Plus (novel)

Novel by Joseph McElroy

Plus is Joseph McElroy's fifth novel. Set in some unspecified future, it tells the story of Imp Plus, a disembodied brain controlling IMP, the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform, in earth orbit. The novel consists of Imp Plus's thoughts as he tries to comprehend his limited existence, while struggling with language, limited memories, and communicating with Ground Control. The plot is driven by Imp Plus's recall of fragments of his past and of language, his improving comprehension of his present, all while his medical condition gradually deteriorates.

McElroy denies that the novel is science fiction, unless "science" is used in its etymological sense of "knowing".^[1]

The novel was reprinted as an e-book by Dzanc Books in 2014, with an introductory 2012 poem "A Green of its Own Breathing" by Sarah Grindley, dedicated to "Joe McElroy & Imp Plus".

Sources

McElroy acknowledges three technical sources:

• Lehninger, Albert L. (1973). Bioenergetics (2nd ed.). Benjamin.
• Noback, Charles R. (1967). The Human Nervous System. McGraw-Hill.
• Weiss, Paul (1969). Principles of Development. Hafner.

Reception

The gradual derangement of Imp Plus ... is observed with the lurid precision of brilliant microphotography. McElroy's slow, demanding traceries of awareness do not always escape tedium; it is the price of the strange and valuable task he has set himself. An exhausting, disorienting work of discovery.

— –, Kirkus Reviews^[2]

Remarkable...brilliant...very moving...McElroy's achievement...may help us home from the apocalypse: Humanity is not what we've lost, it is what we grimly hang onto, even when we're not persuaded that it's still there.

— Michael Wood, The New York Times Book Review^[3]

References

1. LeClair, Tom; McCaffery, Larry, eds. (1983). "Joseph McElroy". Anything Can Happen. University of Illinois Press.
2. Kirkus Reviews 1976. sfn error: no target: CITEREFKirkus_Reviews1976 (help)
3. Wood 1977.

Further reading

Book reviews

• "Plus". Kirkus Reviews. 1976.
• Frank, Sheldon (February 26, 1977). "The Eerie Saga of Imp Plus". The National Observer: 21.
• Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (December 27, 1976). "Books of the Times". The New York Times. p. 61.
• Malin, Irving (1976–77). "Ultimate patterns". The Ontario Review (5): 101–03.
• Wood, Michael (March 20, 1977). "Putting a brain into space". The New York Times Book Review. p. 6.

Literary analysis

• Bould, Mark; Vint, Sherryl (Winter 2007). "Of Neural Nets and Brains in Vats: Model Subjects in Galatea 2.2 and Plus". Biography. 30 (1): 84–104. doi:10.1353/bio.2007.0019. JSTOR 23540600. S2CID 145095839.
• Pulizzi, James J. (July 2014). "Language After Humans: On the Disembodied Language of Joseph McElroy's Plus". Science Fiction Studies. 41 (2): 392–409. doi:10.5621/sciefictstud.41.2.0392. JSTOR 10.5621/sciefictstud.41.2.0392.
• Hadas, Pamela White (1990). "Green Thoughts on Being in Charge: Discovering Joseph McElroy's Plus". The Review of Contemporary Fiction. X (1): 140–55.
• Richardson, Joan (1990). "Metaphor Master". The Review of Contemporary Fiction. X (1): 156–72.
• Miller, Alicia M. (1990). "Power and Perception in Plus". The Review of Contemporary Fiction. X (1): 172–80.

In addition, see these general works on McElroy's fiction.