Cause and effect are the tools of an author's trade, and Swanwick manipulates his tools skilfully. In Jack Faust , Swanwick provides us with his own allegory about the dangers of knowledge. For a moment, about halfway through the book, there is a suggestion of an antithesis to Mephistopheles' equation of knowledge with destruction. Faust delivers a sermon to an increasingly shocked and outraged congregation in which he points out that logic doesn't know should or ought , but only how . You have to listen to your heart, as well, he argues.
Logic triumphs again.
Review by Keith Brooke. Vacuum Flowers reviewed by Peter D Tillman.