Alan's Reviews > Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy : A Novel

Sewer Gas and Electric is an utter failure as an sf novel—if science fiction must be defined as a serious attempt to predict the future, anyway. From the large-scale to the small, Sewer Gas and Electric's prognostications about the early 21st Century have almost uniformly failed to pan out. The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts haven't merged into one urban exploration club; there are no high-speed trains criss-crossing the U.S.; nor are there twin towers still looming over southern Manhattan's Battery Park. Hugo Gernsback would be horrified, I'm sure. About the only thing Matt Ruff did get right, and I'm not sure how he managed that, was that "red state/blue state" (complete with shades of indigo and purple) would become the shorthand for the conflict of reactionary rural values versus more liberal urban policies.

Fortunately, science fiction is not solely about prediction, and fortunately, Sewer Gas and Electric is not at all a failure. On the contrary—Sewer Gas and Electric is a madcap romp, and a delicious skewering of a particularly odious mindset (about which more below).

In short, Sewer Gas and Electric is a lot of fun.

The plot... well, inasmuch as the plot matters, it triangulates on Harry Gant, trillionaire industrialist and perennial little boy, whose vast empire includes continent-crossing railroads, immense skyscrapers (including one in Manhattan called the Tower of Babel which, if it's ever completed, is slated to be a full mile high, a la Frank Lloyd Wright), and legions of android servants. Against Harry is his ex-wife Joan, who works in the sewers, armed to the teeth against mutant crocodiles and other denizens of the toxic sludge that flows beneath Manhattan's streets. Except that Joan's not really against Harry. She still harbors some feelings for him. Far more menacing is "Meisterbrau," a Carcharodon megalodon with no love for either Joan or Harry.

And then there's Philo Dufresne and his polka-dotted submarine.

What is it about the notion of a submarine that attracts fictional anarchists and freethinkers, anyway? It's not as if you can build and run a giant sub in the real world without the resources of a navy (or the equivalent) behind you. From Captain Nemo to the Beatles, though, the smoothly humming underwater luxury cruise vessel owned and operated by a proud loner is a staple of fiction. And here it surfaces again (heh... see what I did there?) as the eco-pirate Dufresne's transportation of choice, equipped with giant creme-pie flingers and other ingenious tools of performance art, interfering with Gant's corporate shipping in a thoroughly unacceptable and highly entertaining manner. Despite Harry Gant's undeniable charm, Sewer Gas and Electric is not especially kind to him or his corporate peers.

Nor is Sewer Gas and Electric especially kind to the so-called Objectivists, those admirers of the émigré writer Ayn Rand and in particular her immense and turgid magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. (John Scalzi pretty much sums up that particular work for me, by the way, although somehow his respondents didn't think to mention Sewer Gas and Electric until comment #139.) Joan spends a lot of time carrying a holographic replica of Rand through those aforementioned sewers, chain-smoking (to Rand, after all, every cigarette lit was a tiny reminder of Prometheus' gift of fire) and arguing philosophies. Despite, or perhaps because, the replica uses Rand's own words to defend itself, Joan definitely holds her own in the ensuing debate.

Sewer Gas and Electric isn't perfect, though. In particular, parts of the plot involving the Pandemic that killed off a billion dark-skinned people made me uncomfortable, especially on second reading. I do not presume to know how a person of color would appreciate the notion—introduced fictionally, mind you, and not at all with approval or as any kind of wish-fulfillment, but still—that almost all of the world's Africans and people of African descent had died (offstage) of what was plainly an engineered disease, and then, as if genocide weren't enough, been replaced in the U.S. by robotic caricatures called "Electric Negroes," the best-selling product of the Gant corporate empire. Ruff's satirical barbs make some serious and laudable points about racist America, to be sure, but I don't think this book is always sensitive as to how it makes those points.

My biggest problem with Matt Ruff, though, is that he just doesn't write enough. Sewer Gas and Electric is only his second novel, out of a total of just four to date (though according to his website, another is in progress). On the plus side, this makes him easy to catch up on—at least, if you can find his work at all; he doesn't tend to show up on a lot of shelves. Which is a shame. On the other hand, though... well, if "always leave 'em wanting more" is a reliable maxim at all, it applies to this guy.

Read it—if you can find a copy...