Viator

Lucius Shepard is yet another of science fiction's elegant stylists, and a founding member of its cyberpunk movement. Unfortunately he may be the least known, most underrated American writer of elegant fictional prose. "Viator" is an excellent meditation of madness and love as seen through the eyes of Thomas Wilander, who wonders whether he is losing his mind while living aboard the nearly derelict freightor Viator, now beached permanently in an Alaskan coastal forest. We are thrust into a surrealistic fantastical landscape that's most reminiscent of tales penned by Edgar Allen Poe and especially, H. P. Lovecraft. Wilander finds some solace and love in Arlene, a local resident. And yet, having found reality in the form of Arlene, Wilander still wonders whether the strange dreams he has nightly are visions of his future, and that of the beached freightor. He finally obtains the truth about the ship's enigmatic history from the vessel's mysterious absentee owner. But is this sufficient knowledge enough for Wilander to save his mind, soul, and his love for Arlene? Long-time admirers of Shepard's fiction, as well as those new to it, will enjoy greatly this fine little novel.

Lucius Shepard, Viator (Night Shade Books, 2004) Lucius Shepard is one of America's most underrated writers by any standards. The man comes out with book after book of gorgeous prose and gets, for the most part, not a breath of press about it. Viator, his latest offering (but not for long; Shepard has two coming out in 2005), continues the trend both of wonderful writing and lack of anything even remotely resembling press coverage. Thomas Wilander, homeless, rootless, and unstable (his own word), has been hired by a Manpower temp agency in Alaska to go out to a wrecked ship called Viator and head up a team of four other men in assessing the value of the wreckage as scrap. Wilander goes about his business, rarely seeing the four other men, and eventually striking up a relationship with the owner of the trading post in the nearest town, Kaliaska. The other man, all of whom have been on the ship longer than Wilander, have become absorbed in obsessions with various parts of the ship (one is fascinated with the formations of the rust, one with the ship's glass, etc). As time goes on, Wilander starts to feel the tug of the ship as well, and becomes absorbed in his own obsessions, while those around him become ever more fearful of his sanity. The book has almost a Heart of Darkness feel to it, though granted the ship here is washed up on shore. Shepard's lush descriptions and deliberate pacing keep the reader always wondering what's just over the horizon, while simultaneously not wanting to leave whatever details Shepard is inking at the time. It's beautiful, beautiful prose, and it demands to be savored. The book's only real letdown is the ending, as other reviewers have noted; the book jumps from Heart of Darkness to The X-Files a little too quickly, and it's likely to jar the unsuspecting reader. Still, there is a good deal to be liked here; this is Shepard doing what Shepard does best, and he does it very well indeed. *** ½

VIATOR is a lovely outing, with some of Shepard's most luminous prose to date. The plot of the novel is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's flawed masterpiece, "Arthur Gordon Pym," and like "Pym," VIATOR's ending is far from satisfying. But this ending accounts for only 14 or so of the book's 170 pages and in no way dims the lush and illuminant prose that precedes. A gorgeous meditation on how the landscapes of the psyche, of madness, of love, of self-loathing, and--just perhaps--of other worlds can line up in precise moments of synchronicity and violence. One of the few true novels of the sublime to appear in some time: mindful on every page that the purest wonder is always shot through with danger, doubt, and despair.

Lovely language coasts in long ribbons around a tale of haunting dreams and lonely lives. Five men, formerly homeless, all of Scandinavian descent, find themselves disturbingly bound to their new job. Manpower has sent them to Alaska to assess a grounded freighter for its salvage value. The men pursue this work in ways that Wilander, the latest to arrive, finds nonsensical -- cutting and storing away bits of the ship, inventing new words. The men are reticent, secretive, unwilling to leave the ship, so Wilander acts for them, travelling into town for supplies, where he meets the beautiful and compelling Arlene. But even as Wilander begins to remold his frustrated and directionless life together into what may be a new and stronger whole, his mind is drawn into the spell of Viator and her mysteries. Images appear in the ship's walls, mirroring those his companions have seen. Is the ship's prow moving forward through the forest to a new destiny, or is he losing his fragile hold on sanity? What has happened to the Viator? And if he casts off for the greatest adventure of his life, will he lose Arlene?