The Beasts of Electra Drive
Product ID: 478349910
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From Hollywood Hills mansions and Century City towers, to South Central motels and the oceanside refinery, The Beasts of Electra Drive by Rohan Quine spans a mythic L.A., following seven spectacular characters (or Beasts) from games designer Jaymi's game-worlds. The intensity of those Beasts' creation cycles leads to their release into real life in seemingly human forms, and to their combative protection of him from destructive rivals at mainstream company Bang Dead Games. Grand spaces of beauty interlock with narrow rooms of terror, both in the real world and in cyberspace. A prequel to Quine’s other five tales (and Winner in the NYC Big Book Award 2021, and a Finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards 2018), this is a unique explosion of glamour and beauty, horror and enchantment, exploring the mechanisms and magic of creativity itself. Jaymi is an independent games designer living on Electra Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Opposed to him are his former colleagues at Bang Dead Games. Their mounting competitiveness regarding his own extravagant game-creation reaches a point where they attack him physically with a drone. Bang Dead is preparing the global release of a game called Ain'tTheyFreaky! , centring on five tabloid-flavoured social-media "Newsfeeds" for the victimisation of certain people by others – the "Gal Score", "Guy Score", "Trivia Score", "Arts Score" and "Cosy Score". Jaymi decides to fight back, for self-protection and to counteract this game's destructive effects. He takes an irrevocable step: after creating Amber, the most dangerous of the characters (or Beasts, as he calls them) who will populate Jaymi's project The Platinum Raven , he releases Amber from that game, such that Amber slithers out of Jaymi's computer monitor. Appearing human, this now-incarnated Beast is sent to stalk Ain'tTheyFreaky! 's creators in real life. While Amber terrorises them, Jaymi creates a second Beast, Evelyn, from his project The Imagination Thief . Incarnated too, she joins Amber in sabotaging a Bang Dead venture in the physical world. As Jaymi's output spawns three more titles, he jumps into the creation cycles and incarnations of five more human-seeming Beasts. Targeted by a more lethal drone attack, he decides his Beasts' missions must escalate: they will infiltrate the very substance of Ain'tTheyFreaky! . So Evelyn, Shigem and Kim sneak into one of the game's visual environments, where they try to put an end to some of its casually-programmed cruelty. Shigem and Kim shame two Bang Dead employees into secretly working for Jaymi instead. Five Beasts proceed to sabotage Ain'tTheyFreaky! at a deeper level still, turning its own server farm into a radically different environment. Their sabotage breaks the game down into its constituent glyphs and pixels – then electrifies these, recombining them into brand-new forms of such enchanted love and wickedness and originality that they'd certainly have been forbidden by Bang Dead. Amid the resultant conflict, a Beast is sent to kill a human; a Beast is arrested, before escaping and wreaking revenge; and another human is lashed to the transmitter tower above the Hollywood Sign, where... After the ensuing convulsions of destruction and violent creation, Jaymi's Beasts slip away to their appointed onscreen destinations, one by one; and he is left alone again, as he was before he brought them into being. As he fires up his newly-completed game The Imagination Thief , however, it is clear that neither he nor the world around him will ever quite be as before. literary fiction, litfic, magical realism, horror, dark fantasy, cyberpunk, contemporary, scifi, gay, transgender, LGBT, visionary, imagination, imagery, spectacular, Los Angeles, L.A., Hollywood Hills, Mount Lee, game designer, video game, creation, incarnation, mansion, motel, refinery, tabloid Review: Technologically intelligent, socially clever, and supernaturally chilling - a trippy sci-fi tale - The Beasts of Electra Drive is technologically intelligent, socially clever, and supernaturally chilling - a trippy sci-fi tale from Rohan Quine. To start, let me talk a bit about that first part, the technology. This is a book that is heavily invested in the creation of technology, the programming of games and apps, and the design of the characters who populate them. There is a strong artistic element woven into this act of creation, allowing us to see how and why Jaymi creates each of his Beasts, giving them purpose and personality as well as form. Hacking is a big part of the story, both in terms of infiltrating code and in cyberspace interactions between Jaymi's beasts and his adversaries' avatars. That technological element leads, naturally, to the social one. Ain'tTheyFreaky! is the application that promises to put Bang Dead Games on the map, and the one that drives Jaymi to abandon ship and start the creation of his Beasts. It is a despicable piece of programming that, all-too-sadly, would probably do very well in today's world. It takes the worst aspects of social media - bullying, shaming, slandering, etc. - and makes them the whole point. The more you bring others down, the higher you rise, and the more shocking your social attacks, the more points you earn. The worst part of the game is that it is not aimed at other players, or even at celebrities - exposing neighbors, friends, family, and random strangers will bring you the most points. As for the supernatural aspect, this is a book that would have been entirely serviceable with just the hacking and virtual reality interfaces, but what makes it really compelling is the ability for Jaymi's Beasts to step out into meat-space (I love that term) and take on corporeal form. These characters grow, learn, and even challenge their programming - they are somewhat childish in their willful independence, to the point of being sociopaths, although they demonstrate real emotion. There