Elvissey

Dryco

by Jack Womack

At once a biting satire and a taut, fast-paced thriller, Elvissey is the story of Isabel and John, a troubled couple who voyage from the year 2033 to a strangely altered 1954. They are on a desperate mission to kidnap the young Elvis Presley and bring him back to the present day to serve as a ready-made cult leader. He proves, however, to be a reluctant messiah, and things do not work out quite as planned.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Post Apocalyptic

319 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

"Womack's fiction may be determinedly non-cyber, but, with its commitment to using SF as a vehicle for social critique, it definitely has a punky edge. William Gibson once said that he thought he was more interested in basic economics and politics than the average blue sky SF writer. That counts double for Womack, whose fiction is packed with grimly amusing social satire and powerful little allegories exploring urban breakdown, class war and racial tensions".
--Jim McClellan (from an interview with Jack Womack, 1995).

Reviews

[Meg ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

i did forget i was reading it but that’s not a reflection on my enjoyment

[Chance Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy, this was quite a find.

Elvissey is the kind of intense high-concept sci-fi that I should read more of, but don't. It takes effort to understand the language. First line: "Ascension, I craved; my husband dreamed of descent. At our meet that set our seal." That's pretty coherent compared to some of the sentences the people of our future come up with. Womack has such an incredible way with language. After a few hours in this world, I was speaking it right along with them. The pace of my reading increased with immersion.

The future is a world where people have latched onto Elvis as their savior. Yes, that Elvis. Like any religion, there are a fair share of non-believers. Like any religion, there are more than a fair share of denominations, sects, cults, and fanatics. Elvis is a savior like any other: He is not everything you hope for. He is not what you need.

Like any religion, there are a fair share of people shrewd enough to manipulate it toward their own best interests. That's where Dryco gets on the Elvis crazy train. This company has basically taken over the world (maybe this story is told in some of Womack's other books?) and one of its employees creates a project to take Elvis Presley from a parallel world and bring him into ours. The savior reborn.

Elvis, here, is Elvis sans fame. He is stupid, horny, and has an amazing singing voice. Stripped of fame and fortune, Elvis is terrifying and sad.

Elvissey is darkly humorous, with funny references to Southern institutions like the Piggly Wiggly and Memphis's Peabody Hotel. The novel also touches upon issues of gender dynamics in marriage, and race issues. It got me wondering, what if Jesus came back? How would people react to him and his dark skin? Would they find him a fraud? How would he feel to be called an imposter?

"Does a beloved's actuality matter, while the image carries comfort enough? In such circumstance is actuality ever admitted, or even recognized? Who suffers profoundest regret, then, when truth rears ugly head: the worshiper, or the worshiped?"

[David Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book long ago, not realizing at the time that it was part of Womack's cycle of "Dryco" novels, a loosely-linked series set in a horrific semi-apocalyptic future dominated by a Wal-mart-like company called Dryco. Since then, I have read (I think) all of Womack's books, both Dryco-related and otherwise, and I still think it is his best. It doesn't have the stunning brutality of "Ambient," his debut, but the themes of dehumanization, greed, violence physical, psychological and linguistic, religious mania, and what it means to be a human when everyone around you is gleefully shedding their humanity are most successfully and subtly explored here. I've reread all of the Dryco novels recently, which is why I'm posting the review now, and as a public service to the handful of people who share my interests and who might read this. Now that I know the backstory of some of the characters and of the world of Dryco, there's a great deal more "payoff" in the book, but that's not as important as my renewed admiration for his writing. The dialect he has created for his future corporate hatchet men and women is brutal, corrupt, expedient, and somehow lyrical at the same time. I haven't been this excited and moved by someone thrashing my mother tongue since I first read "A Clockwork Orange." It mostly involves turning nouns into verbs and creating portmanteau words as follows: "Dryco believed regooding would make everything rainright again." Or, as John and Isabel prepare to leave their world behind and head into a parallel-universe 1954, "Delays unnerve," said John. "Let's lookingglass."

