snowdrift, obviously very ill. Stark wakes up back in his apartment in Colour, with Alkland.

Stark calls Shelby and asks her to come and collect them from the roof of the apartment building with the heliporter. He and Alkland escape through the ceiling of the apartment to the roof, where they take off just in time from the pursuing ACIA. The heliporter and Alkland both take hits, and Shelby is forced to make a crash landing just outside Cat neighbourhood. All three escape into Cat and meet up with Zenda, Snedd and Ji in a hotel.

Realising that Rafe is the cause of the trouble and presumably wasn't as dead as they thought, Ji and Stark make their way back into Jeamland to find him and kill him. Both face down the ghosts of their past, Ji is killed, his head ripped off by a nightmare of his mother. Stark continues after Rafe and follows him into Memory - they watch how they left home years ago, and Stark realises that his friend really is dead and was only alive in his own memory. His bitter memories of the conflicts between them were the root of the unrest. He had inadvertently brought Rafe back to life in Jeamland, and by extension into The City. He turns to embrace his old friend, and after he looks up again Rafe has disappeared. Stark makes his way from Memory back to Jeamland and doesn't bother to find Ji's body, he knows Ji has gone to find the small boy in the flat.

Stark wakes up in Cat to find that Alkland is dead. The ACIA have been called off, the only reason they were pursuing Stark was on the whim of an over eager Actioneer chasing a promotion. Snedd accepts his brother Ji's death and returns to Red to carry on as a ganglord. Zenda returns to The Centre but continues to see Stark, who finally comes to terms with his past and the fact that although he'll never be able to get home again, he has found a new one.(less)

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Sep 15, 2011 Lee McIlmoyle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Sci-Fi, Surrealism, and Film Noir fans

Recommended to Lee by: nobody

This was a rather peculiar book, and I've probably only talked to one or two other people who have ever read it, but I discovered it at a peculiar period in my life, and something about reading it at that specific time kind of embedded it in my psyche. to this day, I tend to bend and break genre barriers in much the same way that this book did.

That said, I haven't read it in a while, so I feel uncomfortable saying more than that it was a very stirring and immersive tale about a noirish private...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Steve Wasling rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've just finished this often recommended book and I don't even know where to start in describing it. In fact, I think describing it too much would detract from certain aspects of the story. I'll put it this way; It starts as a somewhat surrealistic future SF novel set in an unnamed city that is divided into districts where like-minded individuals can pursue their often extreme lifestyles. Slowly but surely the story broadens into a whole other thing that I'm not going to give away in the slight...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopian, fashion-fiction

Starting off strong with a mysterious main character that has a vague job, akin to something like a private detective, within a creative world. The place that he lives in had been divided into separate neighborhoods, almost like small countries, each with their own laws, exports, way of life, etc. Each one of these was very different, but only a few were described, but included a small one that was only delegated for cats. Yup, cats and whatever mysteries they do with their lives when we aren't...more Starting off strong with a mysterious main character that has a vague job, akin to something like a private detective, within a creative world. The place that he lives in had been divided into separate neighborhoods, almost like small countries, each with their own laws, exports, way of life, etc. Each one of these was very different, but only a few were described, but included a small one that was only delegated for cats. Yup, cats and whatever mysteries they do with their lives when we aren't looking, I'm guessing sleeping allot.
The main plot picks up quickly when the MC is approached by his semi-girl friend for a job. A man has gone missing, and they ask him to find him. Simple enough, move forward. The internalization of the main character continues on being vague about himself, only hinting at his personality, job, and past, but it is clearly just used to set up the over-all story arch. But, the job is right up his alley. The initial pursuit was really just to introduce the rest of the cast. The guy is found, but there is something else afoot, okay so the real story finally starts about half way through the book. The only problem was that the first half was good interesting, now all of a sudden we get pushed into some weird dreamworld, and have to deal with some silliness as the rest of the story plays out. Yeah, unneeded story shift, world setting changes, and the main character starts to come clean on who he is and his involvement with the supporting cast. Yup, boring. The story was fine, the world was fine, but the author decided to write a new book half way through. Okay, maybe not that drastic of a change, but it was completely unneeded.
Everything moves forward rather well as we rush toward the ending, some stuff was explained, how it tied to the dreamworld was a nice touch, but really took away from the story. The ending was okay, but nothing impressive, needed a little more closure, seemed a little too tidy. When things get that complicated, it just doesn't fit into place that well in the long run.
Not a bad book by any means, I really enjoyed the first half, there was some really stand out work put into the concepts. But, I just felt ripped off in the long run. I really don't see how this keeps getting linked to horror as well. Sure, it has some really mild horror elements with some of the developments near the end, but not enough to keep listing it as sci-fi horror.(less)

