I just found it hard to get into this book.
I couldn't keep track of the characters.
It did get better as it went, but I still wanted to just finish it so I could read something else. ( )

It's just too dumb. ( )

review of
John Sladek's Mechasm
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 22, 2016
This is just the measley truncated review for the full review: "DNA'S MOL HATH JOKES": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/419915-dna-s-mol-hath-jokes

This bk was.. odd.. or maybe it was just the mood I was in when I read it.. It's a sortof Dr. Strangelove style parody.. I got a copy of it b/c it looked like humorous SF, something I never get tired of; I got it b/c I hadn't read anything by Sladek yet & I was looking for a new author. Reputedly, the 1st title that this was published under was The Reproductive System. There's a wryness to that that's missing from the title Mechasm but Mechasm's good too. I look forward to reading more by him - esp what he wrote under his various pseudonyms. The cover of this edition proclaims:

"SCIENCE WAS NEVER FUNNIER!
FICTION WAS NEVER MORE FANTASTIC!
SEX WAS NEVER SO AUTOMATIC!"

& that's not tooooooooo misleading.. but Sladek's a little deeper than I was expecting from such a lead-in. The action originates in "Millford, Utah". There is a Millford, UT. Authors often avoid common names or real names of places to avoid unintentional implications to potential real-life counterparts. Did Sladek pick Milford as a location because it was sooo smalll (that wd fit the plot) & add an "l" to avoid too close an association?

The real life Milford, UT, is reputed to've had a population of 279 at the beginning of the 20th century & 1,368 as of a 2012 Census Bureau estimate ( http://www.milfordut.com/about_us.main.html & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford,_Utah ). Perhaps it was less than 1,000 in 1968 when The Reproductive System was 1st published. I'm impressed that they even have a website. I'm tempted to visit the place. How hard did Sladek research before he chose this as his subject tiny town?

"Home of Shelley something, Millford lies about halfway between Las Vegas, Nevada, and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) buried deep in a Colorado mountain. The name "Millford" is an honorific; there has never been a stream through this part of the desert, nor a mill, nor anything to grind in a mill. Perhaps it was named ironically, or wishfully. Founders of other desert towns have, after all, given them pretty names, hoping that (by sympathetic magic) pretty reality would follow." - p 9

After copying that paragraph I decided to go back to Milford's website to see whether there had really never been a mill or any water there b/c I remember glimpsing s mention of fishing on the site when I 1st looked at it. This was at nite &, Lo & Behold!, the server wasn't available so I reckon Milford doesn't feel the need to publicize itself 24/7. Now it's the afternoon of the next day & the server's back. On the website, under "Things To Do" it says:

"The town is relatively quiet, with two motels, two restaurants and a fast-food place. Some visitors fish at nearby Minersville Reservoir, once a state park but now a recreation area operated by Beaver County. Desert lovers can explore ghost towns and old mines in the nearby mountains." - http://www.milfordut.com/about_us.main.html

That leaves the answer somewhat ambiguous for me but I reckon Sladek was right.

A father & son run business are faced w/ economic failure as their walking dolls are no longer popular:

""Looks swell to me, Pop," said Louie loyally. He had caught his fist inside the jar of Sooper Proteen tablets. It had not occurred to Louie not to reach into a jar with the spring grip developer in his hand. "I think it's a neat little product."

""But it isn't wanted, son. Little girls don't want Wompler's Walking Babies any more. They want Barbie dolls. Dolls they can dress up in fashions." His voice grew thick with fury, and he flushed purple beneath his sunburn. "Dolls that can't walk a single step!"" - p 14

Louie & his dad are an almost Laurel-&-Hardy-esque comedic duo: "He wanted to learn how to kill a man with Zen—without even touching him, they say. Then there was Kabuki, and there was deadliest Origami. Man!" - p 15

Since ignorance & gullibility rule, pseudo-scientific double-talk can do wonders:

"At each exhibit, Grandison would pause while Cal named the piece of equipment. Then he would repeat the name softly, with a kind of wonder, nod sagely and move on. Cal was strongly reminded of the way some people look at modern art exhibitions, where the labels become more important to them than the objects. HE found himself making up elaborate names.

""And this, you'll note, is the Mondrian Modular Mnemonicon."

""—onicon, yes.""

[..]

"A briar pipe became a "zygotic pipette," the glass ashtray a "Piltdown retort," and the lamp a "phase-conditioned Aeolian." Paper clips became "nuances."" - p 23

For those of you who may not've caught the jokes above I'll at least point out that "Piltdown" is a reference to a scientific hoax called the "Piltdown Man":

"In 1912 Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist claimed to have discovered the ‘missing link’ between ape and man. He had found part of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown village in Sussex, England. Dawson wrote to Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum at the time, about his find.

