The new Beerlight novel features the hunt for a missing brain, a plot that only a writer as benevolently unhinged as Steve Aylett could turn into an entertainment. Beerlight is nightmare city of the future (albeit a future that may be only a week away) where violence is the new art form and artists are the only people with regular jobs. In a cartoon landscape, larger-than-life characters act out plots that would be rejected by Hollywood for being too over the top, yet which still carry a serious message about violence in society. This is satire at its most vicious and most pure. Jonathan Swift would understand Beerlight.

The new Beerlight novel features the hunt for a missing brain, a plot that only a writer as benevolently unhinged as Steve Aylett could turn into an entertainment. Beerlight is nightmare city of the future (albeit a future that may be only a week away) where violence is the new art form and artists are the only people with regular jobs. In a cartoon landscape, larger-than-life characters act out plots that would be rejected by Hollywood for being too over the top, yet which still carry a serious message about violence in society. This is satire at its most vicious and most pure. Jonathan Swift would understand Beerlight.

If Steve Aylett were any more English he'd be dead. His first novel for Phoenix House, SLAUGHTERMATIC, won rave reviews everywhere from the Edge magazine to the New York Times. He is 32 and lives in Brighton.

2005-02-21 Abysmal

What happens when sci-fi goes wrong - Atom attempts to mask its dearth of ideas, narrative and characterisation behind tiresome fabricated, pseudo-cool language and high concept, low-brow gimmickery. Wants to fall somewhere between Phillip K. Dick and Pratchett, instead is excreted as badly written, smug pretentiousness unconvincingly feigning intelligence. The concept - sci-fi pulp-noir - could well have worked, but in execution it's a complacent failure.