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334 (novel)
Encyclopedia
334 is a science fiction
novel by American author Thomas M. Disch
, written in 1972
. It is a dystopian look at everyday life in New York City
around the year 2025.
at 334 East 11th Street, in Manhattan
. The title also refers to the year 334 AD, during the later years of the Roman Empire
; numerous comparisons are made between the decline of Rome and the future of the United States
.
has made housing and other resources scarce; the response is a program of compulsory birth control
and eugenics
. A welfare state
provides for basic needs through an all-encompassing agency called MODICUM, but there is an extreme class
division between welfare recipients and professionals.
The novel consists of five independent novellas (previously published separately) with a common setting but different characters, and a longer sub-novel called "334" whose many short sections trace the members of a single family forward and backward in time. The sections are as follows:
as one of the 100 best science-fiction novels
written since World War II
. Samuel R. Delany
's The American Shore (1978) is a book-length critical essay on the novella "Angouleme"; Delany argues that despite the lack of any scientific themes in "Angouleme", its speculative setting makes it inherently science fiction. The novel was nominated for a 1974 Nebula Award
. Previously, the novella "334" won a Locus Poll Award
in 1973.
, Melmoth
, Stanford White
, The Confessions of St. Augustine
, Pale Fire
, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
, and The Hills of Switzerland; the last is the title of one of Louis Sacchetti's books in Camp Concentration
.
Several usages of future slang in early editions of the novel were "corrected" to standard spellings in the 1999 Vintage Books edition. Two of these, "mickeymouse" and "sexlife", were contractions indicating the increasingly casual usage of the phrases; another, "gorillas" for members of the Marines, was changed to "guerrillas", but may have been an intentional pun due to the black masks worn by the soldiers. The novel is dedicated to "Jerry Mundis, who lived here."
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel by American author Thomas M. Disch
Thomas M. Disch
Thomas Michael Disch was an American science fiction author and poet. He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book – previously called "Best Non-Fiction Book" – in 1999, and he had two other Hugo nominations and nine Nebula Award nominations to his credit, plus one win of the John W...
, written in 1972
1972 in literature
The year 1972 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Fiction:*Richard Adams - Watership Down*Jorge Amado - Teresa Batista Cansada da Guerra *Martin Amis - The Rachel Papers...
. It is a dystopian look at everyday life in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
around the year 2025.
Title
Most of the novel's characters live in a huge housing projectPublic housing
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the...
at 334 East 11th Street, in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. The title also refers to the year 334 AD, during the later years of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
; numerous comparisons are made between the decline of Rome and the future of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Plot summary
The future in 334 has brought few technological advances except for new medical techniques and recreational drugs. There have been no dramatic disasters, but overpopulationOverpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
has made housing and other resources scarce; the response is a program of compulsory birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
and eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
. A welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...
provides for basic needs through an all-encompassing agency called MODICUM, but there is an extreme class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
division between welfare recipients and professionals.
The novel consists of five independent novellas (previously published separately) with a common setting but different characters, and a longer sub-novel called "334" whose many short sections trace the members of a single family forward and backward in time. The sections are as follows:
- "The Death of Socrates": A high-school student finds that, due to poor scores on his Regents ExaminationsRegents ExaminationsRegents High School examinations, sometimes shortened to the Regents, are mandatory in New York State through the New York State Education Department, designed and administered under the authority of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York...
and his father's health history, he has been permanently forbidden to have children; he searches for ways to get extra credit. - "Bodies": Porters at Bellevue HospitalBellevue Hospital CenterBellevue Hospital Center, most often referred to as "Bellevue", was founded on March 31, 1736 and is the oldest public hospital in the United States. Located on First Avenue in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, Bellevue is famous from many literary, film and television...
moonlight as body-snatchers catering to a necrophiliacNecrophiliaNecrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses,It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from the ancient Greek words: νεκρός and φιλία...
brothel. Their task is complicated by the desire of some patients to be cryonicallyCryonicsCryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology...
preserved for a better future. - "Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire": A privileged government worker, trying to decide where to send her son to school, pursues a parallel existence in a hallucinogen-assisted role-playing gameRole-playing gameA role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
set in the year 334. - "Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come": A young professional man and woman face marital conflicts and parenthood, with several twists unique to the 2020s.
- "Angouleme": A group of highly educated prepubescent children decides to commit a gratuitous murder in Battery Park.
- "334": Vignettes of the Hanson family from 2021 to 2025.
Characters
- Mrs. Hanson: An elderly widow living at 334. Mother to Lottie, Shrimp, and Boz.
- Lottie Hanson: An unemployed single mother living at 334.
