City newsrooms bustle and buzz, the pavements are awash with swarming crowds of busy inhabitants, everyone wears hats, the women wear gloves and fitted dresses, all manner of fabulous vintage vehicles and trams ply the roads and heroes and villains do daily battle among the towers to gain the upper hand. Think of a comic-book Manhattan of the 1930’s, with elements of the 40’s, 50’s and occasionally the 60’s woven in for good measure and all ramped up Gotham-city-wise. Where Melbourne is decaying, filthy and dying, perpetually steaming under an acid rain, the towers of Heropa positively gleam under cloudless skies. The contrast between Heropa and Melbourne forms a vivid counterpoint in the novel. In contrast with Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat, which introduced the city, this time we visit fleetingly - most of our time in the novel will actually be spent hooked up to an IV drip and electrodes, with our consciousness lodged firmly in a virtual world called Heropa. Melbourne is not a nice place to be, a polluted, dangerous and divided place labouring under totalitarian rule, where citizens are just as likely to be ‘disappeared’ by the state as to succumb to some environmental hazard or crime.
With this novel, Andrez Bergen takes us once more into the world of his dystopian future Melbourne, Australia - the last city on Earth. Here are some first thoughts on the novel, which I highly recommend for anyone who entertains a certain class of fond childhood memories, and wants a cracking good read. Just over Christmas I was privileged to read an advanced copy of Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?, fresh off the word processor of that wizard of homage, Andrez Bergen.
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