[fonz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Al contrario de lo que me ha ocurrido con otras novelas del ciclo (Terraplane p.ej.) Elvissey, a pesar de quizá un par de detalles en el ritmo y la innecesaria inclusión de un "malo", ha crecido muchísimo con la relectura, revelándose como una sátira rica en ideas sobre el control social (sale mal), la esencia malvada del siguiente paso en la evolución de la América Corporativa, que sigue a lo suyo pero de buen rollo, el conflicto racial, las relaciones tóxicas y la estéril fascinación masculina con la muerte y un Londres tropical convertido en su propia colonia. Me ha gustado especialmente como relaciona la teoría gnóstica valentiniana con el mundo de Dryco. Womack realiza un inteligente, sugerente y eficaz ejercicio de metaforizar en esta "herejía" no sólo la esencia del mundo de Dryco, Demiurgo malvado de un mundo donde hasta lo más banal es falso, sino el conflicto central del libro alrededor del que gira la novela, la redención entendida como actos de bondad, generosidad y entrega, que, a pesar del sufrimiento, pueden generar la esperanza de un futuro para el mundo.

[The Boogerhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Womack is our lord and savior. All Hail Jack.

The Dryco Chronicles will teach us how to adapt to what the future has in store for all of us working poor.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Peter's Adventures in "Similar to Philip K. Dick, I recommend" part 2: "Elvissey" by Jack Womack.

This was recommended to me as being similar to Philip K. Dick in relation to strange worlds and unreal settings.
I really wanted this book to be good, but it's just not.

I found the story tedious and so slow as to be painful.
The future language is atrocious. I get that language changes over time, but they also don't speak in ye highe mædyeval in fantasy books, so it felt definitely unnecessary. Also it felt unrealistic - why would "please" become "por fav"? How would "without" be entirely replaced by "sans"?
It came off as incredibly annoying, even when I'd gotten used to it.

The main characters are irrational and, dare I say, somewhat irritating. I understood very, very little of John.
For special agents they sure seem completely amateur.

Also, I don't know much about Elvis, but I don't get why Elvis is some stupid sadist who's super into murder and pain. I read he had a temper, but where does this characterisation come from? Anyone know?

My biggest gripe of all with this book though: It's barely about Elvis, at all. There's a lot of uninteresting and irrelevant stuff going on, completely irrelevant to the Elvis story. I don't care that the main character's husband is depressed and reads a book called Knifelife - I wanna know about Elvis! The book is called ELVISsey after all.
It promises a tale of multiverses and a godlike Elvis, but at 70% in, we've barely actually met him and from then on, he doesn't flesh out at all.
The book spends more time concerning itself with the main character's sudden pregnancy and smalltalk than it does with the title character.

What a disappointment and waste of a brilliant idea 😔

[Jim Leckband · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Call me Isabel" could have been the first line of this novel (and, to be fair, I think it is used later on.) An innocent young'un signs on with a psycho leader to bring in a great white whale (Elvis). Sound familiar?

Almost needless to say, there is more fun in "Elvissey" than in Moby-Dick - not only because a time-traveling, alternate history bizarro-Elvis is more photogenic than a pasty cetacean. Womack's language is also incredible - almost as good as he was in Ambient. The futurespeak of the Dryco world of circa 2050 (a wild guess) is efficient but poetic. Known and essentialled by its users, it cattounges words beautifully.

The plot mirrors "Moby-Dick" as described, but it also has elements of A Clockwork Orange (violent people are "regooded"), Shakespeare (the ending comes from "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet") and any number of fish out of water tales. The notion that a sizable cult revolves around Elvis the King giggles me.

[Nicholas Barone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elvissey is the 4th novel in Jack Womack's Ambient setting. It was a co-winner of the 1994 Phillip K Dick award. The story in Elvissey draws from elements set up in the first 3 novels. Our main character - Isabel - and her husband have been selected by Dryco to cross over to the alternate world (introduced in Terraplane) in order to bring that world's Elvis Presley back. The story is intriguing, and Womack's writing is excellent. After being absent in Heathern, the future dialect that Womack has created is back in this book, and that is a plus. In the minus column, Elvis turns out to be a whiny loser in the other world, and its hard to sympathize with him despite the ordeal he undergoes. Overall I enjoyed Terraplane more, but Elvissey is a very good read.

[melvinhiddenelder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bring back Elvis to the future! Only problem, this Elvis ain't the right Elvis.

[Byron 'Giggsy' Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

potentially great, and not bad, but the reason Womack wrote this and the publisher published it was completely lost on me

[Cas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I left this damned book 11 pages from the end because I had had enough. The writer got lost in his baroque-fantasy style.

[Printable Tire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by this book at a Savers but realized I already had a book by this author and they had a copy at the library, then I took the copy out of the library and couldn't get past the jarring full-frontal dense style, which seemed tedious, distracting and unnecessary for a book with already such an interesting premise. But I came back to this book, a few months later, when I was feeling more patient. I'm still not 100% into the future-speak being needed, although it leads to some great turns of phrases (or as this book would probably say, "phrases turned").