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Feb 28, 2008 Genevra Littlejohn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book stuck with me for a long time.
Set in a future so far ahead as to occasionally be unrecognizable, this is nonetheless a very visceral story about regret and anger, and the distance between people, and the inability to go home--the fact that one must always, can only, go forward. Very recommended if you're looking for a science fiction story unlike anything you've tasted before.

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Mar 27, 2009 Sarah Dickey rated it 4 of 5 stars

don't know if i'll finish it or not... reccomendation from my coworker

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Oct 17, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Sarah by: Dan

Shelves: 2011, great-reads

If you like scifi and love books and cats, you won't go wrong with this book. Fed-up with Scandinavian Crime, I asked hubby for a recommendation, and this was what he handed me.

This story follows the main character, Stark, as he journeys from his own Neighbourhood of 'The City', called Colour, (reminiscent of Jasper Fforde's "Shades of Grey"), through other Neighbourhoods such as 'Red', (think 'Mad Max') and 'Cat', (a neighbourhood inhabited by cats). Stark is sent on a mission that takes him t...more

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Mar 22, 2009 Simon rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked up this book up very randomly when rushing for a flight and desperate for some work-unrelated reading. As I settled into my seat and read his description of how the tops of clouds seen from a plane actually are solid an can be walked on, I was drawn into the strange world of Stark. Like a warm duvet wrapped around me on a cold, this world was a place I just wanted to be and to stay. But beware, just like the world of duvets there are beasties to contend with in your dreams and nightmare...more

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Jun 04, 2010 Sammie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: age-over-10

This book is exactly what science-fiction should be!

There are two very distinct parts to it. I found the first part (the Neighborhoods) so absorbing, interesting and real that it didn't feel like reading fiction at all. As clichéd as it might sound, I felt like I was really there. The second part of the book (Jeamland) was equally as interesting, thought-provoking and easy to read, but it did not have the same intense feel to it. Plot-wise, Jeamland is a bit of a leap and expects the reader to w...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Nikki rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, cyberpunk, speculative-fiction

Oh -- my -- god. When I started reading this book I expected it to keep up the fairly light tone of the early chapters. Then it fucked with my heart bad. Don't believe reviews saying it makes no sense: it makes perfect sense, in the end, as long as you stop holding onto normal logic and start applying some dream logic. The narrator is unreliable, yeah, and he has attitude, and he knows he's telling a story, so there are bits that some people find irritating, like the way he keeps saying he'll te...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Will Chambers rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Only Forward. Don’t try to work out the title, it’ll take too long to do it. Only Stark can explain it.

Stark is the protagonist, and often his own greatest adversary. He’s a man of many talents, and though he rarely identifies what these talents are or how he acquired them, he appears to be one of a kind in Smith’s fishbowl world. A fishbowl not just in the sense that its inhabitants are trapped into confined areas, but also because (like it’s alcoholic namesake) it hosts a combination of just a...more Only Forward. Don’t try to work out the title, it’ll take too long to do it. Only Stark can explain it.

Stark is the protagonist, and often his own greatest adversary. He’s a man of many talents, and though he rarely identifies what these talents are or how he acquired them, he appears to be one of a kind in Smith’s fishbowl world. A fishbowl not just in the sense that its inhabitants are trapped into confined areas, but also because (like it’s alcoholic namesake) it hosts a combination of just about everything. It may also leave you feeling lost and confused, “but that’s another story”. Note: get used to that four word phrase, you’ll hear it a lot from Stark. The main principle of Smith’s future world is that it is divided. Divided into Neighbourhoods where your personal tolerances and preferences dictate where you live. It’s cleverly done and dealt with in a mature and complex manner for such a seemingly naïve idea.

