Appleseed

Appleseed is the John Clute novel that almost no one was expecting and that almost no one knows how to read on a first attempt. Clute is best known as the co-editor (with Peter Nicholls and David Langford) of the canonical Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and as one of the most consistently demanding genre critics of his generation. His own SF novel, when it finally arrived, was as dense and formally challenging as you would expect from his criticism.

The plot involves Stink (the human protagonist), an interstellar trading mission, and a galactic-scale infection of "lens flu" that is corrupting the fundamental ability of inhabitants of the galaxy to think clearly. The prose is the engine. Clute writes in a particular high-density genre-saturated voice that requires the reader to do significant active assembly.

Whether you can ride with the register depends on your taste for difficult prose. I find it deeply rewarding. Others find it impenetrable.

Four stars. Recommended only to readers with a real taste for formally challenging SF. Not the entry point for SF; if anything, the entry point for late-period Clute as a writer rather than a critic.