Every so often a writer of literary fiction manages to transcend the genre, and create something that you can truly call science fiction. Mamatas has clearly done that with Sensation. O.K., kids, see how ridiculous that sounds? So lets stop with the whole "literature vs. science fiction" nonsense, shall we? Yes, Mamatas pulls a lot from the literary genre for this book, or alternately Mamatas has written a literary novel with science fiction trappings. It doesn't matter. It's not a war. Using th...

...even in these latter days of the law, where tyranny and sadism seem to have filled to overflowing the scales of blind justice, there ain’t no criminal statutes about being tedious.As I read this little quip, I couldn't help but think that Mamatas is lucky that it's true that he can't be arrested for being tedious. I suppose Sensation is readable. I think that it might have even gotten closer to rounding up to 3 stars if it had been edited more carefully. Each time I had to reread a sentence d...

It's possible that I could write one review of Nick Mamatas's work and leave it at that: it's startling, weird, and uncomfortable--not for everyone; and it tends to investigate some fracture or failure in society; often with the motif of multiple worlds or a multiverse.(I am so looking forward to his I Am Providence: A Novel, in which that society is early 20th-century writer/nerd-con.)In this case, Mamatas starts with something almost reminiscent of Fritz Leiber's The Big Time, except whereas L...

Tiresome and smug. Wouldn't have finished it but I didn't have anything else to read while I was on jury duty.

Interesting conceit - and not so far-fetched considering the recent news about linkages between toxoplasmosis and various neuro problems - but although entertaining, could have been written with more attention to developing the main character, Hernandez. However, I loved the sly observations on hipster life, and the sense of events occurring on multiple levels - virtually, in real life, as well as how the characters interpret what is going on. The reader will want to finish reading this book so

Seinfeld meets P K Dick?The writing is witty and every bit as hip as the privileged bobos it skewers. So I guess if the reader gets most of the references and catches all the winks then they are indicted along with the cast of the book. Also, smart alternative presses are not helping themselves by using spellcheck instead of human proofreaders. This book is full of unfortunate substitutions like "lip" for "limp" that jar the reader out of the flow.

The thing about Mamatas...you can't ever say he's done it again, no matter how many great books or short stories or essays he pens, because in doing so you'd run the risk of implying that he's repeating himself, which he isn't. No, what makes him such a vital voice in modern fiction is that he veers so wildly from project to project that you can't really predict his trajectory, but you're always sure he'll land somewhere interesting. He can be a smartass, but like the best of the weisenheimers t...

[This is an old review I'm just now adding to Goodreads.]It all starts with a wasps' nest in Raymond's mother's basement. The wasps are Hymenoepimescis sp., which usually reproduces by attacking the Plesiometa argyra spider and laying its eggs within the spider's abdomen. As the larvae feed off the spider, they change its behavior, compelling it to create a web that can allow them to finish their development. When the spider is done with its work, the larvae kill it. (The spider and wasp species...

from author/publisherRead 7/30/11 - 8/6/113.5 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers familiar with genrePgs:198Publisher: PM PressSensation by Nick Mamatas is a first for me in many ways. It's my first encounter with this publishing company, who publish political, edgy fiction and non-fiction. It's my first experience reading the author, who has two previous novels under his belt. AND - probably most importantly - it's the first time I've ever willingly read a novel whose story line revolved ar...

Great, another lost review. I truly enjoyed the way Mamatas told this tale through (no spoilers) a collective consciousness, allowing a unique perspective on this story. Finally, a tale with an activist bent that plays with and subverts the trappings of these various movements. I feel like maybe the ending should have had a bit more punch to it, considering the scale of the revelations, but I truly love how his characters were undeniably human and flawed. I greatly look forward to reading more o...

You know that moment in the midst of a book when you blink, take a mental step back, and think, “What in the hell am I reading?” This happened quite early on in ‘Sensation’ and the feeling persisted. I picked it off the shelf in the library and was attracted by the concept of a civil war between ‘anarchist wasps’ and ‘a collective of hyper-intelligent spiders’. I was expecting some Grant Morrison or Steve Aylett-type weirdness and hoping the whole thing would be told from spider and wasp points

There's a certain flavor of delight I feel when reading fiction that is smart, witty, cynical, and of-the-moment. The stuff that makes me laugh while being discomfited. Few works conjure this feeling for me -- books like Snow Crash, The Picture of Dorian Gray, parts of The Satanic Verses or Foucault's Pendulum. There's the fun of being in on a joke that not everyone will get. There's the pride of feeling like the author recognizes you're smart enough to get it (or sometimes the aspiration to lea...

Three and a half stars."Culture and society, all of modernity is apparently an epiphenomenon of the occasional wasp who stings a person instead of a spider, in the right circumstances."Nick Mamatas uses humor and absurdity to explore the futile flailings of human beings in the accretion of cultural practices and social movements, his characters' actions and musings suggest a simultaneous powerlessness and agency in romantic relationships, anarchist political movements and the economic shifts of

It's really just silly. And it rambles. The latter is more irritating than the former.

I have been told that insulting Brian Keene and Nick Mamatas would lead to fame and fortune as an indie writer, and I read some of Brian Keene's work and was crushed to discover that I have little to insult him over. I mean, I could, but that would be all petty, and we know I'm NEVER petty, right?But here, despite my being retired and hopelessly unmarketable, HERE is my ticket to fame and fortune as a writer! For in this very fine month, I have finally picked up a Mamatas title, Sensation, and I...

This is a fantastic, smart, engaging book, with polished writing. It's also a complex story, involving shifting relationships and loyalties, and two additional sentient (insect) species in a long-term struggle for survival, with humans as part of their battlefield. The use of a first person plural ("we") narrator throughout the book (though with much of the work reading like third person narration) adds another dimension, and a degree of uncertainty. There are areas of ambiguity and uncertainty

A true pleasure to work on, though it arrived with plenty of polish. A biting satire set on firm entomological foundations, this is hilarious, action-packed and also thoughtful. By that I mean you can be inspired to think deep things while you read it, or not. Just as you wish. The politics are twisted, the text is playful, and the characters are people you are as close to recognising as you can get given the story is told by spiders. Nothing is sacred and the world itself hangs in the balance.

Political satire in which humans are tools in the war between parasitic wasps and spiders. And internet culture becomes a prank revolt.

The history of humanity and it's culture are being directed by the war between two species, one of spiders and the other of wasps, the first sentients, the second not. Once you set that idea on a book, there are mainly two directions in which the story can go, one is the more typical "humanity is being controlled by external forces, let's do something about it" direction, the other is the one Mamatas chose and also the one which could ostracize a great deal of readers. The book is so well writte...

Bit better than three stars, this is the second Mamatas book I`ve read and I thought it was going to be a 5 star book until about halfway through. There`s a lot of really great stuff in here, from the premise of human history being a sideshow to a slow conflict between arachnid intelligences and parasitic wasps, to the humor of late capitalism, to the breakneck pace of everything. The language and structure gets a little too experimental for me, but if you dig that sort of thing you`ll probably