Though it’s hardly stream of consciousness, the novel is told in a very thought like manner, albeit Stark’s concise and straight to the point manner. Most of Stark’s emotion is kept to a minimum and feels somewhat omitted from the majority of the prose. Throughout the novel you’ll hear a lot about fear. But I just said that Stark’s emotion is kept to a minimum, but you’ll hear a lot about it. It’s not a contradiction. Stark seems to regard fear as an entity, a physical part of you rather than a mental capacity. That said, Stark keeps the reader entertained with a witty, dry and altogether odd sense of humour. Smith almost seems to tell the story to an audience that he has lived after, as though he is looking back on the current generation with hindsight.

“The Centre” screams shades of George Orwell’s 1984, as does, in fact, the majority of Part 1. Smith creates an ironic mockery of the life we lead, and captures (just as Orwell does) an idea that people and thoughts cannot be merely categorised and subject to input from outside sources. Though Orwell deals with this matter with the Proles, Smith’s pairing of restricting environments and inhabitants that refuse to leave showcase the idea equally effectively. The first half of the book can ultimately be the crowned the section of the novel that is superior in plotline and writing style, but it is in the novel’s latter half that Marshall Smith lets loose his torrents of symbolism and new wave ideology.

And that’s when it gets weird. But listen to Stark and you’ll be fine, he’s a man of many talents after all.

(less)

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Sep 11, 2011 Trayana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bg, fantasy, owned, sci-fi, weird

Майкъл Маршал Смит пише не само фантастика, но и трилъри под името Майкъл Маршал. Не може да се каже, че творбите му са непознати на българския читател. Фантастичните му книги са издавани от три различни издателства през годините. За мен „Само напред” представлява втори опит с Майкъл Маршал Смит, след като зарязах странно неконсистентния сборник What You Make It. Основно, защото не бях в настроение да чета психарии по него време.

Четох „Само напред” в изданието на ИК „Пан” от далечната 1999 г. Да...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Ketan Shah added it · review of another edition

A stunning piece of work,even more so when you consider it's Michael Marshall Smith's first novel. Smart ,surreal and brutal.,with a lot of heart. Smith does a good job creating a hard boiled narrator who does some incredible violent things ,but who you still care for.Ideas fly willy nilly as he describes the various strange neighborhoods that his character's inhabit. If you enjoyed this ,you might like Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan comics,Michael Swanwyck's ,In the Drift and some of William...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Geraint Griffiths rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ok, this is my all time favourite book. My college housemate introduced me to it back in 1995 - I read it 3 times in the space of 4 or 5 days and have re-read it countless times since. I cannot stress enough how much I love this book. It has razor sharp wit, sci-fi, politics, kidnapping, gratuitous violence, time travel, talking walls that alter colour to suit your mood, and cats, while also presenting quite a scary (and possibly accurate) vision of the future of western society. I love all of M...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Alyssa Oppelt rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Alyssa by: goodreads

It's late and I'm tired, but wow. I just finished this one and it's already become my favorite book. I can't even explain it.. Why most of the reviews give the last half of this book low ratings is beyond me. The last half was what kept me reading long after bedtime... I almost want to read this one again. Now. I damn near almost cried at the end - not because it's sad, but because the story was over. It is such a good book. I highly recommend it. The book kind of gave off the feel of the film '...more

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Jun 04, 2010 Neil Powell rated it 3 of 5 stars

This really was a book of two halves. It begins as a wonderful sci-fi world created around the premise that the Earth is covered by one massive city and each "neighbourhood" has different rules and behaviours that govern the people who live there. The whole "missing person" private eye tale evolves nicely, but then at the half way point it becomes a strange and surreal trip through a dream world. I found the story lost its cohesion here, and it made it difficult to want to finish the book. The n...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Felicia rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is probably more like 3.5 stars, but I rounded up. The first half was extremely entertaining and enjoyable. Half way through, the tone changed, and it seemed to become almost an entirely different story. Still engaging, but less so. I also felt that the ending was rushed. I could see that there were very few pages left, and wondered how it would be possible to wrap everything up within that space. The end just seems kind of slapped on and vague.

