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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Steve Aylett?

04:43 / 09.10.01

anyone read this guy? Slaughtermatic, Atom, etc? I've recently been told he's the most amazing, ultra-compressed doubleplus amazing author. and counts GM as a worshipping fan. anyone have any opions? sounds like slaughtermatic is the one, huh?

more importantly, does anyone have spare copies of the british printings? Graham Roundthwaite is one of my favorite pop artists, and the 4 Wall 8 Windows printing in the states has some other garbage-assed art instead,

12:30 / 09.10.01

I've read Slaughtermatic. It's brilliant, if you ask me - speedy, hilarious, ultra-pumped sci-fi stuff. Heady philosophical concepts fly faster and more furiously than bullets. I'm now on a search for some of his other books, since they're fairly hard to find here.

13:33 / 09.10.01

Slaughtermatic seemed to me to be a bit too plot and character free. It doesn't help that everyone talks in the same gag a minute style. His short story collection The Crime Factory is much better in my opinion, as it gives you neat little bite sized chunks which better off-set his spectacular prose...

13:33 / 09.10.01

i didn't really like slaughermatic, jeff noon is better for that kinda thing. i bought it for the graham rounthwaite cover art too!

(speaking of which, check out fashion illustration now, a book of neat pictures by roundthwaite and a load of other cool peeps.)

15:04 / 09.10.01

that man who did the old Off-Centre posters/flyers you mean? I feel his shit is now OLD. the cover of aylett's new book is by someone else, and i fear it looks even older. (but, thank all the fuck, not OLDER)

15:10 / 09.10.01

he still does the off-centre promo stuff. we have a recent flyer on our fridge, even though i haven't been to OC since the year 333 opened. but back to aylett....

15:16 / 09.10.01

he still does the off-centre promo stuff. we have a recent flyer on our fridge, even though i haven't been to OC since the year 333 opened. but back to aylett....

12:46 / 10.10.01

see my Steve Aylett thread

Actually, I don't like him half as much as I made out in that thread. His use of language and sheer weirdness is something to behold, no doubt, but after a few chapters I started to find it massively irritating and gave up half way through.

Couldn't quite say why.

14:04 / 27.11.03

I read most of his short story collection 'Toxicology' recently, and bloody loved it. Loads of ideas, hundreds of gags. 'The Waffle Code' and the PG Wodehouse pastiche 'Dread Honour' had me trying not to laugh out loud on the bus.

Hated it at first, mind. I had to re-read the first page 3 or 4 times in order to get used to his style and figure out how to read it properly - at first I tried rattling through it at normal reading speed, and found myself thinking "bah, this is just a load of meaningless, stream-of-consciousness bollocks" but when I slowed down and digested it a little lump at a time I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of it actually made some sort of sense. Btw, the cover pic (Graham Roundthwaite) nearly put me off taking the book out at all - "Oh, great, a bloke with a gun, done in a club flyer style".

Glad I stuck with it, although about three quarters of the way through I suddenly lost the urge to carry on. Can only handle it in small amounts, I reckon.

[irrelevant, gossipy aside] Has anyone met him? I've heard (via somebody who did a reading with him) that he can be a right rude sod, in a snotty, "I am cooler than you" teenager kinda way. [/irrelevant, gossipy aside]

15:16 / 27.11.03

mmm. he does strike me as the kind of writer who you'd never get sick of bouncing off your fist. he wants to stay out my way that one

Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless

17:17 / 27.11.03

He has some cool ideas, like the various demons in the Accomplice books, but his obsession with epigrams stops him writing decent novels. Too much stuff is half thought out and generally half arsed. E.g. the map of Accomplice, filled up with important locations + with nowhere for the ordinary citizenry to live. Some of the epigrams are good, but only a few. Given that there are tens of them on every page of every book, its not a great hit rate.
Also, he has a list of every epigram he's ever written on his website Every single one in the list (and there are hundreds) has the word 'Aylett' written beneath it. Inflamed ego ahoy.

Phex: Dorset Doom

20:52 / 27.11.03

If you've seen his website you jus' might have seen the 'quotes' page, undoubtedly compiled by the man himself.
It's about fifty pages of A4 long, seems like the guy has just a tiny little issue with his own self-importance.
Slaughtermatic was (in places) the bomb though.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:57 / 29.11.03

Has anyone met him?

Guilty. I started an argument between him and China Mieville. Well, I say "started", but actually I suppose I just facilitated its resumption. Completely unintentional. Neither of them is exactly restful to be around, but Aylett seemed nice enough when I was gushing that I loved his work and so on. That's when a writer can really put the knife in (Russell Taylor, I'm thinking of you...) Unlike China or Mike Marshall (Smith), though, Steve Aylett wasn't born gorgeous, so it's not hard to see why he might be a little on the defensive side now that he's, y'know, a litgod.

I loved 'Bigot Hall', and was delighted by 'Crime Studio' although I was also a bit horrified because I was writing similar things. Not surprising, I suppose - post Gibson/Runyon madness - with a dash of Wodehouse - isn't the hardest idea to come up with. Fortunately, he's now writing things I wouldn't, so I can go back to admiring him. I think 'Atom' is my favourite.

11:48 / 29.11.03

Had a beer with Aylett at a reading thing earlier this year. He seemed alright. He was a bit excited about his work I suppose, but that's quite an easy trap to fall into for anyone. He didn't really strike me as the raging ego-beast he's being painted as here.

16:30 / 29.11.03

"Shamanspace" was a fun read. I can easily see why GM would write a blurb for it; its got a very Invisible-esque feel. (I can't really comment about his other books though, not having read them.)

12:59 / 16.03.04

Steve Aylett is writing an issue of Alan Moore's Tom Strong: Linky.

21:51 / 16.03.04

I've read a few of his. The Crime Studio was very funny, I thought, but exhausting to read. If you like good lines, this is a good book for you.
The Inflatable Volunteer was rubbish, IMHO. It just was plotless and impossible to follow. When the characters are as nebulous and similar as his, you need a hook to hang your attention on, goddamn it.
I thought that Only An Alligator was really very good. The characters and world seemed better defined, and the pace more relaxed. Maybe a good place to start?
I'm looking forward to Tom Strong #27 now. Are there any other cool guest writers lined up?

03:57 / 17.03.04

Ellis, probably. Mark 'Cadillacs and Dinosaurs' Schultz?

Depends what you think's cool.

09:19 / 17.03.04

I read "Bigot Hall" recently and thought it was absolutely superb - the best of his books that I've read so far. All the crazy-ass comedy shtick was of course present in spades and as funny as ever (sad to say, Aylett is probably the only author whose books still regularly make me laugh out loud), but beneath all that, sections of it were a really beautifully written tribute to the whole kind of gothic mansion/isolated childhood/incest aesthetic. The chapter where the narrator and his sister chase each other through endless layers of lucid dream-worlds is brilliant.. it's easy to see why Michael Moorcock and Grant Morrison rate Aylett so highly.