- Shrimp Hanson: Considered genetically desirable for her unusual intelligence, therefore has a free pass from the government to have children, although she is actually motivated by a fetishParaphiliaParaphilia is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her...
for artificial insemination. - Boz Hanson: Unemployed, former resident of 334, managed to leave by marrying Milly.
- Milly Holt: A professional sex demonstrator for the high schools. Was Birdie's girlfriend, now married to Boz.
- Ab Holt: Manages the morgue at Bellevue Hospital. Milly's father.
- Birdie Ludd: A high-school student living as a "temp" in a stairwell of 334.
- Frances Schaap: A prostitute living at 334. Like many people in the 2020s, she has lupusLupus erythematosusLupus erythematosus is a category for a collection of diseases with similar underlying problems with immunity . Symptoms of these diseases can affect many different body systems, including joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, heart, and lungs...
. - Alexa Miller: A MODICUM administrator, responsible for the Hansons.
- Tancred Miller: Alexa's son.
- Amparo Martinez: Lottie's daughter.
- Bill Harper, aka Little Mister Kissy Lips: Son of a television executive, classmate of Tancred and Amparo.
Critical reception
334 was selected by David PringleDavid Pringle
David Pringle is a Scottish science fiction editor.Pringle served as the editor of Foundation, an academic journal, from 1980 through 1986, during which time he became one of the prime movers of the collective which founded Interzone in 1982...
as one of the 100 best science-fiction novels
Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels
Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984 is a nonfiction book by David Pringle, published by Xanadu in 1985. The foreword is by Michael Moorcock....
written since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Samuel R. Delany
Samuel R. Delany
Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...
's The American Shore (1978) is a book-length critical essay on the novella "Angouleme"; Delany argues that despite the lack of any scientific themes in "Angouleme", its speculative setting makes it inherently science fiction. The novel was nominated for a 1974 Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
. Previously, the novella "334" won a Locus Poll Award
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
in 1973.
Other
Shrimp watches 54 movies at home. Besides existing films, Disch lists some proposed future works including Leaves of GrassLeaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman . Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death...
, Melmoth
Melmoth the Wanderer
Melmoth the Wanderer is a gothic novel published in 1820, written by Charles Robert Maturin .- Synopsis :...
, Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...
, The Confessions of St. Augustine
Confessions (St. Augustine)
Confessions is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by St. Augustine of Hippo, written between AD 397 and AD 398. Modern English translations of it are sometimes published under the title The Confessions of St...
, Pale Fire
Pale Fire
Pale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti is a book-length psychiatric case study by Milton Rokeach, concerning his experiment with a group of schizophrenic patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan....
, and The Hills of Switzerland; the last is the title of one of Louis Sacchetti's books in Camp Concentration
Camp Concentration
Camp Concentration is a 1968 science fiction novel by American author Thomas M. Disch.-Plot introduction:The book is set during a war, projected from the Vietnam War, in which the United States is apparently criminally involved...
.
Several usages of future slang in early editions of the novel were "corrected" to standard spellings in the 1999 Vintage Books edition. Two of these, "mickeymouse" and "sexlife", were contractions indicating the increasingly casual usage of the phrases; another, "gorillas" for members of the Marines, was changed to "guerrillas", but may have been an intentional pun due to the black masks worn by the soldiers. The novel is dedicated to "Jerry Mundis, who lived here."
Release details
- Original publication of novellas:
- "The Death of Socrates": as "Problems of Creativeness", in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...
, April 1967 - "Bodies": in QuarkQuark (anthology series)Quark is an anthology book series devoted to avant-garde science fiction and related material, edited by fiction-writer and critic Samuel R. Delany and poet and editor Marilyn Hacker; four volumes were published in 1970 and 1971...
#4, 1971 - "Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire": in Bad Moon Rising, 1973.
- "Emancipation": in New Dimensions #1, 1971
- "Angouleme": in New WorldsNew Worlds (magazine)New Worlds was a British science fiction magazine which was first published professionally in 1946. For 25 years it was widely considered the leading science fiction magazine in Britain, publishing 201 issues up to 1971...
, 1971 - "334": in New WorldsNew Worlds (magazine)New Worlds was a British science fiction magazine which was first published professionally in 1946. For 25 years it was widely considered the leading science fiction magazine in Britain, publishing 201 issues up to 1971...
, 1972
- "The Death of Socrates": as "Problems of Creativeness", in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
- 1972, UK, MacGibbon & Kee, ISBN 0-261-63283-3, hardcover
- 1974, US, Avon Books, paperback
- 1974, UK, Sphere, paperback
- 1976, US, Gregg Press, hardcover
- 1981, Australia, Magnum, paperback
- 1987, US, Carroll & Graf, paperback
- 1999, US, Vintage Books/Random House, ISBN 0-375-70544-9, trade paperback