Venusia: A True Story  (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)
At the end of the twenty-third century, Earth has self-destructed, and the last remnants of humanity survive in a bizarre totalitarian colony on Venus. Rogers Collectibles--his name--is a Venusian antiquities dealer whose tenuous career is kept afloat by serendipitous discoveries that include a rare book detailing Venus' settlement. The tome inexplicably goes missing while Collectibles is preoccupied hallucinating lizardlike authorities. Cajoled by roving virtual media starlet Martha Dobbs into visiting a prominentneuroscop(mind inspector), Collectibles confesses that he hallucinates because he isn't taking his government-sanctioned dose of psychoactive flowers. Unfortunately, the resulting documentary video of Collectibles' session with the neuroscop catches the eyes of diminutive government agent Nifty Norrington, who is charged with blotting the minds of any flower abstainers, and Collectibles' life begins to unravel further. A sentient, interdimensional plant is also in the whimsical cast of this absurdist blending of fantasy and cutting-edge sf that never fails to entertain and proclaims von Schlegell to be a promising new voice in the genre(s).Carl HaysCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved