Chris reviewed Fandom of the Operator by Robert Rankin
None
2 stars
Not my favourite one of his although it does contain zombies (doesn't everything these days but this came out in 2001) and seems to be grounded in actual places and times the way a lot of his aren't although the west London of the novel is more a mythologised one (the way some recent TV series set in say Ancient Rome are really set in Hollywood's conception of same). In the case of this novel it's more the Rankinverse, complete with PP Penrose, Professor Slocombe, the Flying Swan, etc, etc - and for once possibly the only sympathetic characters are women (two of them though I don't think it passes the Bechdel Test, not that that is an indication of book quality, just of itself). Elvis and Time Sprouts - it's as though all the events of the other novels are going on and the protagonist of this one is …
Not my favourite one of his although it does contain zombies (doesn't everything these days but this came out in 2001) and seems to be grounded in actual places and times the way a lot of his aren't although the west London of the novel is more a mythologised one (the way some recent TV series set in say Ancient Rome are really set in Hollywood's conception of same). In the case of this novel it's more the Rankinverse, complete with PP Penrose, Professor Slocombe, the Flying Swan, etc, etc - and for once possibly the only sympathetic characters are women (two of them though I don't think it passes the Bechdel Test, not that that is an indication of book quality, just of itself). Elvis and Time Sprouts - it's as though all the events of the other novels are going on and the protagonist of this one is intersecting with them in an odd way, without being the protagonist of any of the other stories and also (possibly) being sufficiently disturbed not to recognise that those other events are going on.
This is actually RR's gay serial killer novel and while I'm not sure about the only gay characters being villains, there aren't really any good guys anyway (apart from the aforementioned two female characters). It's more a case of Black and Gray Morality.