Still, not usually being a sci-fi type of per...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Nathan Cocks rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's my favourite book of all time, so the fact my reception to this book could be described as extremely positive should be no surprise at all.

Michael Marshall Smith's frequent toying with the reader's expectations is masterful. Effortlessly mixing elements of science fiction, horror, drama, romance and philosophy, this tale of one man's journey to uncover the truth of a seemingly unfathomable mystery provokes delight and thought in equal measure.

I won't lie; I get a little hyperbolic when disc...more

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Apr 05, 2012 Ruth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is almost a 5 but the initial Jeamland part frustrated me a little as I didn't know what was going on or why and it seemed to drag a little. BUT this was still really very good. I'm not entirely sure I actually know what on earth happened by the end, but I loved all the ideas in the story, very well imagined and good characters.

Love this quote from the end:
"Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don'...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Ray Daley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: good-to-re-read

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a great book. You won't read anything weirder.

You could read everything Robert Rankin, Terry Pratchett & Douglas Adams ever wrote and you still won't find a book as weird as this.

The main character is Stark, he's world weary but loves his cat Spangle. He's a fixer, he's the type of man people contact when they need "things" doing that would prove otherwise difficult or possibly illegal.

He lives in what I assume is the fairly near future where people live in Neighbourhoods. That's Ne...more

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May 20, 2012 Dylan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pkd-winners, owned, favorites

Only Forward is a great book with great style. Smith's writing is funny and fresh, if maybe a little too self-aware at times - he's constantly addressing the reader's expectations directly, which works great only when he's right about those expectations, though to be fair, he usually is. His vision of a future where the world is divided into Neighbourhoods which are obsessed with various themes - e.g. color, action, sound, cats - is funny and absurdly inventive. The concept would provide most wr...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy

Early in to this book I flashed back on the books of Ron Goulart that I read back in the 70's and 80's. There was a very similar sense of humor. And as I got a little further in to the book, I began to sense a bit of Phil Dick. When I told this to my friend, he said that the writing style reminded him of Roger Zelazny. I can see that, too.

There was something incredibly unique here. I never got a sense that I was reading something that had been done to death in different ways.

In Only Forward, Smi...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Sam rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a very unusual, and very creative, book. It is partly science fiction, borrowing from crime noir, with a somewhat mysterious protagonist who is a kind of private-eye character working to solve an abduction. This part of the story takes places in a futurist society, where machines are highly intelligent, and in which cities and states have been replaced by "neighborhoods". Some neighborhoods have themes like "Color", others are based on extreme behaviors like inner city gang culture, or e...more

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Nov 22, 2011 Thomas Toth rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my favourite book of all time. It is excellently written in first-person, and Stark's (the protagonist) personality comes across brilliantly, so you really engage with the character and the story right from the beginning. I've read this book an incredible number of times and each time I pick up something new from it. Each time it feels fresh. Only Forward explores an incredible number of themes and settings, all of which are relevant and constructive to the story and plot structure. Each...more

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Oct 12, 2010 Bill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

This is probably going to be the worst review I've written.
There is so much to say about this novel, but I can't really tell you anything without spoiling it.
So, where to start?
How about the story? Well, the less you know, the better. Suffice it to say, our hero's travels take on some strange turns.

This is the second book I've read by Smith. His thriller Straw Men, under the name Michael Smith, was quite good, but the story wasn't one I wanted to keep following for two more novels.

Only Forward...more

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Oct 30, 2008 Nicolas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anticipation, cyberpunk, enquête, inclassable, mémoire, noir, ville, voyage, rayon-fantasy-et-sf

