A review of 
Sewer, Gas, and Electric The Public Works Trilogy 
Matt Ruff 
Warner/Aspect Science Fiction 
1997 
IBSN: 0-446-60642-1 
560 pages

There's so much to like about this, it's hard to know where to begin.  It's 
like Douglas Adams and Neal Stephenson on a satirical 
communist/liberatarian kick with a heavy dose of Carl Hiaasen.  In other 
words, it's crazy but startlingly clever.

Start with Harry Gant, sort of a Bill Gates-cum-Howard Hughes who can't 
keep his attention focused on the business side of his transglobal 
megacorporation.  He keeps getting distracted by neat technology ideas and 
his ex-wife, social crusader Joan Fine.  Add a nuclear submarine (named the 
"Yabba-dabba-doo") filled with eco-warriors that keeps sinking Gant's 
money-making operations in acts of terrorism that protect the environment 
and occasionally save some endangered lemurs.

Then, for a more sinister note, find out that all black people on Earth are 
dead except for those with green eyes due to an unknown, unexplained 
plague.  Gant's corporation's hottest products are, if you pardon my 
French, "Electric Negroes," which are electronic Mr. Robotos that do many 
of the jobs nobody wants to.  Is the fact that the most popular skin color 
for the robots is black a painfully un-politically-correct coincidence, or 
part of some sinister plan?

That's about all I'll reveal here, except that our heroes and heroines 
encounter things only found in pedal-to-the-metal social satire---an Ayn 
Rand simalcrum in a lantern that guides the socialist heroine from place to 
place, an Eskimo from Kansas who calls himself "Twenty-nine words for 
snow," Queen Elizabeth wielding a submachine gun, and a giant multi-legged 
landshark who, for public relations reasons, is called "Meisterbrau."  It's 
wild, it's wooly, and it's hilarious.

Hilarious how?  Well, lots of the clever ironic, sarcastic humor requires 
some knowledge of the plot, but you've got to love any book where one set 
of characters are watching "Star Wars" from a communist perspective.  When 
listening to Luke telling Biggs to bail out as they attack the Death Star 
in the final battle, he asks the following question: "Please explain 
something...Intergalactic class struggle is taking place in hard vacuum 
above imperialist battle station.  Where precisely is noble working-class 
member of People's Army supposed to eject to?"  "What are you talking 
about?"  asks the communist's companion.  "He told him to eject...Even if 
parachute opens in zero atmosphere, proletarian paratrooper will land on 
Death Star and either die in nuclear chain reation or have neck broken by 
capitalist pawn Darth Vader."  Damn, Ruff, that's a good point.

Like Robert Anton Wilson, Ruff's yarn is mostly an excuse to string 
together a series of amusing scenes and interesting lectures on history 
(and some even more bizarre extrapolations into the future).  Ruff seems to 
be a serious Ayn Rand scholar and his exposition covers an annotated 
summary of _Atlas Shrugged_ (and, indeed, this book is somewhat a parody of 
that same book).  Conversations with Rand's ghost lead the reader on a trip 
through some logical objections to libertarian extremism.  At other times, 
Ruff's just doing Hitchhiker's Guide asides for a laugh.

This book is devilishly funny.  I kept reading good parts to my wife until 
I realized that nearly every page had a "good part."  I gasped out loud at 
one scene in its cleverness; it's two interpretations of a scene at 
Disneyworld's Club 33 (a real place in real life), and the intricacies of 
how the two scenes interrelate is almost worth the rest of the book alone.

I have to say that even as I tore through this novel with delight, I ended 
up confusing several of the characters and their quests.  I would complain 
Ruff needed better editing, but I feel for his editor---leaving out one of 
the amusing asides would detract from the story or the fun, even if it made 
the story is sometimes pretty ragged.  At over 500 pages in paperback, 
though, I think wrangling a piece of such epic satire into any sort of 
readable shape is good enough, even if it isn't totally polished.

This is Ruff's second novel, and I eagerly await him further exploring his 
imagination.  This effort is completely worth reading and worth reading 
again.  If you liked _Snow Crash_, if you liked _Shroedinger's Cat_ but 
could use less drug use, and if you're willing to laugh at some of 
America's sacred cows, you've got some serious fun ahead of you.