Sewer, Gas & Electric
Matt Ruff
560 pages
published in 1997

Imagine if you will, a mid-nineties update of the Illuminantus Trilogy in which the hippie-free-sex-and-drugs crap is taken out and replaced with cyberpunk-sex-drugs-and-ayn-rand, add in a mix of Clinto-era political obsessions (p.cness and all that) and you begin to get a little hint of what Sewer, Gas & Electric is about. It's a gonzo science fiction novel written by someone you suspect isn't in the least bit gonzo. It's partially a parody, partially serious, but not hitting you over the head with how funny, serious or absurd it is supposed to be. It's a big novel, as it should be, but you can read it in an afternoon or two.

If I'm not mistaken Sewer, Gas & Electric was one of the first ever books I ordered from Amazon, after Matt Ruff had turned up in rec.arts.sf.written and shown himself to be a decent bloke and interesting poster, with several others recommending his books. I read it for the first time sometine in 1998, liked it quite a lot, then forgot about it until I was once again in the mood to read something gonzo-ish and the Illuminantus Trilogy didn't appeal.

The year is 2023 and looking much like a retro-nostalgic thirties view of the future: mile high Empire State Building style skyscrapers, superfast long distance trains and humanoid robotic servants called electric negros (real Black people all having died out in the Pandemic). Much of the look and feel of the world is due to Harry Gant, megalomanic genius-billionaire, currently busy building a new Tower of Babel in New York. The world itself not haven gotten much better between now and then; not just the death of all Black people, also the wars that grew out of that and general environmental degradation.

While Harry Gant is trying to remake the world in his image, Philo Dufrense, captain of the good submarine Yabba-Dabba-Doo was trying to remake it in his, or at least stop some of the damage Gant and his kind did to it. The same goes for Joan Fine, Gant's ex-wife and currently a proud employee of the Department of Sewers, in the course of her job making her acquintance with Meisterbrau, an "alternative-environment-adapted Carcharodon carcharias"...

All three, and others, including Kite Edmonds, a 181 year old veteran of the US Civil War, get involved with a conspiracy when one of Gant's Electric Negros kills a competitor. The conspiracy is of course a major reason why the world of 2023 looks the way it does and all is explained in the course of the story. As it should be, it's all fairly complicated and involves a lot of exposition, not to mention a simulacrum of Ayn Rand in a magic lantern.

In short, Sewer, Gas & Electric is a romp. It has its rough patches, but Ruff's writing is fast paced enough to get you through them. Recommended to everyone who likes a bit of gonzo in their science fiction.

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