She Treads Softly: Amorphous Breaking the Mold

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Amorphous Breaking the Mold

Amorphous Breaking the Mold by Steven Burgess
1/1/24; 338 pages
sbgbooks.com

Amorphous Breaking the Mold by Steven Burgess is a recommended quirky, unique science fiction novel told through the dialogue of the characters. The group of characters are a diverse mix - all of them with distinct personalities. It all starts when an object from outer space crashes into a restaurant at a golf course and releases a pulsating yell ooze.

The plot, such as it is, all unfolds through the dialogue of the characters who all display unique personalities and can be entertaining, humorous and absurd. They are also caricatures of a type of person rather than fully realized individuals. There are some informative chapters about slime mold before the slime mold hits.

This novel perplexes me. I think I would actually enjoy it as written more as a performance piece. If the description pointed this out ahead of time I wouldn't have been expecting the science fiction novel I expected to be encountering. With all the dialogue and interaction between characters, I think it could work as a TV show or film. As a science fiction novel it failed for me. The alien doesn't arrive until later in the novel. If I'm reading sci-fi I want the alien encounter front and center, and a lot of real action accompanying some hard facts directly in the story.

Thanks to sbgbooks for providing me with an advance reader's copy via LibraryThing. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.