Gun, with Occasional Music
First edition cover
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| Author | Jonathan Lethem |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Jacket design by Michael Koelsch and Steven Cooley Jacket illustration by Michael Koelsch |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel, hardboiled crime fiction, science fiction |
| Publisher | Harcourt Brace & Co. |
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Publication date
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March 1994 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 262 pp (1st edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | (1st edition, hardcover) |
| OCLC | 28213412 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3562.E8544 G86 1994 |
| Followed by | Amnesia Moon |
Gun, with Occasional Music is a 1994 novel by Jonathan Lethem. It blends science fiction and hardboiled detective fiction. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1994.
The novel follows the adventures of Conrad Metcalf, a tough guy private detective and a wiseass, through a futuristic version of San Francisco and Oakland, California. Metcalf is hired by a man who claims that he's being framed for the murder of a prominent urologist. Metcalf quickly discovers that nobody wants the case solved: not the victim's ex-wife, not the police, and certainly not the gun-toting kangaroo who works for the local mafia boss.
In the novel, thanks to technology, children can become smarter and more cynical than adults; such children are known as baby-heads. "Baby-heads" have their own subculture and bars, and can drink alcohol. Animals, too, can be given the intelligence of a human being through bioscientific techniques, a concept explored previously by David Brin in his Uplift novels, Roger Zelazny in The Dream Master, and in Olaf Stapledon's Sirius. Lethem's animals stand midway between these two; like Brin's, they have clearly delineated and delimited rights; like Zelazny's, however, they are part of a darker symbolism. It is not considered bestiality when one has a sexual relationship with an evolved animal in this world, and humans may also adopt younger evolved animals.
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