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The Cipher (1991)

por Kathe Koja

Outros autores: Ver a secção outros autores.

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6113438,366 (3.66)27
"Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com's "Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm." With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag. "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not." But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole."- Amazon.com.… (mais)
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Mostrando 1-5 de 35 (seguinte | mostrar todos)
The opening third is fantastic, it gets a bit weaker by length where it introduces a bunch of other stuff that distracts from the central relationship but it's still great. It's about the call of the void and destructive relationships and our desire for things that hurt us and how we want to save others when we can't even save ourselves. And so there's a literal destructive void in it. It's great, both as obvious metaphor and as a literal thing. Nakota is a very unpleasant character and you're constantly wanting the narrator to somehow leave but the pull of people like that is understandable to me - constantly wanting to somehow impress them and also think you have to be there to stop them being self destructive... but in the process we lose ourselves. The extra characters aren't as good but they do show a particular dynamic of hangers on and people desperate to witness *something*, whatever it is. The writing is so, so good and perfectly depicts a constant feeling of griminess, desperation, the dead end of life. And there's good dose of horniness mixed in too - where cumming really is a little death. Really clever, atmospheric and claustrophobic book - sort of on the edge of 5 stars. Also I listened with the quake 1 soundtrack - that kind of industrial ambient suits it well

Was the darkness always there? Was all it needed to infiltrate a lack of determination to keep it out? and had I really done all this to myself, by myself, by being the little I was? I was so tired of hating myself. But I was so good at it, it was such a comfortable way to be, goddamn fucking flotsam on the high seas, the low tide, a little wad of nothing shrugging and saying Hey, sorry, I didn't mean it, I didn't know it was loaded, I didn't think things would turn out this way. It's so easy to be nothing. It requires very little thought or afterthought, you can always find people to drink with you, hang out with you, everybody needs a little nothing in their life, right? Call the specialist when you do. You don't even have to call, chances are I'll already be there, you've just overlooked me because I'm in a corner, crouched like a dustball, a cobweb, my busy little spaced-out grin and oops it seems I've stumbled on some sort of exalted hellhole, Funhole, do excuse me while I let it out, while I let it into my body, while I let it run my life because somebody has to, right? somebody has to take the goddamned brunt even if it's a void.

Even if it's chosen me.

Because how bad can it be, right, if it wants me, how dangerous? If it will settle for a tool this poor HOW BAD CAN IT BE.
( )
1 vote tombomp | Oct 31, 2023 |
Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive."

When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not." But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review
: Republished thirty years on, this debut horror novel far exceeds my memory of it; when it came out, I wasn't interested in its eldritch overtones and dismissed its literary charms far too readily for that reason. Still not that interested in cosmic horror, as horror anyway, since the crap people do to each other every day scares me a lot more than some Evil Force somehow making people do awful stuff or, sillier still, does awful stuff to them despite being disembodied...possession and so forth come under the heading of mental illness untreated or undiagnosed in my materialist worldview.

But honestly, so what. This is a story, fiction with all that implies. Author Koja's been at this gig for decades now, and it's clear she started strong with this debut. Like all well-made fiction, this novel tells us truths about ourselves and our world. Self-harm, suicidal ideation, depression, all come into the story and are treated with due respect. This being thirty years ago, maybe not the way we'd talk about them now, but they aren't presented as reasons to become a victim.

The power dynamics of this book are very intricate. Upper hands slip. Control falters. People don't behave in reasonable ways, ever! The story unspools at a fairly brisk clip and rewards your attention to its details. Since this is a body horror novel, you know violent changes will be wrought on humans. It's part of our culture to revel in this strange obsession with involuntary body modification and/or death. Not always to my personal taste. This story's main appeal isn't its physical violence but its quieter, less obtrusive dealings with the power within a relationship, how it's used, what it does to the parties involved...and, on that level, this story *rocks*! Can't recommend it unreservedly, see the CWs, but recommend it I do to my fellow #Deathtober fans. ( )
  richardderus | Oct 2, 2023 |
The Cipher is a book that quickly became incredibly personal to me. It's impossible to summize why in the brevity of a goodreads review, nor do I wish to. Suffice to say, this is visceral, uncomfortable, and deeply jarring story, one that affected me quite strongly.

This wouldn't work without the two protagonists, their inseparability, their absolute loathing. The dynamic is gratifying, gluttonous. Neither I hated, despite their apparent unlikability.

The pain in this is admirable. What is beautifully rendered is the excruciation of moments. The events themselves? They aren't what grind you down. What gets under the skin is the grit, the spittle flying in the mind as an inner voice screams to stop. The narrative pushes in to those moments, elongates them, distorts them.

Koja writes filth painfully inspired. I don't just mean the physical grime, excrement, and blood, though there's plenty of that too, no, I am referring to the dirt rubbed into the wounds equivalent of the relationships between all characters. No dynamic is clean, no one is unblemished. Nakota in particular has a talent for dragging people deep underground, it's lovely.

