Daryl Gregory's first novel, Pandemonium, is an unusually strong debut, a
quirky fantasy whose Pynchonesque elements are more statisfying than the plot to
which they are harnessed. That plot, ar at any rate its resolution, draws too
heavily on Twilight Zone tropes and a classic Harlan Ellison story whose
title alone would qualify as a major spoiler. But the novel transcends its debt
to these sources thanks to a vivid narrative voice, an oddball cast of
characters, and a pervasive sense of anarchy that seems perpetually on the verge
of spinning out of control.
The sense of a book teetering on the edge of chaos is entirely appropriate,
however, because as the punning title suggests, Pandemonium is about
chaos… and about demons. Or something that the people of Gregory's alternate
Earth call by that name, lacking a better one.
It's an Earth very much like ours—except for the fact that, beginning in the
1950s, isolated and seemingly random instances of demonic possession began to
occur, causing subsequent history to diverge from what we know. Some of these
changes are wittily rung: for example, after President Eisenhower dies as a
result of one incident, Vice President Nixon assumes the presidency and attacks
the plague of demons with all the paranoid energy that, in our reality, he
reserved for communists, Democrats, and journalists. In another nice touch, the
SF community has embraced the phenomenon, giving rise to DemoniCons that feature
earnest panel discussions, late-night drinking sessions, and obsessive cosplay.
The so-called demons go by such names as the Captain, the Truth, the Painter,
and the Little Angel. As these names imply, the demons are, or seem to be,
expressions of various archetypes pulled from the collective unconscious, and
their appearances always involve the performance of actions—often with a
supernatural or superhuman aspect—that manifest their archetypal identities. The
Truth, for example, is a merciless avenger: here he cold-bloodedly executes a
certain infamous murderer whom a jury has inexplicably acquitted. The Little
Angel appears in hospitals and nursing homes, where she grants a merciful
quietus to patients… whether they want it or not.
Those possessed by demons—should they survive, and many do not—have little
memory of the experience, but are marked by it in various ways. Which brings us
to our hero and narrator, Del Pierce, who, at the age of five, was possessed by
the demon known as the Hellion. The Hellion is the archetypal mischievous and
irrepressible boy, Dennis the Menace on steroids, with a dash of Damien thrown
in for good—or bad—measure. As the Hellion, Del puts out his mother's eye with a
slingshot pellet, leaving her disfigured and himself wracked with guilt. Now, as
a young adult, a blow to the head results in a resurgence of the Hellion, and
Del begins to suspect that the demon never vacated its possession of him, but
instead has lain dormant within his psyche for years. The Hellion is waking up…
and it is seriously pissed off.
Del, understandably terrified, seeks the help of a leading scientist whose
theories on demonic possession seem to offer a shred of hope. But instead of
answers, he finds himself suspected of murder, pursued by the Human League, a
shadowy group devoted to the extermination of all demons, and dependent upon the
good graces of a bad-tempered, bald-headed, seriously sexy exorcist named Mother
Mariette. Oh, and then there's the entity calling itself Valis, who claims to
have possessed a hack writer by the name of Philip K. Dick.
Gregory's appropriation of pop-cultural icons is shrewd, amusing, and, as with
Valis, often surprisingly poignant. As things get progressively weirder and
wilder for Del and his older brother, Lew, who, against his better judgment, is
roped into helping him, and progressively hotter for Del and Mother Mariette,
who it turns out was also possessed as a child, Pandemonium bristles with
frantic, feverish inventiveness, twist following twist at a dizzying rate. Only
when Gregory starts trying to reel his book back in does its energy and
imagination flag. A certain predictability settles in. But by then, Del's
engaging voice had long since won me over.