The Flies of Memory - Hardcover

Watson, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0881847828 ISBN 13: 9780881847826

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1991

Synopsis

When aliens begin transporting areas of Earth--Rome's St. Peter's, New Orleans' French Quarter--to different points in the universe, Charles Spark travels to Mars in an attempt to understand their actions

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Episodic alien-visitation yarn, the expansion of a 1988 short story, from the talented, erratic British author of God's World, Chekhov's Journey, Whores of Babylon, etc. When insect-like alien ``Flies'' descend upon Earth, claiming to have come in order to ``remember'' the planet, body-language expert Charles Spark is brought in to decipher the alien's purposes. The Flies study Rome intently and in turn are studied by nuns, secret agents, psychics, and Charles. Turns out that the Flies discharge their memories into hormone-jelly-filled tanks, where the memories are impressed upon the universal information- field and thus are preserved forever. But then, as the Flies depart, the city of Munich vanishes, only to turn up on Mars, where some survivors take refuge inside a submarine in a museum. A huge international expedition brings the protagonists to Mars; during the voyage, experiments with the hormone jelly evokes a godlike entity that snatches up the experimenters, all women, and conveys them to the Flies' home planet; here, they must come to terms with being immortal though trapped inside the Flies' memory store. A triumph of style, what with the novel's five parts each told from a different point of view, and plenty of stimulating and intriguing ideas; but also dense, hard to follow in places, and fragmented. Impressive, then, but far from easy and not entirely rewarding. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Watson's ( Stalin's Teardrops ) latest novel is a quirky, thoughtful exploration of memory, history and the nature of individual identity, all couched in a playful, fast-moving story full of well-drawn characters. When the alien Flies arrive and announce their cryptic intent to "remember" the planet, a team assembles to try to communicate with the aliens and, if possible, learn the secret of their stardrive. Psychologist Charles Spark psychic Olivia Mendelssohn and nun Sister Kathinka study the Flies as they tour Rome, apparently committing every detail of the city to memory. But then a Fly is killed by a hostile mob and the dome of St. Peter's vanishes simultaneously--it seems that when a Fly "remembers" a place, the site's very existence relies on the Fly's memory. When, after other "forgetting" accidents, a lost part of Munich appears on Mars, the world mounts a hasty expedition to investigate as Charles and the others persevere. Watson does a superb job of holding his material together, while offering intelligent comments about the power and burden of memory and history. Although he sometimes falls back on unvarnished exposition to develop his points and although his use of surreal elements becomes heavy-handed toward the end, this is surely one of the more ambitious and rewarding science fiction novels of the year.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0881847828
• ISBN 13: 9780881847826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220