If you have the stomach for it, if you admire the ugly in the world, if you love to see spirals into darkness and madness, this book is incredible. ( )
  KarthNemesis | Jul 5, 2023 |
Esta crítica foi escrita no âmbito dos Primeiros Críticos do LibraryThing.
An award-winning novel of longing and the unknown from the 90s, or as I like to think of it, the White Wolf and Friends decade. Kathe Koja first came to my attention as a name around the same time as White Wolf's Vampire roleplaying game, probably in the same much-beloved Barnes & Noble -- and I could've sworn WW either republished her or anthologized some of her stories.

(Edit: It took a little bit of digging, but I found at least one story they published, in 1994's _Borderlands 3_: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3... .)

White Wolf was the roleplaying game company that brought the modern goth aesthetic and 90s angst into roleplaying as text: no more fighting monsters in dungeons or space, now you were decadent vampires playing baroque political games with each other (in 1991's -- please hold your applause until I finish the full title -- Vampire: The Masquerade); _Friends_ started in 1994 and -- can someone correct me on this -- was maybe the first major sitcom to feature young adults post-school (i.e., not _Saved by the Bell_ years) without the armature of the family (e.g., _Blossom_).

And looking back, Kathe Koja's 1991 _The Cipher_ seems to prefigure them: not the story of a family facing evil (a cursed house, a terrible vacation, a monstrous dog), but just some (mostly) young people trying to make their way in life, trying to make it as artists or simply make it with the artists. That's both the _Friends_ thread (friends or lovers, rivals, hangers-on, but no family) and the _Vampire_ thread (art-centric, outcast, grimy).

(Insert here sincere wish for _Friends_ to have turned out to be a Lovecraftian tale, where Ross discovered his own hand-writing on dinosaur bones millions of years old, where Phoebe's uneasy dreams of a drowned city gave form to otherworldly music, where Monica turned to cannibalism in her pursuit of charcuterie perfection.)

Koja's Cipher gives us twin ciphers: the zero protagonist, foot-dragging Nicholas, who only drinks beer, hates his poetry, and loves the uninterested but occasionally willing to fuck Nakota; and the blank hole in the storage closet in his apartment building, which might be a portal or a process or a living presence: the Funhole. While Nicholas just wants to pine for Nakota, driven and cruel Nakota wants more, wants something extraordinary.

A sort of perfect horror/weird set-up: Nicholas loves Nakota, Nakota loves the Funhole, the Funhole loves(?) Nicholas. No one can get what they want -- no one can even understand what they want. Heck, the title is THE Cipher, the most obvious referents may be Funhole and Nicholas, but honestly, no one is truly understood here, nothing is explained, everything is filtered through the cracked lens of Nicholas (not unreliable in the Poe or Lovecraft sense of being mad, but unreliable in the sense of being a person).

The book suffers (for me, today) a bit from being _too_ bleak. Digression: I went to see the 2014 horror film _Goodnight Mommy_ with my high school best friend, which involves twins who believe their mother is an impostor and go about interrogating her, until the last 30 minutes was just my friend going "Jesus, come on" -- and that's sort of the danger of a certain bleak horror: at some point, the end is obvious, I do not feel the terror of impending horrors, the bleakness is not exactly shocking but just enervating. A chunk of the later section of this book felt like that, with Nicholas and the others repeating some of the same moves over and over, with no real progress. That might be part of the thematic engine of this book: people stuck in loops, unable to break out even when given something completely new. But it can still be a bummer to read.

But I think the real grace of this book is that when something shocking happens, it's so quick that I'm left to ponder it, it sticks with me because it's unexplained morally, which is the greatest trick of horror fiction: so often moralizing as a genre (as, frankly, most stories are), _The Cipher_ ends with moments of cruelty where I cannot pin the blame exactly. It's a tragedy, we're all involved.

One final note: I read the Meerkat Press ebook, which had a number of typographical errors ("carne" for "came") which were a bit problematic because of how loopy the writing is, meaning that some errors are hard to parse out from the stylistic choices. Glad to have the ebook, looking forward to more Koja, but I hope Meerkat can fix these. (If they are indeed problems of the book/scan, as I assume from that carne/came substitution.)
  benjamin.blattberg | Jun 1, 2023 |
I genuinely don't know if I liked this book or not. It's compelling for sure, but that early 90s dirtbag aesthetic left me feeling grimy and filthy as I read it. ( )
  xaverie | Apr 3, 2023 |
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Nome do autorPapelTipo de autorObra?Estado
Koja, Katheautor principaltodas as ediçõesconfirmado
Hag, ThomasTradutorautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Rosson, KeithArtista da capaautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado
Saxon, JoshuaNarradorautor secundárioalgumas ediçõesconfirmado

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Could my wish be fulfilled,
I would want to be the balm
For a sore,
Dissolved
By your saliva.
---Shikatsube No Magao

Conscious or unconscious, it doesn't matter in the real world.
Rick Lieder
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For Rick
Impossible without you
With all my love
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Nakota, who saw it first: long spider legs drawn up beneath her ugly skirt, wise mouth pursed into nothing like a smile.
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Because that's what the Funhole was, wasn't it, that was the key and clue: a negativity, an absence, a lack.
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"Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com's "Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm." With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag. "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not." But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole."- Amazon.com.

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