You may know Jack Womack — and if you don’t you should remedy that. He is an author who is generally lumped in with the cyberpunk movement, where his novels fit in extremely well, even though there is generally an absence of cyber. Most well-known is most likely his Dryco-Cycle. Or rather, -Series.

This book — “Let’s Put the Future Behind Us” — is not part of that, but it also fits the bill for cyberpunk without cyber, as it is set in one of the most cyberpunkish societies we have seen so far: Yeltsin’s post-Soviet Russia. A time of corporations foreign and domestic, capitalism unrestrained, gangsters, corruption, alcoholism, and violence. A society where the oppressive element of supreme order has fallen away, and in the vacuum something is struggling to emerge.

What is it about?

The book follows a certain time in the life of Max Borodin, a former aparatchik with lots of contacts in the bureaucratic elements that remain after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but with an enterprising spirit. So he became a “businessman”. In Cyberpunk you would call him a Fixer, and he brings everything to the table that this needs: Cash from mystrious past successes, contacts to play with, and a quick and imaginative mind that helps him to anticipate, understand, and solve problems in smart and effective ways, with witty lies, sensible bribes, and by helping one hand wash another.

The first half of the novel we see Max move within his habitat, an environment that he has under complete control: A wife who runs her own businesses separate from his, a brother who also thinks of himself as a businessman, a best friend who is a fellow businessman with his own network, and this best friend’s wife, who is Max’ mistress, and a host of contacts, some more legit, some more criminal, all of them solidly living in a vast morally grey area that makes up the whole spectrum of 1990ies’ Russia, with no room left for black or white. Everyone is dirty, everyone has secrets, and you cannot fully trust anyone… but if you have your ducks in a row you can swim on this filth pretty fine and find profit in all things.

Or can you?

Because then by the middle of the book things change. We were on a pretty safe and entertaining ride on a grimy dinghi in a sea of light dirt. We were following a little weasel who is a shifty and tricksy and lies, but who is ultimately not a bad guy. Maxim is immoral and does illegal things, never bothers to think about wrong or right for long, but he always remains inside a sphere that could be called “mostly okay”. A likeable fellow in corrupto-land.

Then the ride gets a bit more rocky.

Through no fault of his own, Maxim gets pushed into contact with various bigger fish in this ocean. Politicians of nationalist or post-communist splinter parties, gangsters with international reach, deals with foreigners, and suddenly it turns out that “ultimately not a bad guy” and “mostly okay” can make you a sucker and a victim very fast, and in this Russia there is not only the light grey that Max calls his home turf, but also a very, very much darker aspect to this corrupt filth that can swallow people whole and never even bother to spit them out.

As things turn from funny to frightening, surreal and phantasmagoric within hours Max must think faster than ever if he wants to stay ahead of the sharks; and he must explore his own capacity for going deeper into the realm of dirt.

Russian Non-Russian Russian

It is stunning to think that this so very convincing voice that the book is in, this Russian-ness, actually comes from an American. Reading the book it feels so authentic that it is almost impossible to believe that this light-hearted and casual way of describing life in Yeltsin’s Moscow is not, in fact, written by a Muscovite. The little jokes, the tiny anecdotes, small matter-of-fact side commentaries, they make Russia feel so alive and tangible.

The tone of the book instils at once an appreciation for the beauty of Russia, as well as a cyncial contempt of it, and a sadness about the Russia that could be but isn’t; a love for the Russian people and a warning of the Russian ways of life. A prose hymn to the multi-faceted thing that was the chaos after the fall.

How is it possible that someone from Kentucky can sound so Russian? Jack Womack spent only a short time in Moscow — he very obviously spent this time well. Breathing in the atmosphere, living Russian, so he was able to recreate it so convincingly.

image: Filip Filipović from Pixabay