Evolution, ethnography, epidemic – this is the soup from which Dengue BoyA brilliant strange new novel of Argentine Michel Nieva, appeared. Eponymous Dengue Boy is a hybrid mosquito that can be an experiment, a genetic mutant, or the result of some scary corporate crime. He may all be three at the same time. In any case, the massive creature is not important, which we find in 2272 on what Argentina's remains after melting the Antarctic Ice Cap gave most of the world either underwater or countless hot.
It was hot enough to roast a turkey for 20 minutes flat on what passed for room temperature in California. The “Argentine Caribbean,” meanwhile, remains a relatively balmy throughout the year average of 140 degree Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). It was a little surprise, then, that the developers were busy with terraforming the Antarctic Caribbean, engineering whole biomes to re-create a small cut of soil in, uh, soil. For a flat fee, clients can choose packages of five, 10, or 20 species to live their biome en masse. Who cares about an Amazon rainforest when you can make 30?
Humanity hangs, more or less, like a bug under a stone. On the other side of the stone are the privileged children of Viroeconomy (more later). These kids plug themselves with virtual headsets and soak themselves in conquering fantasies like game Christians V Indians 2. One character is cautious about getting sheep: near-futile flesh lights with endless orifices to explore. Some have a whole wardrobe full of things.
I mentioned sheep that would not be prurient but because they get something about the odd Dengue Boy. All of this is very fat. The division heads, the tenthearts that go down, the internal becoming outards – the book is a disturbance of the sensations. One can call the book “Climate Fiction,” which is set to a world that is clear in the death of climate disaster, but it will cite the terrifying novel, which has skipped the whole economy, sexuality, biology, and temporary without really breathing.
Any novel in which the opponent finds themselves in an insect body takes an inevitable comparison to Metamorphosis. Illustrated by the book flap Dengue Boy As a “extraordinary, kafkaoesque picture of a demented future.” But in Kafka's novel, Gregor Samsa woke up to find herself changed in a huge bug; His immense illness came from his knowledge of what he was before and the life he wanted to crawl back.
Dengue Boy is always a dengue boy. He has no change where he should have terms. It is the outside of the world to be brought to get to know him. “Where his mother wants to see the pudgy arms, his wings are emerging, their nerve endings like varicose veins of a disgusting old man, and where his mother wants to hear Chuckles and lovely Yelps, there is a still -like, annoying buzz to drive even the most silent soul to lose hope.
In MetamorphosisGregor Samsa's transformation is a one-way street. But the Dengue Boy is going through a storm of changes, such as evolution that works fast forward, to unclear where the time or fiction begins or ends.
In Dengue Boy The billionaire class is not tech bros, but the speculators in the so-called Viroeconomy, who bet on which disease is about to remove and then makes a stockpiling killing will be the remedies. In conjunction with the developers who build ground resorts ceded by retreating ice covers, they are the only real winners in the disaster economy. It takes a certain type of person to view a landscape riven by destruction and see a chance for luxury condos.
Which all sounds a bit depressed, except Nieva's visceral, surreal prose – translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery – is anything. It is a book that takes up the terrible strange in the world and it explodes with something that is both terrible and impossible to stay away. It reminds me of the last scene of the movie PearlWhere Mia Goth faces the camera with a Rictus Grin who is dragging and continuing, until she is sobbing, slowly Avoiding a Grimace of deep uneasy as the end of the credits plays.
Dengue Boy Playing this trick upside down. It's a grimace that becomes a smile. This is a camera shot that flows around many times when you're not sure if this is the director or the actor you look at, and in any case you feel frustrated or are you just surprisingly excited?
It was weird sliced, spun with a salad spinner, and served with some indescribable gunk on top. It's delicious, if you can stomach it.