is some wonderful genderfluidity to some of the Beasts, with Shigem never feeling "quite like a boy, being half a gender to the left" and Scorpio whose "nature flowers with so transgender a beauty," as well as a gay love affair between two Beasts who were created for one another. Lest you forget that this is a revenge fantasy, however, Amber is modeled after Rutger Hauer's character in The Hitcher, while Scorpio's defining moment is the fantasy of dominating an entire prison as the most dangerous boy in a skirt. In terms of the overall narrative, I found The Beasts of Electra Drive a little repetitive in parts, but I strongly suspect those patterns and passages were deliberate on Quine's part, coding the story as much as writing it. What really impressed me, however, is the flair for language, with some really beautiful - and beautifully chilling - passages that had me dog-earing pages along the way. Personally, I found the social commentary and the digital sparring with colleagues far more interesting than the real-world gore that drives the climax, but I love the uncertainty or unreliability of Jaymi as a narrator, and the open-ended question as to whether the end justifies the means. Review: A unique mergence and convergence of sci-fi, magical realism, and postmodernism - In The Beasts of Electra Drive, Rohan Quine merges the techno-psychological with the interior. The Beasts of Electra Drive follows the character Jaymi, a constant recurring character in Quine's books, perhaps a cypher for Quine himself. The novel attempts to speak to cyber-creation and the repercussions of our technology addicted times. Quine's writing is melodic and well-attuned to the rhythm of his characters. I'd recommend his work to anyone interested in an even more postmodern version of Philip K Dick, with a more neo-feminist cybernetic vision.
| Best Sellers Rank | #5,544 in LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction (Books) #14,638 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Books) #23,997 in Magical Realism |
| Customer Reviews | 4.0 out of 5 stars 2 Reviews |
B**S
Technologically intelligent, socially clever, and supernaturally chilling - a trippy sci-fi tale
The Beasts of Electra Drive is technologically intelligent, socially clever, and supernaturally chilling - a trippy sci-fi tale from Rohan Quine. To start, let me talk a bit about that first part, the technology. This is a book that is heavily invested in the creation of technology, the programming of games and apps, and the design of the characters who populate them. There is a strong artistic element woven into this act of creation, allowing us to see how and why Jaymi creates each of his Beasts, giving them purpose and personality as well as form. Hacking is a big part of the story, both in terms of infiltrating code and in cyberspace interactions between Jaymi's beasts and his adversaries' avatars. That technological element leads, naturally, to the social one. Ain'tTheyFreaky! is the application that promises to put Bang Dead Games on the map, and the one that drives Jaymi to abandon ship and start the creation of his Beasts. It is a despicable piece of programming that, all-too-sadly, would probably do very well in today's world. It takes the worst aspects of social media - bullying, shaming, slandering, etc. - and makes them the whole point. The more you bring others down, the higher you rise, and the more shocking your social attacks, the more points you earn. The worst part of the game is that it is not aimed at other players, or even at celebrities - exposing neighbors, friends, family, and random strangers will bring you the most points. As for the supernatural aspect, this is a book that would have been entirely serviceable with just the hacking and virtual reality interfaces, but what makes it really compelling is the ability for Jaymi's Beasts to step out into meat-space (I love that term) and take on corporeal form. These characters grow, learn, and even challenge their programming - they are somewhat childish in their willful independence, to the point of being sociopaths, although they demonstrate real emotion. There is some wonderful genderfluidity to some of the Beasts, with Shigem never feeling "quite like a boy, being half a gender to the left" and Scorpio whose "nature flowers with so transgender a beauty," as well as a gay love affair between two Beasts who were created for one another. Lest you forget that this is a revenge fantasy, however, Amber is modeled after Rutger Hauer's character in The Hitcher, while Scorpio's defining moment is the fantasy of dominating an entire prison as the most dangerous boy in a skirt. In terms of the overall narrative, I found The Beasts of Electra Drive a little repetitive in parts, but I strongly suspect those patterns and passages were deliberate on Quine's part, coding the story as much as writing it. What really impressed me, however, is the flair for language, with some really beautiful - and beautifully chilling - passages that had me dog-earing pages along the way. Personally, I found the social commentary and the digital sparring with colleagues far more interesting than the real-world gore that drives the climax, but I love the uncertainty or unreliability of Jaymi as a narrator, and the open-ended question as to whether the end justifies the means.
K**.
A unique mergence and convergence of sci-fi, magical realism, and postmodernism
In The Beasts of Electra Drive, Rohan Quine merges the techno-psychological with the interior. The Beasts of Electra Drive follows the character Jaymi, a constant recurring character in Quine's books, perhaps a cypher for Quine himself. The novel attempts to speak to cyber-creation and the repercussions of our technology addicted times. Quine's writing is melodic and well-attuned to the rhythm of his characters. I'd recommend his work to anyone interested in an even more postmodern version of Philip K Dick, with a more neo-feminist cybernetic vision.
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