Venusia

Narcotic flowers keep the masses placated in a decaying, dystopian, extraterrestrial colony in this ambitious but marginal sci-fi fantasy. Debut novelist von Schlegell concocts a post-Earth benevolent dictatorship where, centuries after the home planet is rendered inhabitable, the population gathers en masse daily for Feed. Writes von Schlegell: Like a castaway's calendar carved in a piece of driftwood, Feed was a communal marking away of days. Then a junk purveyor named Rogers Collectibles comes across a book of the colony's secret early history, a time when humans did more than count the seconds until extinction. Soon Collectibles and his sort-of psychiatrist Sylvia Yang are skipping Feed and seeing their world as it really is. The expected run-in with authority ensues, involving a dwarf named Niftus Norrington, journalist Martha, funny-talking lizards and sentient (and sexy) plants. Von Schlegell's kitchen-sink approach evokes the works of Neal Stephenson, Williams Burroughs and William Gibson-and, alas, much that feels snatched from a slush pile. The author has a knack for seeing profundity in the thunderously meaningless ( Homo Sapiens sees its real in the emptiness that its 'real' implies ). Disorientation may well be his aim, but it does not make for a satisfying narrative, as fidelity to storytelling gets lost in the muddle. A shaky start to an already threatened series that can only improve. (Kirkus Reviews)