Mindplayers

Alexandra Victoria Haas puts on a madcap, a device that provides a good half hour or so of psychosis, only to find that it is a flawed prototype. Jerry Wireammer, her bad news friend that offers her the defective goods, drops her off at a dry cleaners. When she comes to, her mind wiped, she is under arrest for using illegal devices. But the Brain Police, a branch of the civil service as threatening as their name, take an interest in Alexandra Victoria, or Allie as she is called. It seems she lives a very mental life, storing information in parts of her brain most people use for only the trivia of everyday life. She is offered an option. Prison for using the illegal madcap or training to be a professional Miindplayer at J. Walter Tech, the best school of its kind. Next chapter, Deadpan Allie, as she is now known, is off to J. Walter Tech. (Yes, there are shades of Harry Potter here.)

In the 26th century Mindplay seems to have taken the place of all forms of psychotherapy and many entertainment outlets. Citizens visit Neurosis and Fetish Peddlers; work with lucid dreamers; or, hire Thrillseekers to find what is missing in their lives. This is not always as sensational as it sounds. One woman's thrill proves to be walking a particular kind of dog in the park when the weather is just right. Allie becomes a Pathos Finder, the most difficult path of all to follow. Pathos Finders are used mostly by artists who need to get in touch with real feelings. No actor would consider taking on a role without a pathos finder. Artists and musicians who have lost their way hire Pathos Finders to rediscover that creative core that allows them to excel in their fields.

This is a very cerebral book. No nefarious plots are uncovered, and the fate of the earth never hangs in the balance. Readers spend a lot of time inside peoples' minds. The descriptions are good, very trippy (the book was written in 1987), and the insides of peoples' minds turn our to be distinguished by abrupt changes of location, potentially threatening presences, or at times some very nice folk. Cadigan does a good job of describing this interior world, but 20 some years later we have seen it all at the movies -- starting with The Cell 2000, and twice in 2009 with Terry Gilliam's Dr. Parnassus and Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones.. For that matter you could go back to Un chien andalou (1929). But this is not to take away from Cadigan's accomplishments, because she by no means just piling on effects. Each Mindplay activity has a specific goal and entails its own dangers and its own revelations.

What Cadigan has not done, in this her first novel, is structure her story to bring any level of suspense to bear or even to provide clear through lines for just what Allie is learning all this time. The episodic structure probably results from this being, for the most part, an elaborately stitched together series of previously published short stories. Allie is engaging, and her friend Jerry Wireammer is a charming but ill-fated fuck-up. Other characters are little more than props.

I am looking forward to other Pat Cadigan novels to see where she goes with these ideas.