First published in 2008; published digitally by Open Road Media on September 2, 2014
If Camus wrote science fiction, something like Cosmocopia might have been the result. Absurdist in approach, inventive in style, and imaginative in content, Cosmocopia is an offbeat novel that introduces the reader to a world that is recognizable for all its absurdity. It is, in fact, just as arbitrarily cruel and rewarding as the world we inhabit.
Cosmocopia is a parallel universe story. The “Cosmocopia” is, in fact, a collection of universes shaped like a horn of plenty. At the small end of the horn (or so the legend goes) resides the Conceptus, the creator of the Cosmocopia. Each new universe takes its place on the ever-expanding outer ring.
Frank Lazorg, an aging artist, has not produced any work since his stroke. He receives as a gift a package of powder from a rare beetle. He is told he can use it to produce a beautiful crimson paint. Feeling compelled to put a bit of the powder on his tongue, Lazord is instantly invigorated. After experimenting with the powder, he contacts his former model and lover, a young woman who abandoned him shortly after he lost his artistic powers. Lazorg, who wants to complete his masterpiece and needs her as his muse, does not react well when she rejects his plea. What follows can be described as an act of artistic inspiration … or desperation.
Meanwhile, Crutchsump and her pet wurzel live on a parallel world in Sidetrack City, where Crutchsump ekes out a meager living by collecting bones. The shifflet skeletons are easy to find but the monster that has recently haunted the Mudflats has deterred the other bonepickers. When Crutchsump encounters the monster … well, it isn’t what she expected.
For reasons that are only superficially explained, Lazorg comes to live in Crutchsump’s world. Crutchsump’s people are pretty much human except for a key anatomical difference. Unisexual genitals are located where a human's mouth would be.
Crutchsum's world is pretty much like Earth but for another key difference. Lazorg is frustrated to discover that he cannot paint because Crutchsump’s universe does not allow three dimensions to be represented as two. It is possible, however, to make sculptures out of a cosmic material that can be accessed with the right tool. Lazorg’s experimentation with the new art form is a transformative experience for both Lazorg and Crutchsump, but it is the transformation of Lazorg that underpins the novel.
By the end, Cosmocopia crosses the threshold from the strange to the bizarre. The point of the novel, apart from telling an amusing story, might lie in Crutchsump’s insistence, in the face of adversity, that we fashion our own destinies. In other words, it is pointless to blame Conceptus for problems that we bring about ourselves. On the other hand, a reader might find Lazorg’s point of view more convincing: the universe is unfair and if Conceptus isn’t to blame for that, who is? Although Lazorg is confronted with a choice as the novel nears a resolution, Paul Di Filippo seems to suggest that there may be no reason to choose one philosophy over the other. Life unfolds. We influence some of it, some we can’t, and in the end, that’s life … whatever universe we happen to find ourselves in.
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