Warren Ellis

A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future—by an iconic visionary writer Some people call it “abyss gaze.” Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you. There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geo-engineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks. For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the “abyss gaze” takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest. When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Dearden uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future—and the past, and the now.

A Novel

Normal

“I’m clearly insane. I’m threatening your life with a toothbrush.” 

A highly entertaining and surprisingly depressing book.

The general plot hits a little too close to home, considering the surveillance culture and the divisive atmosphere in the world today, but the dark humour in this book is really what made it enjoyable for me. After all, we are ALL mad down here.

Emmett

'The thing about the future is that it keeps happening without you.'

A clinical and plausibly nightmarish vision of the future in the near-future, where intelligence reigns, data is power, and surveillance rushes along to inevitable absoluteness. The 'abyss gaze' is an interesting concept; it is the consequence of the meeting of the limited human mind with infinite contingencies and information flow, madness brought about by the terrifying loss of agency. Those living on the edge who plan and bring about the future can no longer comprehend or withstand what they see, or do not see, coming. A story of destabilising realities is set up within the structure-heavy paradigms and languages of bureaucracy and academic research, creating a riveting and chilling ironic contrast. This is dystopia writ small, the state of the world is felt only through the tremors of the glass walls of a mental institution for their best and brightest scientists and strategists. The resulting echo effect, where everything is implied and conveyed with a sense of belatedness, effectively maximises the sense of powerless felt by its characters and the atmosphere of dread characterising the novel, alleviated only by small victories. Ellis' writing expertly conveys the fracturing of experience, the off-kilter feeling of not being there and being mere steps away from losing it.

Scott Vandehey

The story is about a futurist who is sent to what amounts to a retirement home for spies and theorists who have become broken by all the horrible things they see in the world. The retirement home is completely cut off from the rest of the world, with no phones and no internet. The story he tells in this setting is great, but the best part is definitely watching Warren passionately describe his own ideal disconnected retreat from our world of distractions.

Bryan Alexander

"All communication becomes dangerous" (56)Normal is a fun novella with a terrific premise. Every so often futurists go insane when they look too deeply into the future, a condition Ellis dubs "abyss gaze" (15). A facility called Normal (!) treats them, and that's the setting. Into Normal enters our freshly mad protagonist, who quickly stumbles into a locked room mystery.

This little book has many pleasures, all familiar to anyone who's read Warren Ellis. There's a lot of humor, often darkly tinged ("phones are half-trained demons always ready to betray you." (26)). There are plenty of intriguing ideas, like a scientist who cultivates her gut flora to expand her intelligence. And there's just sweet writing:The speaker was a man from the north of England, by his accent, with a face like a mallet and skin like a map of Yorkshire scratched out in gin-broken veins... But a grin split if like a spade through clay. (18)Several major issues hue Normal. The book is very concerned with digital surveillance, flagged early on: "all communication since Windhoek seemed fraught with danger" (10) . It's a dark meditation on where social media, robotics, and mobile are headed. There's a subplot involving the sociology of futurism, as Ellis posits a divide between those working for art and nonprofits versus those wedded to finance and security agencies.

As a futurist, I enjoyed the portrayal of the field, plus the speculation in futuristic ideas. Ellis knows the topic well, sketching out a group of people who take real and lonely risks in dwelling in years to come. "It's like we're the sin-eaters for the entire fucking culture, looking at the end of human civilization because it's supposed that somebody should. I'm fine, by the way." (62) Ellis even references a classic Bruce Sterling line ("The future is about old people, in big cities, afraid of the sky") with this amplification:That's the future, Adam fuckling whateveryournameis. City-states rammed with aging people huddling up against hospitals and looking up in terror for the big storm that will come and go and leave them floating facedown in thirteen feet of shit. And I can't do anything about it. (61)Personally, I haven't seen the professional tension between non-profit and security futurists, but there is certainly a difference.

Before I go further, let me throw up spoiler shields, since the plot does advance.(view spoiler)[The conclusion does solve the mystery, adding a fascinating drone-based concept. Otherwise it falls short. Characters don't grow very much. Insanity falls away as a theme. Adam's suicide attempt is surprising, and not well prepared (hide spoiler)] 

Overall, a very entertaining read.

A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future—by an iconic visionary writer Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you. There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geo-engineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks. For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the "abyss gaze" takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest. When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Dearden uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future—and the past, and the now. The ebook edition also includes four conversations with Warren Ellis about Normal, featuring Robin Sloan, Laurie Penny, Geoff Manaugh, and Lauren Beukes. The conversations originally appeared on tor.com.

Normal A Novel

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