Language English Pages 215 Originally published 1977 Page count 215 Cover artist Fred Marcellino | Media type Print (Hardback) ISBN 978-0-394-40794-4 Genre Science Fiction | |
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Similar The Letter Left to Me, Hind's Kidnap, Ancient History, Lookout Cartridge, Cannonball | ||
Plus is Joseph McElroy's fifth novel. Set in some unspecified future, it tells the story of Imp Plus, a disembodied brain controlling IMP, the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform, in earth orbit. The novel consists of Imp Plus's thoughts as he tries to comprehend his limited existence, while struggling with language, limited memories, and communicating with Ground Control. The plot is driven by Imp Plus's recall of fragments of his past and of language, his improving comprehension of his present, all while his medical condition gradually deteriorates.
Contents
McElroy denies that the novel is science fiction, unless "science" is used in its etymological sense of "knowing".
The novel was reprinted as an e-book by Dzanc Books in 2014, with an introductory 2012 poem "A Green of its Own Breathing" by Sarah Grindley, dedicated to "Joe McElroy & Imp Plus".
Reception
The gradual derangement of Imp Plus ... is observed with the lurid precision of brilliant microphotography. McElroy's slow, demanding traceries of awareness do not always escape tedium; it is the price of the strange and valuable task he has set himself. An exhausting, disorienting work of discovery.
Remarkable...brilliant...very moving...McElroy's achievement...may help us home from the apocalypse: Humanity is not what we've lost, it is what we grimly hang onto, even when we're not persuaded that it's still there.
Trivia
The accompanying author photograph is the only such author photograph of McElroy sporting a beard.