There are parts of this book I absolutely loved- namely, the middle parts, when the couple actually get to the alternate reality world (it's even grimmer now reading about awful alternate realities when it already feels like we live in one) and go on a road trip with psycho JD Elvis Presley. Womack could've cut to the chase getting there, and the last part of this book gets all needless wacky world-building and the whole Elvis plot thing just sort of fizzles out. This book is part of a loose series but really should just be a standalone, and let it stand alone on its own volition without trying to shoehorn in a whole world. The whole thing reminds me sometimes of a mix of Judge Dredd, Grant Morrison, and a disturbing Devo music video, but Womack is really his own thing.

So I was gonna give this book 3 stars. But it really was written with some ingenuity, and even though I was disappointed by the end chapters I really had absolutely no idea where this book was heading and it was constantly a surprise, so that deserves some credit. And Womack writes some crackin' prose and really tried to do a lot of interesting things (albeit many to showoff) and he never really appears tongue-and-cheek but takes it all in earnest, and if not everything he tries is all successful, it's okay if you're only in it for the ride.

"Mug us with joe," John said, starling me as he appeared to startle the waitress; I hadn't thought he'd soaked a single phrase during our training.
"Coupla cups a coffee, you mean?" our waitress asked.
"That's right," I said. "Unmilked. I mean black. I'm lactose-intolerant."
"Egg me," my husband added. "Deyolked and mashed."
"You mean scrambled?" the waitress annotated her pad, forbidding confusion from affecting her smile.
"It matters that yours are the whitest eggs on the Eastern Seaboard?" John asked.

When one kills another, two die. Never forget this.
Even when no blood is shed some inevitably spills.
The drops collect around you over years; each action
deepens the pool. Once the bottom is lost, the surface
is unreachable. Accept your drowning time.


Also learned from this about this utterly bizarre Elvis record.

[CHILTONM]

DNF. I do want to come back to this, the premise is fantastic, but I struggled with the writing -- it's almost like reading a clockwork orange in that the grammar and vocabulary of the characters is significantly different from our own, which is a great way to signify the passage of time/near future but also makes my teeny tiny brain hurt. Think I'll try it again when I'm on a vacation or something & have more uninterrupted reading time.

[Brendan]

Rating: 3 1/2

Definitely a victim of the pandemic and its effect on my reading habits.

I liked the MC, but there wasn't a strong #2 among the supporting characters. The plot had enough turns to keep me interested.

Nothing's twisted so easily as reality so long as you've reason to bend it.

Something you'll always get in England is good food.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything's changing. Always. All the time. What was Elvis? What did he start out as? What did he become? Throw in time travel, and an alternate universe, timespace culture shock, the American South, England. Language mutations. Can you create a messiah or do they just happen? Can a marriage survive it all? What's a corporation to do? What happened to Elvis? Did Trump take his place?

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

B-.

[Siv · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fabulous dystopian satire on cults

[Cyndi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really hope the next read aloud book we choose is more interesting and uplifting.

[Danny S · Rating 3 out of 5]

If nattō was a novel, it would be Elvissey.

[Sean Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t recommend enough

[Gill Ekins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who the fuck hurt you jack

[Forvalka · Rating 4 out of 5]

What should from the concept (secret agents from a dystopian future attempt to kidnap Elvis from a parallel world) be a goofy romp is in a fact a very dark, even tragic novel in which the collapse of two worlds and one relationship follow eachother down to darker and darker places. Brilliantly written, but be prepared to be depressed.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember watching Pulp Fiction for the first time? This is a similar experience, but without the whimsey. Womack takes on that symbol of 80s and 90s era quackery and 90s try-too-hard quirkery and makes him meaningful again in a future suffering from the full blown consequences of disengagement. The only one left to sneer in this book is Elvis, and it's entirely involuntary.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply moving story of a broken world and broken people in search of redemption, and ultimately being unable to find it. Perhaps my favorite in the series — Womack's world building is seductive. The language was a bit easier to follow than Terraplane.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book, and I probably won't read it again. It was disturbing. Good book, but still... disturbing.

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not usually a quitter, but I've tried making it through this one twice and have lost interest both times. Love the premise, but it's not exactly a crackling, fast-paced read.

[Arturo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cómo me reí. Fue un gran viaje.