Going Nowhere Fast in a Dismal Scottish Future: Soundproof in Satellite Town by Graham Rae.

William Burroughs, JG Thirlwell, William Gibson, Jim DeRogatis, Richard Kern, JG Ballard, Mark Simpson, Henry Miller, Chris Kelso: with a line-up of associations like these, either due to recommendations from the writers themselves, or their being cited in comparison, Graham Rae’s subversive sci-fi novel promises something special.

Independently published late 2023 by Anxiety Press, Soundproof in Satellite Town jostles along at a manic pace. The publisher’s tagline, Where the Art of Making A Beautiful Corpse is Mastered, augers bizarre supernatural content and gore. The reader is spared, for the most part. Instead, society continues its decline in the usual way. A form of totalitarian techno-feudalism seems to have been imposed on the population in an independent Scotland during the 22nd century.

Rae’s language is salty and explicit throughout, but leavened by plenty of humour and puns. For example, characters go online with their ‘abusernames’, to endure the ‘blunders of modern technology’. The setting may be glum, but the text sparkles with playful linguistic fun. Despite liberal vulgarity, a gentle note of kindness runs throughout. The narrative voice is insistently intimate, demanding to be heard even as the country lurches in disintegration.

Compulsory sterilizations of young people were carried out after a global Battle of the Sexes that somehow coincided with a massive population boom. Government welfare must be earned in horrible jobs to avoid starvation. Religious conflicts continue in new sci-fi forms. Environmental activists are still getting into trouble for trying to dent business as usual and make society fairer.

The central character, Johnny Certex, spends most of his time abusing substances and shooting the breeze with his partner-in-crime, Ratsoup. They are also members of the band Soundproof; self-deprecatingly so-called because of a persistent absence of musicality in output. For the past five years after leaving hi skool, they found a way to trick the system and get themselves removed from the live register. But now, the game’s up, and they’ve been summoned to work on Monday morning. So, in splendid defeat, before the guillotine falls on their freedom, they direct all their energies into enjoying one uproarious weekend, of, as the blurb puts it, ‘blackly humorous booze and sex and muzak and chaos’.

Scottish history and politics, plus popular resistance, are discussed along the way. There are poignant reflections on topics such as ageing and social care. Johnny relishes simple pleasures, such as a ride on the park swings, the synchronicity of first meeting his girlfriend, but especially, the protocore music of The Empty Vessels whose gig is the holy grail of the pilgrimage they make during their last momentous weekend as duty-free citizens. The destination luring them on is Wavesound Island, where the Empty Vessels are booked to play. This event is based on an annual punk festival that used to be held on Cramond Island outside Edinburgh, round 1989/1990. Cramond Island Of Punk has since evolved, or devolved, depending on your cup of tea, into a more staid middle-class international affair these days.

To some extent, the story has echoes of Trainspotting, obviously; and also of the 2004 Irish film, Adam and Paul, about two heroin addicts dragging themselves around Dublin. The infectiously upbeat resilience of Rae’s anti-heroes, help them ride the waves and troughs. The adventure has some kinship with Karl Parkinson’s poetic novel, The Blocks, portraying residents of a notoriously impoverished and drug-ridden flat complex in Dublin’s inner-city, which doesn’t stop some of them making space for creativity. Kneecap’s recent map-cap film is also concerned with channels of expression for people who often don’t get a look in.

Already featured in a wide variety of literary and cultural journals, Rae’s on top of his brief. He does not over-egg the vantage point of the future but uses it as a device to highlight the trajectory of certain current trends. Occasionally, he amuses himself imagining inventions. For example, the character referred to as the Carrier is undergoing ‘electronic disease recreation’ so that he can fulfil his ambition to experience every disease known to man through a microchip inserted in his brain by friends.

Paying a visit to the town shopping centre, the protagonist Johnny feels repelled by the endless electronic brainwashing ads bombarding him from all angles, the ‘digigame’ access everywhere, and even the ‘maulsmell’ — all of which goes to show how close we are to this dystopian vision already. Scenes of vulnerable neglected teenagers combing the streets at night seem tragic to Johnny, but “you threw up a screen of anger over the deeper feelings and moved on.”

The description of Chance, the local pub, is comfortably familiar. This is where the girlfriends show up, and some key conversations take place, such as some decrying the rich with their enduring “colonialist world-beating mentality” and their ability to engineer varieties of “slow-motion genocide”. Chance is where they despair of The Disillusionist, the complex repressive religion some still follow with the hope of an afterlife. They damn this religion as anti-female and all about lineage, and condemn corrupt control of the news media, which uses climate hazards as pawns instead of forging ahead with dynamic cheerleading to a renewable future.

Time brings change, but in many respects, things stay the same. Soundproof In Satellite Town retains enough of what is recognisable to take the reader on a colourful whirlwind tour of the state of post-modern civilisation, led by a couple of hardy Have-Nots. The steady stream of pervy profanity does not obscure an honest and often humble humanity. After finishing this effervescent original odyssey, Scotland will never look the same again!