Laidlaw, Marc Books

The 37th Mandala

Marc Laidlaw

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Attack of the Doilies!! 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Run for your life, some doilies with really funky shapes and colors are attacking! Try as I might I could not get up to the level of terror the author wanted to instill with this particular villain--the mandalas. I found the main character very unlikable so I really didn't care what happened to him. ...

Editorial Review:

Anyone who's ever wished that the charlatans of the New Age movement would get their comeuppance from a real and potent Evil, will enjoy this well-crafted horror novel. From his wicked characterization of a cynical ad-copy writer who turns to writing occult books to make a buck, to his portrayal of the moral uncertainty of the followers who blindly hunger for occult knowledge, to his evocation of scary monsters (described as "astral jellyfish," "ghostly buzzsaws," and "wheels of grainy flame") from the killing fields of Cambodia, Marc Laidlaw knows how to hit the high points. As a monsters vs. humans story, the novel's plot is a bit unsatisfying (dramatic endings are hard to pull off), but as Brian Stableford writes in Necrofile, "the strength of The 37th Mandala ... lies in its painstaking attempt to scrutinize and analyze the psychological malaise which lies at the heart of the so-called New Age."

Neon Lotus

Marc Laidlaw

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great novel with buddhist philosophy embedded. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is a truly fascinating book. It has depth and is an easy read at the same time. If you are into Buddhism or not, you will like how the story unfolds. I read it two times and still love it.

Neon Lotus 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderfully unique, readable book combining Buddhism, Magic/ Western Mysticism, and technology in a workable and enjoyable blend. Buddhists, Pagans, and "techies" I have reccomended this book to have all liked it.

Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction June 2005

david gerrold, matthew hughes, charles coleman finlay, marc laidlaw, john morressy, robert reed, harry turtledove

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'Dhalgren:' the city not yet fallen, the novel still unread. (science fiction by Samuel R. Delany): An article from: The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Marc Laidlaw

Amazon Price: $5.95 List Price: $5.95 Available for download now By: Review of Contemporary Fiction

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Editorial Review:

This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on September 22, 1996. The length of the article is 2781 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Samuel R. Delany's 'Dhalgren,' exerted influence on those who did not read it. Delany's reputation when the novel appeared was of a great writer who had quickly lost his initial force, and 'Dhalgren' was supposed to be his most significant work. These expectations combined to daunt the would-be reader. The novel's complexity and the mixed reactions it produced enhanced its stature for the non-reader, a position which becomes more mysterious and fixed with time.

Citation Details
Title: 'Dhalgren:' the city not yet fallen, the novel still unread. (science fiction by Samuel R. Delany)
Author: Marc Laidlaw
Publication: The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1996
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: v16 Issue: n3 Page: p136(6)

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Dad's Nuke

Marc Laidlaw

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A wonderfully twisted tail of power and corruption... 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

...right in your own neighborhood. This is a strange book, but one of my favorites. It gets very strange, and could easily offend at many points. If you can find a copy, give it a try. This one is definitely a step above most of Laidlaw's books.

Dad's Nuke 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Science fiction writer Marc Laidlaw's debut novel, Dad's Nuke, takes place in the near future, in those not-so-far-off days of... 1998!?

Granted, this was a novel written over twenty years ago, when the late 1990s were a looming presence within the imaginations of sci-fi writers. And though the visions of Mr. Laidlaw never have come to pass almost ten years after this novel takes place, we can't really wish that they had.

First of all, William "Dad" Johnson - the distraught yet somewhat megalomaniacal protagonist - lives with his biologically-engineered family; a wife, seven or eight kids (depending on how one classifies the youngest, a grey-skinned infant who lives on radioactive waste from the nuclear reactor in Dad's garage), and a dog named Wolfie. And his community is unlike any we have ever seen - a little suburban neighbourhood with nosy neighbours, satellite television, maybe even the odd illicit affair here and there... with each family competing against each other for the most destructive atomic weaponry they could afford upkeep on in their back yards! The community, of course, is protected from the rest of the world (which, as it turns out, has been mostly destroyed during hyper-religious warring factions' attacks).

