The Brooklyn Rail

James W. Fuerst’s new speculative fiction and noir novel Distress Cries of Animals is not a novel for everyone. That is actually quite a compliment in these tepid mainstream days. The opening lines will give you a clue why:

The new DriTech zip-up jumpsuit with stitched-in footie boots, retractable hoodie collar, and wifi holosleeves s’like total porn. Been binge-gearin it since it droned to the pod four days ago, but I can still barely foreals it. Black cling-fit synthfab, 100% wetproof and simulcrisp, but also breathies so you don’t sweat till you corpse?

Language cracks and sizzles like a defective screen, but after a short while the reader eases in and settles down for the cyber-fueled ride, following Laz, the main character and narrator, into a labyrinth of rage, violence and pain. In many ways, the new creole Laz and his cronies speak is the story itself, repeating the long tradition of slang appearing in the social interstices of mega-cities. Slang is not slang for those who speak it, it is their usual form of communication. And yet it defines a cultural background, a social origin, even the color of a skin. Laz’s Spanglish pidgin redux is more than his “voz,” it is the totality of his being, the world he comes from, the world he lives in, and the world he confronts—the world of those speaking “immaculate” English. There are, of course, reminiscences of William Gibson in the techspeak, but also of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange—an open reference, as his “droogs” make a short cameo, with their distinctive bowler hats.

Like all speculative fiction and noir novels, Distress Cries of Animals has a specific setting, which is New York at an undisclosed date in the future, submerged because of climate change. It is divided into a lower part, which is close to the water and poor, and an upper-part, where the 1 percent have settled. To travel between districts, you have to use naval transportation, just like in Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’s 1970 “Valérian and Laureline” comics The City of Shifting Waters. The verticality and horizontality of the city becomes a symbol of the capitalist social construction: the poor and the working class at the bottom, the ruling class at the top, with almost no interaction between the two, except for exploitation and oppression. The strength of Fuerst’s narration is that this situation doesn’t feel exaggerated at all but, on the contrary, absolutely plausible, and even logical given the circumstances. Laz accepts his living conditions, because there is, literally, no alternative. And when a mafia boss offers him a deal, he accepts it is his only chance to become part of the 1 percet, who are cyber-augmented humans. Technology is everywhere, even in the lower levels of the city, and is used for different purposes: entertainment, enhancement, and control. Everybody’s connected, all the time, and yet alienation rules. Visors project emojis, relationships are filtered through social media and pain is something that needs to be commercialized and entertaining—Laz was a famous player in the “pain” business before a tragedy ruined his life.

Tragedy indeed dominates in Distress Cries of Animals, whether in the big capitalist picture, or at individual level; one of the major strengths of the novel is to convey this without the usual pathos. Human feelings are played against the fake surface of social media and hi-tech enhancements, and mortality finds its true weight, tearing through the holographic textures. Laz’s quest is motivated by love and empathy, notions absolutely alien to the ruling class that manipulates him in order to preserve their secret agenda. The strange mission that he accepts—he has to find the origin of a shipment of tiny baby arms which could be designed for illegal androids—is in fact a quest not dissimilar to the errand knights in Arthurian mythology: he does it to save a damsel in distress and attain the (cyber) grail. And the violence he will meet will also be of mythological proportion.

Playing with a multitude of genres and references, Fuerst manages a true tour de force in Distress Cries of Animals, which is, very much like Philip K. Dick, to put the human back in the center of the narrative, instead of the “magical machines of science.” In these times of absurd techno-faith and totalitarian data use, Distress Cries of Animals stand out like a monumental memorial object dedicated to empathy, solidarity and love. Yes, love. Without emojis or the heart-shaped hand gesture.