@~This should have gone into last issue with James Jillians'
@~review of the same book but got to me just too late to be
@~included.

                THIS OTHER EDEN - Ben Elton
                 œ4.99 from most book shops

                  Reviewed by James Judge

Advertising is everything these days, isn't it? Two of the four
channels that most people get piped through a small cable into
their TV have adverts on about once every twenty minutes - or an
average number of breaks that make it three per hour. Americans
have it worse, with home shopping channels which are, really, one
big advertisement for various products.

If you see a good review of a game, see it advertised in a
magazine and everything says it is good, you are bound to go out
and buy the thing, even though it may just be discarded at the end
of the day because it was just another waste of thirty pounds.

Well, this book is all about this concept (advertising) and,
using the author's unmistakable style, intermixes that with the
end of the world as we know it and quite a few digs at the current
situation of the world - both political and social.

Those of you who have either read one of Ben's earlier book or
seen his stand up routine will know the way that he tries to make
humour - by taking hold of an idea, mucking around with it and
bringing it to the ludicrous and then harping on and on about it
until people are either dying with boredom or laughter.

This is the way that this book is written. Taking a potentially
boring storyline, the end of the world, he then populates it with
a few characters (who are, in themselves, characterisations of our
society) and throws in all of these concepts that have been blown
out of all proportion.

In a way, this works to a particular extent as it did induce a few
chuckles from me at various points in the book, but it wasn't as
funny as I would have expected. Then again, if you adore this kind
of humour and would gladly lay yourself in a puddle so Ben Elton
could walk across the path without him getting wet, this book is
just right for you.

It looks at the Earth a few years from now where it will soon give
up on the human race. The ozone has completely gone, you can't
breath the air, there are barely any ice-caps left and it is
common for a city to be decimated by an environmental accident.

There are two main factions in this book - one who are trying to
sell different worlds, somewhere you or I could go when the world
finally says 'right, I've had enough. I'm going on a long sick
leave and sorry, I don't want any visitors'. If you buy these
wonderful mini worlds (that can be easily installed in your back
garden) you, or your descendants, will be able to come out after
the world has healed itself. The other faction is the greenies
who want to stop the destruction of the world and to destroy
those people who are encouraging it - the people who are marketing
and building these mini worlds (called 'Spheres).

The book is then sculpted around a huge marketing ploy for these
'Spheres and ends up happily ever after.

There is no excitement and little more than Ben Elton going on and
on about his ideal and the way things should be (just like most of
his other books, really). For me there was very little that made
me truly laugh - just the odd giggle now and again.

If you like Elton's work, you'll like this book, but if you don't
you definitely won't. Even the mini-series that was on the BBC a
while back was better than the book.

This is better than Gridlock which, in turn, was better than
Stark, and Ben actually tried to include something of a complex
storyline and a twist at the end - failing on both accounts. There
was no complexity there, just skipping from one storyline to the
next, and the twist was blatantly obvious from about thirty or
forty pages in.

Not worth the money if you ask me and with a fair deal of swearing
and a bit of sex it won't appeal to everyone.

I know that there will be at least one of you who is reading this
and will say that I don't know what I'm talking about as I haven't
got a sense of humour. Let's just say the same could be said of
you.












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