"Dawson and Smith Woodward started working together, making further discoveries in the area. They found a set of teeth, a jawbone, more skull fragments and primitive tools, which they suggested belonged to the same individual.

"Smith Woodward made a reconstruction of the skull fragments, and the archaeologists hypothesised that the find indicated evidence of a human ancestor living 500,000 years ago. They announced their discovery at a Geological Society meeting in 1912. For the most part, their story was accepted in good faith.

"However, in 1949 new dating technology arrived that changed scientific opinion on the age of the remains Using fluorine tests, Dr Kenneth Oakley, a geologist at the Natural History Museum, discovered that the Piltdown remains were only 50,000 years old. This eliminated the possibility of the Piltdown man being the missing link between humans and apes as at this point in time humans had already developed into their Homo sapiens form.

"Following this, biological anthropologist Dr Joseph Weiner and human anatomist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, both from Oxford University, worked with Dr Oakley to further test the age of the Piltdown findings. Their results showed that the skull and jaw fragments actually came from two different species, a human and an ape, probably an orangutan. Scratches on the surfaces of the teeth, visible under the microscope, revealed that the teeth had been filed down to make them look human. They also discovered that most of the finds from the Piltdown site had been artificially stained to match the local gravels.

"The conclusion: Piltdown Man was an audacious fake and a sophisticated scientific fraud." - http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/library-and-archives/coll...

"Having proven fraud, the question that remained was who had been responsible for the deception. Woodward had a strong reputation for honesty, and his innocence was generally acknowledged. Dawson, instead, was fingered as the likely culprit. His motive for perpetrating the hoax was complex, since he never profited from it financially. But it seemed likely that he had done it to gain scientific fame and recognition. After the British Museum team published their findings, it was then discovered that Dawson had trafficked in other fake antiquities. This seemed to confirm that he probably was the culprit behind the Piltdown man hoax.

"Today most still agree with the verdict that Dawson was the hoaxer, but controversy continues to simmer. Some argue that Dawson worked with an accomplice, perhaps Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a young priest who briefly participated in the dig. Others place the blame elsewhere entirely. Martin Hinton, an employee at the British Museum whom Woodward once refused a job, has been implicated ever since a boxful of artificially stained bones that may have belonged to him was discovered in 1975. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, has been named as a possible suspect. Doyle lived near Piltdown and had a strong interest in paleontology." - http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_piltdown_man

Sladek isn't only a funny man, he gets technical at times too: "(c) Some computers had already been used to solve problems in circuitry, this in effect "redesigning" themselves. But there remained what seemed an unbridgeable gap between these and a true self-reproducing machine." - p 26 But it's not long before parody kicks back in again, in this case a parody of gossip:

""Crap!" spat a navy technician whose rolled-up sleeves revealed tattoos of Walt Disney characters. "The real scuttlebutt is, he's a Rooshian. All that security stuff is to keep the other Rooshians from assassinating him. The real scuttlebutt is, he invented a way of putting monkey brains in the heads of little children."" - p 28

A self-reproducing machine is developed & it 'inevitably' escapes its lab:

""Oh, don't worry," Cal said. It seemed to him that he was still trying to pick up the runaway cell, but bright white clouds kept getting in his way. Steam?

"All at once, he realized the clouds were real; he was looking at the sky. He rolled over and sat up, hands buried in cool grass.

"A file drawer marked "Secret" scooted past, pursued by a mob of people in white coats. "Stop it! Catch it!"

"How odd, he thought with a tolerant smile. Chasing file drawers." - p 40

Chapter VIII, "THE END OF THE WORLD", begins w/ an epigraph credited to be an "Old Saying": "What are little girls made of? Contain dextrose, maltose, monosodium glutamate, artificial flavoring and coloring; sodium propionate added to retard spoilage." Just whose "Old Saying" is that exactly? It cd be a sly reference to another novel.. or, as seems likely, just something that Sladek made up for this occasion. Speaking of parody, the next one up is up there w/ Frank Zappa's commentaries on 'American Womanhood':

"Quickly Susie showered with Nice, the 24 hour soap that gets at odors other soaps just seem to miss, and rolled on plenty of Shut, to be sure about those offensive odors. After dusting all over with Lady Clinge talc, she slipped on her Modaform 6-way-stretch panty girdle that b-r-e-a-t-h-e-s, her Deepline Modaform Sport-support bra, and began applying Classique Parfum, the scent that makes every woman an empress, every man a slave." - p 64

Parodies of SF movie titles run thru the entire bk:

""Sure, why not?" Ron said. "Like in Attack of the Fungamen, everyone protested the dangerous experiments, right? Like in Goz, they demonstrate against the army's impotence, remember? And in The Day the Earth Caught Cold————"" - pp 67-68

A parody of conservatism yields this:

""Are you planning on studying medicine yourself, Mr. Porteus?"