Un petit résumé
Ce roman nous raconte les aventures de Starck, une espèce de détective privé un peu étrange, dans une ville aux dimensions d’un contient, munie de particularités assez étonnantes. Celui-ci doit aller exfiltrer une espèce de vieux cadre dynamique, censément enlevé ...
Un début d’avis
J’ai lu, il n’y a pas si longtemps, du même auteur, la proie des rêves. Ce qui est étonnant, c’est qu’on retrouve dans les deux romans d’assez nombreux points communs : le rêve est indiférenciable d...more Un petit résumé
Ce roman nous raconte les aventures de Starck, une espèce de détective privé un peu étrange, dans une ville aux dimensions d’un contient, munie de particularités assez étonnantes. Celui-ci doit aller exfiltrer une espèce de vieux cadre dynamique, censément enlevé ...
Un début d’avis
J’ai lu, il n’y a pas si longtemps, du même auteur, la proie des rêves. Ce qui est étonnant, c’est qu’on retrouve dans les deux romans d’assez nombreux points communs : le rêve est indiférenciable de la réalité, qui n’est pas elle-même ce que l’on peut en croire. Ca ressemble à du Dick, me dites-vous ? Autant, pour la proie des rêves, j’aurais répondu non, autant là, à partir d’un moment, oui, j’ai bien cru voir sortir des morceaux de le dieu venu du centaure, pourtant, si il s’agit à mon avis d’un des hommages évidents de l’auteur, il ne s’agit pas d’un roman de Dick, et par bien des aspects, qui tiennent autant à la narration et aux personnages qu’à la forme de l’univers.
La narration, pour commencer, prend vraiment le lecteur aux tripes. J’ai déja dit bien des fois tout le bien que je pensais des récits à la première personne, et ça se confirme encore une fois. Bien que Starck ne soit pas ce qu’on pourrait appeler un héros attachant, on l’aime, on le suit, on pense avec lui, et on est souvent confus … comme lui. Car Starck est un personnage des plus confus, qui fait penser d’assez près aux détectives privés de la littérature (enfin, je dis ça, je n’ai jamais lu un seul roman mettant en scène ce genre de personnage, c’est plus de l’ordre de l’imaginaire collectif). Par de nombreux aspects, il porte en lui ce côté imper crasseux, clope tordue au coin des lèvres, dur à cuire que rien n’arrête. Pourtant, cette facade se lézarde souvent, aussi bien dans les phases où il se bat pour sa peau que dans d’autres, où le lecteur comprend que son travail repose sur d’autres bases. Et sous ces lézardes, on voit apparaître un autre individu peu en phase avec son monde. Mais ça, ça n’est pas bien difficile ! Le monde que nous décrit Smith, avec ses Quartiers tous plus étranges les uns que les autres, est à mes yeux complètement incroyable : un ensemble de de petits pays, tout à fait isolés les uns des autres, où chaque coin de rue peut révéler un environnement surprenant, et où surtout les règles changent quasiment tous les kilomètres ! La grande force de l’auteur est d’insufler une vraie vie à cet endroit, alors même que les personnages le parcourant ne sont pas très nombreux, et alors surtout que son étrangeté est parfois très difficile à admettre (comme par exemple pour le Quartier chat). Mais bah, habitué que je suis aux expériences de la sf, je me suis facilement laissé emmener dans ce monde, et je n’ai pas regretté le voyage.
Attention aux spoilers, maintenant.
Mais ce voyage de la première partie n’est rien, selon moi, face à ce que réserve la deuxième partie : cet univers, étrange et fascinant, qu’a construit l’auteur se lézarde à son tour pour révéler un monde du rêve, qui ne peut que faire penser aux légendes aborigènes, qui est tout aussi réel que l’univers d’où vient le héros. Quoique… Lorsque l’auteur, avec la maîtrise la plus extrême, nous explique trois pages avant la fin (je vous avais prévenu, le spoiler qui tue commence ici) que le héros et son ennemi viennent de notre bon vieux monde, là, c’est proprement fabuleux : tout s’écroule, et pourtant tout reste pareil, rien n’est clair, sauf peut-être cette conviction que Starck a choisi sa réalité. Et c’est là, justement, lorsque Smith détruit son chateau de cartes, que l’ascendance de Dick se révèle le plus clairement, je trouve. Alors qu’il aurait pu finir son récit tranquillement, il préfère nous asséner une grande baffe dans la figure, avant de nous pousser gentiment vers la sortie.
Bref, un grand moment de littérature, que j’ai vraiment beaucoup apprécié (beaucoup plus en tout cas, que Dick) et que je ne peux que vous recommander chaudement.(less)

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Feb 13, 2008 Ian rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sci-fi/Lit fans. But not sci fi or lit fans.

Recommended to Ian by: Philip K

I'm giving this one a good review because I thought that elements of only forward were greater than the sum of it's parts. As a collective, the novel really doesn't hold together all that well but when you examine it's finer pieces there are some really beautiful things at play here.

I picked up Only Forward because I am presently going back and reading all the Philip K Dick award winners. For those of you who don't know, the award is given each year for the best annual sci-fi novel that did not...more I'm giving this one a good review because I thought that elements of only forward were greater than the sum of it's parts. As a collective, the novel really doesn't hold together all that well but when you examine it's finer pieces there are some really beautiful things at play here.

I picked up Only Forward because I am presently going back and reading all the Philip K Dick award winners. For those of you who don't know, the award is given each year for the best annual sci-fi novel that did not receive a hard cover publication. Dick never received a hardcover publication in his lifetime which was why the award was created. I've read some phenomenal books as a result, including one of my favorites 'Altered Carbon' by Richard K Morgan. Altered Carbon is brutal, hard-boiled, and very conventional cyberpunk and I think that when Michael Marshall Smith gave some of the readers who left bad reviews here a taste of something similar they fully expected him to run in that direction.

Instead, at almost exactly the halfway point, Only Forward slips right off the deep end. All of the conventional worlds and detail that Smith has established are eliminated and it's almost as though we start completely from scratch again. It's quite a leap of faith he makes with his readers to expect them to come along for the ride and I have to admit I found the next 75 or so pages to be a little bit of drudgery.

Eventually he started to reel me back in with characters and backstory that I found extremely compelling. Perhaps I was in just the right mood for it but the ending was a perfect pitch of sadness and satisfaction, despite the fact that (due to the unreliable narrator) Smith jammed a TON of exposition into the last 50 pages.

So I suppose I was finally able to suspend my disbelief enough to let the themes play out and just come along for the ride, though I can understand enough why some readers just couldn't. Upon reflection I found that the sci-fi aspects of the book were actually pretty conventional and cliche, almost satirically so. It's the plunge and what follows after which was really unique and satisfying.

There is a lot here that DOESN'T work though. While I found the Douglass Adams-y aspects of the writing entertaining (the bug finder made me laugh out loud), eventually they just dissapear and also it just DIDN'T fit together with the brutal and hard boiled aspects of the first half. To go from humorous jokes about the main characters shirt to women defecating on each other (an isolated element here but still) was just too much of a stretch for me. Also some of the material suffers because Smith just attempts to do too many things at once and it becomes unclear exactly WHAT he's shooting for. If the cyperpunk-ish city is meant as sci-fi than aspects of it (the cat city) need a clearer explanation for their existence than what he gives. If the incidental to what he was really trying to accomplish than (in my own limited opinion of course) he shouldn't have spent SO much time establishing it's rules.

If this all sounds vague and unclear than you have some idea of what it was like to read the second half of the novel.

Either way I found each of the individual elements of the story interesting individually even if they weren't cohesive. There were moments that I found Michael Marshall Smith actually managed capture horror in a way that you're conventional blood drenechd "horror" novels can only stab at (pun intended.) There are nightmares here that left me a little sick and uneasy as though they'd been my own. Parts of it are really funny. And some of it is really exciting. If you can get past the fact that it is inconsistent and just take the story as it evolves you may just have a good time.(less)

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About Michael Marshall Smith

Michael Marshall (Smith) is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. His first novel, ONLY FORWARD, won the August Derleth and Philip K. Dick awards. SPARES and ONE OF US were optioned for film by DreamWorks and Warner Brothers, and the Straw Men trilogy - THE STRAW MEN, THE LONELY DEAD and BLOOD OF ANGELS - were international bestsellers. His most recent novels are THE INTRUDERS, BAD THINGS and K...more

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Quotes from Only Forward

“How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all?

Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. "Plenty more fish in the sea," they'll say, or "You're better off without them," or "Do you want some of these potato chips?" They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live.

Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.” — 425 people liked it

“When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.” — 14 people liked it

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