by Ray Wallace

Dr. Identity
by Harlan D. Wilson
Raw Dog Screaming Press     


When you open a D. Harlan Wilson book, you expect something weird, something wild, something surreal. At least I do. Known for his bizarro style of writing and rather skewed vision of modern reality as captured in his short story collections The Kafka Effect and Stranger On the Loose, D. Harlan now sets his sights on the future with the bizarro sci-fi novel entitled Dr. Identity. And what a future it is!

The book is set in a country called Amerika, in a city called Bliptown, and begins at a place called Corndog University where a certain professor (or plaquedemic, as these teachers of higher learning are referred to in this bizarro society), who cannot remember his own name and is therefore called ‘Blah or Dr. ‘Blah, is about to have his whole world turned upside down. You see, he is in no mood to face the group of student-things he is required to teach one day and so sends his doppelganger, the titular Dr. Identity, in his stead. Unfortunately, Dr. 'Blah’s double commits the unsanctioned murder of one of the student-things making him and Dr. ‘Blah fugitives from the law. What should they do? Go into hiding? Nearly impossible with the Pigs, “genetically souped up pseudonyms-made-flesh,” hot on their tails. And so they flee Corndog University and ignite a media frenzy as an apparently malfunctioning Dr. Identity sets out on a murderous rampage the likes of which Bliptown has never seen before. All of this is caught on camera by the seemingly omnipresent Papanazi, eager to capture the next lucrative piece of shocking footage.

At its heart, Dr. Identity is an inventive and entertaining black comedy set in a futuristic version of our own society where all of our worst excesses have run amok. Sex and ultra-violence, while verbally condemned, are celebrated by the media and given thousands of video channels through which it can be experienced. In the schizoverse—the mutant descendant of today’s internet—users can inhabit bodies with ridiculously enlarged genitalia and molest or destroy one another at random. And just beyond the walls that surround Bliptown grows a rain forest inhabited by dinosaurs and other terrible creatures where criminals and undesirables are exiled to face their doom.

Fans of Steven Aylett’s Accomplice series will feel right at home in D. Harlan Wilson’s Amerika, where the strange settings are outdone only by the even stranger characters that inhabit them. For lack of a better cliché, this is “through the looking glass” fiction done with style and wit. Be forewarned, though, Dr. Identity and other books of this stylistic bent are not for everyone. Only those with a yearning for something different, something truly off-the-wall, something that pushes the boundaries of good taste and what they’ve come to expect from a novel should take the time to journey through D. Harlan Wilson’s bizarro future world. And those who do will find the experience entertaining and at times maybe even a little enlightening.