Well, Camp Concentration is a tour de force. Proving SF writers can be just as literary and intellectual as "serious" fiction, Disch's dark novel is hilarious, depressing, intelligent, and germane to the 1960s (recent memory of the Holocaust, Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement). Furthermore, the twists were, at least for me, not obvious and nicely combined science fiction ideas with an intriguing captive narrator. This is only the second Disch book I have read, and the style of Louis Sachetti, the narrator, is remarkably similar to Disch's nonfiction writing in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World, especially the ironic and condescending humor of Disch or even how he discusses science fiction, race, feminism, and spirituality in the works of fellow SF writers like Philip K. Dick. Needless to say, Camp Concentration explores all of these aforementioned ideas in a humorous, literary way, replete with numerous quotations and homages to the classics in Western poetry, art music, and philosophy. Anyone interested in challenging but rewarding SF literature should read Camp Concentration, and I am sure you will not predict the ending.
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