Gun, with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem

I’ve mentioned here a few times that Jonathan Lethem is one of my favorite authors (most recently when describing The Disappointment Artist.) As I was looking around for books to take on vacation that were fun to read, I had an urge to read some old, more traditional science fiction, and this qualifies pretty well.

Gun is Lethem’s first novel, and most everyone describes it as an interesting mix of influences between Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick — and that’s accurate enough. This is a sci-fi noir book in the best sense — every sentence practically oozes cool. Here’s the first sentence: “It was there when I woke up, I swear. The feeling.” Classic.

Anyway, one of my favorite books in this genre, and the only one featuring kangaroos that carry guns and can talk.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2005 at 10:21 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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