Sound pretty far-out? Don't worry - it is, but deliberately so. Mr. Laidlaw has created a tiny little universe filled with such things as planned aging (residents of the community receive injections which cause them to age a specific number of years so that they can achieve their ultimate life goals that much faster), 15-minute family vacations to anywhere in the world (which, thanks to time-altering properties, make one feel as if one has taken a week or two away from it all), and 100% incubatory babies (so that the delicate process of making a baby is never left to the instabilities of one's body, from conception to birth)!

The story is an obvious satire on modern living, yet it doesn't hesitate to bite into the crust of real science fiction. While not bogged down in technical details, the story does meander into territory which isn't exactly lucid. For example, the reader never fully understands the significance behind various groups and elements surrounding this little community because such details are not made clear at any point, but they play a vital role in how the tale unfolds. At other times, it feels as if critical parts of the story are left out for brevity's sake, while others are included, creating a miasmic mist of images which create a toxic atmosphere, but do little to further the story. In fact, the novel reads like a semi-frightening nightmare from which the mind wants to escape, yet allows to continue to see how events unfold.

The attraction of Dad's Nuke stems from its thematic similarities with David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, without the pontification of obscure verbiage, and is mixed heartily with the surrealistic humour of Terry Gilliam's film Brazil. The downfallings - or, the reason why this novel is long out of print - can be attributed to the sketchiness of the plot, the under-development of many of the potentially rich characters, and the overall sense that the novel simply does not elaborate on the very things that would help to clarify the reasons behind why the story unfolds as it does.

Because it does merit being read, this book is a great find on the shelf of a public library, though it does not invite itself to be read more than once.

Third Force: A Novel of Gadget

Marc Laidlaw

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

this is a great book 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

this book is really great. I recently bought this book and read it in one day, go figure; i hardly ever read and i just couldn't put this down. Partly because i'm a huge Half-life fanatic. i think i might even buy the other books hes written.

All around, a good read! 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Third Force is a horror-meets-sci-fi novel. It was very original with radical new concepts which could only come from the mind of a visionary. All-in-all, The Third Force is a great book, get it now.

All around, a good read! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Third Force is a horror-meets-sci-fi novel. It was very original with radical new concepts which could only come from the mind of a visionary. All-in-all, The Third Force is a great book, get it now.

Editorial Review:

In the eighth year of the Empire, beautiful Elena Hausman is drawn into the group of scientists and secret government agents whose mission may be to save the world, or to destroy it, in a novel based on the bestselling CD-ROM, Gadget. 75,000 first printing.

Amazing Stories/No. 9

Barry B. Longyear, Marc Laidlaw, Don Webb

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Kalifornia

Marc Laidlaw

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Entertaining and savvy 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The premise of this book is that everyone (or almost everyone) is now wired to receive continuous media broadcasts, and a few lucky people are wired so they can also send broadcasts. the main characters are all family members, has-beens who were once the stars of a reality-tv-meets-the-brady-bunch type show of unmatched popularity. now, after the show ended in tragedy, they are all depressed, burned out, and suffering from various varieties of naivete. not quite a family member but almost is the lovable butler, a transgenic seal-man.

the plot of the book is entertaining, but kind of seems to fall apart towards the end, maybe because it seems to be striving for a happy ending after setting us up for bloodshed, despair, and nonchalant mayhem. i mean, the whole world is watching TV 24/7, aren't they asking for it?

the book is surprisingly well written. laidlaw takes a fairly predictable subject matter and premise, and turns it into a really entertaining satire on contemporary popular culture. the language is fresh and unexpected and the characters are compelling and believable, even the seal-man. "kalifornia" is a pretty rare find: science fiction that is immensely readable but still has literary quality and a discerning edge.

Editorial Review:

On the eve of California's bicentennial, Poppy Figueroa, a woman who, through the miracle of the wires, can share her every sensation with television viewers, plans to broadcast the birth of her baby. By the author of Dad's Nuke.