""No I'm not, Mrs. Suggs." He removed the glasses, startling her with the hard planees of his face. "No, I'm afraid the medical profession is a dead lettet, these days. Despite all our efforts to prevent it, socialized medicine is on its way—and with it, starvation for doctors." - p 69

Ha ha! That was 1968. Now it's 2016. Not only do we not have "socialized medicine", wch might help us join the civilized world w/ Canada & France, but we have something that's a total travesty of it. Here's a link to a short movie I made that only addresses the tip-of-the-overpriced-brainwashing-needle: http://youtu.be/tjB3QBz4LAc . &, no, the drs are far from starving - but it's not the drs who're the problem as much as it is the completely corrupt & greedy people who (wo)man the helm of the middle(wo)men juggernaut: the insurance companies. May they die off like the dinosaurs.. but much faster.

Sladek is remarkably persistent in his incisions beneath the pretty surface:

"It was black, luxuriant hair shot with silver gray of the same shade as his foulard tie. This was embroidered with black anthrax bacilli, carefully knotted, and clipped with a tiny silver scalpel. His suit was a quiet gray, his shirt of television blue, though he had no real intention of appearing before news cameras. The only real spot of color about him was his lapel pin from the Blood Bank, a red plastic droplet." - p 82

"The banns were published on two continents. Toto and Nan spent their evenings planning hysterectomies, new and dangerous techniques of anesthesia. Then, without warning, their castles of ether collapsed.

"A muffled stranger came to call upon Toto in his lab, where he was dissecting a cadaver on the eve of their wedding.

""You must not marry Nan Richmons."

""But why not?" asked Toto. His brow darkened. "I must warn you, sir, to be careful what you say about her."

""Why, you ask?" The stranger laughed savagely. "Two reasons: First, she is already married——to me."

""I care nothing about that. This is 1935, man! Let us be civilized. Her past is———"

""Stay! The second reason is——is that I removed her appendix over two years ago." - p 85

I feel like I often call attn to what I think is probably obvious but know may very well not be: "castles of ether" is a variation on the common expression "castles of sand" - meaning something built of a material easily subject to quick destruction. That expression may not be common enuf anymore for people to recognize a variation thereon immediately. A castle of sand can collapse but can a castle of ether? Does ether become a solid at low temperatures & therefore become susceptible to collapsing? Talk about a relationship cooling off! Anyway, I use a similar technique of making substitutions in expressions. EG: "tip-of-the-overpriced-brainwashing-needle", written above, is a take-off on "tip-of-the-iceberg". How many of you noticed that?

Ahem. ( )

Well, here's a heap of absurdity that both pre-dates and sends up all the nanobot apocalypses of SF history - as well as everything else it can think of, including but not limited to, the military, espionage, government research projects, international politics, the space race (we are talking 1968, here) and not least, the author himself, who keeps mentioning The Forklift Truck, a boring technical manual he wrote, in an ironic, self-deprecating way...

The more absurd the exaggerated stereotypical caricature, the more memorable the character, including such loons as the paranoid/murderous CIA agent who has to prevent the enemy from committing suicide, the US Army General who is all bombast and bluster but is hiding an embarrassing secret, the evil scientist who practices dentistry on himself and the journalist who makes up jokey headlines about his own wife absconding with another man.

Three stars worth of silliness. ( )

(Original Review, 1980-08-18)

A few years back, I picked up John Sladek's "Mechasm" as part of a special series of "forgotten classics" by some publisher. (this series also included L. Frank Baum's delightful "The Master Key"). "Mechasm" has been reprinted in paperback, so I thought I'd review it here.

"Mechasm" is a story of a toy company, which has made the same style of doll since the 1930's. Finding itself going bankrupt, it decides to get money for doing government research. They come up with "The Reproductive System", a machine which reproduces itself and self-mutates. Inevitably, the system gets out of hand of its creators. "Mechasm" is very funny, with some interesting characters and situations. Sladek writes something like Laumer, but the quality is somewhat uneven. You will have to suspend your disbelief for this book, since some of the situations and coincidences are just
TOO unbelievable.

I liked this book, and believe that many will enjoy it as light reading. It's only $1.95; a bargain at today's prices.

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )