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A MOUTHFUL OF TONGUES: HER TOTIPOTENT TROPICANALIA
by Paul Di Filippo
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Wildside Press (2002-04-01)
ISBN: 1587155060
EAN: 9781587155062
Dewy Decimal #: 813
Hardcover: 184 pages
Release Date: 2005-09-29
SKU: 082308041
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: exlibrary copy in good condition with the usual markings and stickers
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In his new novel, A Mouthful of Tongues, Paul Di Filippo, cult author of Ciphers, The Steampunk Trilogy, and Ribofunk, makes his boldest fictional statement yet. Writing in the tradition of Kathy Acker and Samuel R. Delany, but with a subversive brio all his own, Di Filippo here imagines a true erotic revolution, a crusade of the libido that will topple a corrupt and jaded future world order, and possibly much besides . . . Kerry Hackett is just another corporate pawn in the urban cauldron of 2015, besieged on all sides by those who would possess and exploit her. Driven to desperation, she undergoes a mysterious transformation into an alchemical goddess, wanderer of the timelines. In a magnificently evoked parallel Brazil, a place of seedy splendor and charismatic lusts, Kerry, or that which she has become, tests her carnal arsenal on targets deserving and undeserving; but the attention of a more powerful agency has been attracted, and a yet stranger metamorphosis awaits. A tale of heartbreak, revenge, and liberation, written in Paul Di Filippo's most fantastically effervescent prose, A Mouthful of Tongues is a work of science fiction which crosses boundaries and breaks taboos with brilliant savage abandon. It can only add to its author's rapidly growing following, and will shake the world of speculative fiction to its very foundations. "Out of a rich impasto of language, a story that is sensual, sexual, and hot takes shape around one of the most engaging heroines since Southern and Hoffenberg's Candy." --Samuel R. Delany "Sacred sin, that's Di Filippo's force here. We have participated in a transpersonal act that lifts our consciousness above the situational polarities of morality and into the psyche's unknown, where objective energetic processes fuse dream and matter--and make us us. A ruthless fantasy of aggressive sexuality and archaic intentions." --A. A. Attanasio
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Customer Reviews
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Surely, there must be a point...
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-09-02
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Kerry is an average girl - working as an assistant/secretary in a biotechnology job, supporting her boyfriend ill with something like AIDS, getting hit on by her boss - when she releases the benthic, a top-secret project at her firm. The benthic is a force of living energy, with a magical ability to transmute any matter it touches. Given shape by Kerry's emotions at the time of the release, the benthic travels to Bahia, a tropical resort island, where its sexual hunger rampages, uncontrolleable and unstoppable.
Delany had "Hogg," and Di Filippo has "A Mouthful of Tongues." The explicit sexual context comprises all of the book, resting in a thin frame of a story as summarized above. It's impossible to open a random page and not be in the middle of something explicit. As I'd started reading this as a science fiction book, I was disappointed that there wasn't more explanation and elaboration. What is the benthic? (My little description above is pure conjecture.) What drove it, why was it so hungry, and what did it want? To what original purpose was it designed, and on what scientific or at least philosophical principles? Was it erotic in nature, destruction and creation, kindness and cruelty - all expressed through sex, or was that only one possible expression? How did it reason? I was also interested to read more about the near-future world Di Filippo briefly sketched (80% of the book takes place in a tropical jungle).
Perhaps it was the author's intention to leave these questions to us. The writing and the prose is excellent, but the overall impression is less than satisfying.
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A Grand Erotic Science Fiction Tale From Di Filippo
Rating  (5)
Date: 2003-07-31
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Paul Di Filippo is highly regarded by his fellow science fiction writers; one of the finest practitioners of the subgenre popularly known as "steampunk". Here he steals a few pages from Delaney and Dick, crafting a splendidly well written erotic near future fantasy that is as well told as any from these other great science fiction writers. It is one of the finest erotic tales in science fiction I have come across, rich in the magical realism that I found prevalent in works such as those by Borges and cyberpunk fiction writer Lucius Shepherd. Di Filippo is as skillful a stylist as William Gibson in "A Mouthful Tongues", and has created female characters as memorable as any of Gibson's. Yet please note that this may not be a fine book for everyone since some may be disturbed by the intense erotic content prevalent through much of the novel.
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