Salem

Set in a future dark pulpy science fiction world, Joe4 works as an engineer for a company that has tight security. By night, he composes music for his own entertainment, sometimes releasing certain bits for public consumption. A famous record label picks up his work and has him ghost-composing work for a famous singer, DJU. But then DJU dies and Joe4 is coerced into creating the singer’s final record, which must be grand.

Now toss in some corporate espionage, the mysterious desert lands of the Four Corners area, the love for a retired racing dog, and possible alien contact, and you definitely have an odd and fascinating tale. At the beginning, the reader is immersed in Joe4’s work life – all the checks and balances to his work plus all the security protocols. For Joe4, these are simply inconveniences to a viable paycheck and to doing what he really enjoys – his music.

Now Joe4’s music is special, at least, to him. Early on, us readers know that Joe4 suspects his music is inspired by some extraterrestrial muse. Mostly, he’s just having fun with it and appreciates it when consumers also enjoy the work, even if the music isn’t released under his name. He keeps track of his musings and thoughts in his various notebooks. Later on, these will come under scrutiny.

Once DJU dies, the record label company more or less forces Joe4 to quit his engineer job in order to go off into the sandy isolation of the Four Corners area and compose full time. They want their golden opus record! Joe4 takes very little with him and that includes his best friend, his dog. I really liked this dog. She gets a little backstory and is a constant companion. Joe4 never thought he would fall in love and yet when he did, it was with this dog.

Now once Joe4 gets to the desert, things do get a bit odd. Talking dogs, alien music, etc. In avoiding spoilers, I can say that some of the odd bits from earlier in the story all come together in this final quarter of the book out in the desert. Joe4 himself has become a valuable commodity because of this unique contact with an alien. People will fight and die to have him within their keeping.

It’s all rather dark, pulpy, mysterious. I really loved how this over all feel to the story remained constant throughout. The science fiction bits were nicely sprinkled here and there through cool bits of tech and, of course, the alien muse. It was a worthy listen and I’m glad I gave it a chance.

I received a copy of this audiobook at no cost from the author/narrator (via a post on GoodReads Audiobooks group) in exchange for an honest review.

Narration: While Salem spins a fascinating tale, his narrating skills could use some work. As the voice for Joe4, he was excellent. He definitely gave voice to this picture of a youngish, intelligent man trying to figure out his life in this future crowded scifi city. However, his voices for additional characters were sometimes clear and sometimes they didn’t differentiate at all from Joe4’s voice. Also his pacing felt unnatural. Still, because the story itself was so engaging, I found myself embracing this lukewarm performance and enjoying the tale.… (más)

Joe4 is a novella by Salem that continues the author's story from his novel Black Hole Butterfly (BHB). Both books describe restricted life in a futuristic New York City. In BHB, the Naranja solar empire fought opposing special interest forces to corner the market on physical energy in the City and manipulate psychological energy to control the thoughts and behavior of the citizens. Detective Rook Black attempted to solve crimes in the city and because of his detecting methods, became the eye of the storm of characters competing for control of the City. He was a "psychonaut" able to enter dream states that allowed him to experience parallel realities, escaping the artificial feedback loop of time controlled by Dr. Naranja that kept other citizens in an artificial reality.

Joe4 is an employee of Dr. Naranja. He is an engineer who analyzes the effects of acoustical vibrations on solar satellites that are used in the Naranja empire to generate the artificial energy source "sunjuice." But, like Rook Black, Joe4 is able to enter a dream state in which he escapes the physical and psychological domination of the Naranja solar empire. He receives "alien" messages in the form of visual/acoustic "dark music" that he can transcribe with pen and ink in his journal into classic reality tunes. Presented on radio stations by pop star, DJU, most of Joe4's compositions rise on the music charts to top ten positions. He is offered a contract to produce music full time if he can resign from his position with the paranoiac Naranja empire, not an easy task.

Dr. Naranja has a team of agents who look for spies within the organization. Usually, a person can come to the solar energy manufacturer but not leave. Dr. Naranja decides that Joe4 is an unusual threat to him and allows him to resign with the plan of spying on him and secretly discovering Joe4's alien source of musical inspiration. Rook Black was drawn by an alien impulse to the desert to live for a year and attempt to solve his mystery cases. Joe4 is also drawn for a year to the desert to work on his grand opus. He arrives at the Four Corners area of the United States that is historically the site of extraterrestrial alien activity. With his dog, Aoede (named after the Muse of Song and Voice), Joe4 sets out to find his source of power that makes him the tuning fork of an alien communication code (444) that came to him in a dream state.

Joe4 is a very good stand-alone novella that can be read and enjoyed without exploring the connections with Black Hole Butterfly. But, BHB allows the reader to understand the complicated alien source of power for both Rook Black and Joe4 (father and son?). Both books make it possible for us readers to go beyond our daily limitations of artificial reality. By reading the books, we may be able to tune in to a pirate radio station narrow casting information about space, time, and existence and join Joe4 in his abduction.… (más)

Salem presents an algorithm of the mind, inviting readers to play a blind chess game starting at a point approaching chaos then working toward increasing levels of reality. We are limited in our ability to play the game by seeing the world through the mind’s eye of Rook Black, a private detective who solves crimes in a futuristic almost unrecognizable New York City. He seems to have had some success in his cases brokered and supported by an information technology specialist Cosmo. Angela is the agent of action who takes the case information from Cosmo and gives it in disguised form to Rook (he likes a good challenge).

Rook has a good tolerance for unreality and investigates unusual people and events with enthusiasm. The case that dominates Rook’s mind is the murder/suicide of his genius master chess playing father, the man who taught Rook the art of playing chess while blindfolded. This tragic event seems to have triggered an addiction in Rook with mind altering consequences. He has a dominating need to seek out parallel realities, multiple levels of experience determined by the written and spoken word. Language includes codes that can exist in multiple levels of consciousness.

In the beginning of the novel, Rook’s life has been transformed as if an “internal, subconscious ghostwriter was penning” his realities. Rook is helpless in his addiction, reclining on his “psychonaut” couch experiencing infinitely modified reiterations of a week long experience. The experience is a self-authoring state, like automatic writing used by existential surrealist writers of the mid-20th Century. It is like tuning in to a cosmic radio with many channels broadcasting the fundamental conscious nature of the universe. Chaos is channel 0, while Rook’s personal channel is 113, an anchor for all the characters in the novel, the eye of the storm. If competing forces can dominate Rook’s channel, they will be able to self-author reality and control the New York area.

As he comes to understand he is the eye of the storm, Rook keeps trying to find out why he is the chosen one. A cast of characters attempt to hijack Rook for survival reasons because if he dies, the ghostwriter’s work comes to an end and they all die. He keeps trying to find out who he is but his identity is elusive. The cost of his psychonaut addiction is a proliferation of black hole butterflies that flutter around him sucking his consciousness into quantum shadows, the archetypal forms behind classical reality.
Even though Rook is living a cycle of seven, the same seven day week over and over, there are black holes in his memory.

The ghostwriter starts Rooks narrative on the edge of chaos and doles out a bit more reality with each week, a bit less interference with black hole butterflies. Readers are set free of the limitations of Rook’s impaired consciousness in a great reveal at the end of the novel. Although the novel is written backwards requiring readers to remain in a hallucinogenic state for most of the novel, the theme is positive. Rook moves from hopeless addiction to parallel realities to an acceptance of his real emotional reaction to his father’s death.

Salem has written a novel that some may consider a “bad trip.” But, I would say that the only thing you have to fear is retrieving memories from your own black hole butterflies.… (más)