Review of Cryptozoic by Brian Aldiss

With great quantity comes great chances of a stinker. With Brian Aldiss, and his dozens of novels and one-hundred+ short stories, it was just a matter of time. <DING> It's Cryptozoic (1967). A kitchen sink of fiction, the novel changes identity more times than a Gen Z teen from an ultra-liberal family, making for a difficult piece of fiction to make heads or tails of (mixed metaphors intentional, natch).

Cryptozoic is the story of Bush, an artist living circa 2090. But at the start of the novel he is deep in mind travel in the Jurassic past. Mind travel a form of time travel, it allows people to cast their consciousness deep into the depths of time. Physical contact not possible, people can nevertheless go back and observe, and if they happen to meet other minds, interact. People spend years embedded in mind travel, it's thus happens that Bush has a Rip van Winkle meets George Orwell moment when he awakes. And it's not good.

Where Cryptozoic goes from this point is not a coin flip, rather the rolling of many colored dice. It's here, it's there, it's everywhere. Time/mind travel, dystopian authoritarianism, Victorian spy thriller, Vietnam war commentary, artist angst, and other motifs appear and disappear. It. just. never. settles. into. a. groove. Even Aldiss' diction seems to be working according to its own 7/37 time.

About halfway through Cryptozoic I was still optimistic Aldiss was headed somewhere. I couldn't see where, but I've read enough Aldiss to know he is one of the all time greats, i.e. to be trusted. I toyed with the idea of laying a Benjamin down on the roulette table at the spot labeled: “social commentary on the dissonance between youth and government in the 60s”. But slowly I pushed this bill back into my wallet, not wanting to throw it away. Then slowly I walked away to see what other games are being played. I did complete the novel, but never discovered if even Aldiss knew where he was going.

In the end, Cryptozoic is a tough novel to get through. Aldiss seems to set his sights on a new target every couple of chapters, never letting the story focus on a single plot or theme. If characterization were done well, the reader could have something, at least, to latch onto. But even that is mediocre. Bush's motivations, decisions, etc. never seem grounded in anything between the lines let alone something generic or obvious. He just passively floats through a world/story that pushes him this way and that with minimal complaint. Meh, he seems to say. Meh, Aldiss seems to say. And highly likely you too, dear reader, will get stuck in the same haze. Meh.