I really wanted to like this but it just didn't work for me. The beginning was interesting but my enjoyment and attention went down hill as the story progressed. The writing was fine but it wasn't great.

A number of times while reading The Fictional Man, by Al Ewing I felt like I was on the edge of a great book. Like one of those clichéd oases in any stranded-in-the-desert movie, I could see it glimmering and hazy just at the edge of the horizon. But every time I thought I was nearly there, I was left with just more sand. Though that’s more than a little unfair. The Fictional Man is better than sand, but as tantalizing as it is it never got beyond decent for me.

Ewing sets the story in an LA not too different from our own—still filled with movie stars, sun, diners, loudly rude producers, corrupt agents, etc. What separates this world from our own is the creation of Fictionals in 1977 — clones created by the entertainment industry with the look and pre-programmed personality/mind of characters (already in existence or original ones) they’ll play in TV/film. Public domain characters are fair game for anyone, so LA is, for example, filled with a slew of Sherlock Holmes (Action Holmes”, “Classic Holmes”, etc.). But most studios make made-for-the-script clones in a tank, employ them for some years, then when rating slide leave them “to their own devices.”

Niles Golan is a midlist (if that) pulp writer with a moderately successful series centered on divorced, hard-drinking, former-lawyer Kurt Power. When his agent invites him to a meeting with a studio guy, Niles hopes it’s about a movie version of a Kurt Power novel, complete with a Fictional Kurt Power. Instead, he’s tasked with, as the studio exec is careful to note, not a remake, but ”taking a movie from the past and making it again now.” The film most definitely not being remade is The Delicious Mr. Doll, a 1966 piece of misogynistic hackwork about Dalton Doll—by day lead singer of The All Together (him and “five glamours female assistants in bikinis), by night secret agent for Y.V.O.O.R.G (Young Valiant Operatives for Order, Right, and Good). Coincidentally, this was 13-year-old Nile’s favorite movie, and he still harbors fond feelings for it. The rest of the book follows Niles as he works on writing the pitch for the not-a-remake, deals with his ex-wife who divorced him after one of his many affairs, sees his Fictional therapist, socializes with his best and only friend Bob — a Fictional who left his series and is trying to find his own way, meets a strangely beguiling woman who may or may not be a Fictional, tries to convince several people (including himself) he’s not a Realist (one bigoted against Fictionals), and tries to track down the source material for the Doll movie. That last leads him down a rabbit hole, as the movie itself he learns was based on a TV episode from a Twilight Zone-like show, which itself was based on a children’s book, which in turn was based on a short story. Golan gives us all three, summarizing in great detail the episode, giving us multiple passages and illustration descriptions from the children’s book, and including the entire short story.

Ewing is doing a lot here with identify and authenticity, the idea of a constructed personality, and he comes at it from a variety of angles, including the foregrounded one where thanks to science fiction the metaphor can become literal. I’ll grant it’s not the most original of ideas, but Ewing comes at it in a fresh manner, and from so many side angles, that it’s still a pretty exhilarating concept. Or, well, it could have been.

The first problem is that Niles Golan is a complete ass. It’s a tough challenge for an author to write a character that is wholly unlikable and ask a reader to follow along with him/her for several hundred pages, and I can’t say Ewing full meets that challenge here. I don’t require my characters to be likable, but if they aren’t, I do require them to be if not engaging, compelling, or at least interesting. And really, it felt to me that once you take away all the things that make Niles so off-putting, there isn’t a lot left. I will say this changes somewhat toward the end, but the change felt more than a little abrupt and unearned. But, and this was key, it didn’t feel like it couldn’t have been earned, which is why by the end I was still happy I’d read The Fictional Man. As noted in the intro, it felt like it was just, off, just by a little. Toning down some of Nile’s worst points, or balancing them out with something, anything would have made it far easier to flow along the story with him. Draw out those changes at the end a bit more so they felt wholly earned and it could have been quite moving.

Take out some of the running interior narration that is a tic of Niles’ (“Blazing with fury, the author drew himself up to his full height”), and it would have been less irritating. Give Bob a bit more substance, and his side-plot could have been greatly emotional (to give credit where it’s due, Ewing does wring some solid emotionality out of Bob toward the end). Make it so not all the studio execs are in typical parody mode (blustering, yelling, using “baby”) and it might have been a bit funnier. Delve a bit more into the role of Fictionals in society, and it could have been a bit more thoughtful. For instance, there’s a taboo regarding Fictional-Real sex, but it feels more like a plot necessity than something fully born from the Fictional world. The one aspect I felt Ewing nailed was the nested structure created by Nile’s attempts to chase down the origin of the Mr. Doll film. I loved each example of a story-within-the-story (you’ll swear the TV episode, starring William Shatner, was real based on Ewing’s vivid recreation and be wholly disturbed by the other two) for the writing itself and also for the way the nested stories act as yet another metaphor for the central theme of authenticity and construction of the “real.”

I wasn’t sure early on if I would finish The Fictional Man. I hated the main character, found the frequent interior narration annoying, and the LA satire too broad and familiar. It did grow on me past the halfway point though, and by the end I was glad I’d finished it, though it was a frustrating read for what could have been. 3.5

It was fun. Perhaps not the best book I've read this year but wildly entertaining and imaginative. The world-building felt vague and the plot felt directionless in places, but it didn't stop me from having a good laugh while reading it. A fun, quick read.

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read and review this book. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer simply to advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.

An excellent novel, full of food for thought. It's a gripping and fascinating story that kept me hooked.
I loved the world building and the fleshed out characters.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This book had an interesting concept that I really liked but I just couldn't get in to the story, and was unable to finish the book.

This is has been out since 2013 and has lots of helpful reviews. I'll just say that it's OK. It has some good moments and ideas, but doesn't always work.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

Ewing plies his trade predominantly in Marvel Comics these days which is a shame as I prefer his prose and 2000ad work but I guess they pay the top dollar. This novel is mind bendingly good fun and I will be recommending it to anyone who likes a fun but though provoking read.

Solid three stars, I think this is going to be one of those middle of the road books for the majority of readers. I don't think it can be a 5 star reread every other year type of book, but at the same time it wasn't a skim and only read 20% kind of book. The concept is an original quick and easy fun enough. It's not as PKD as I was expecting from the blurbs but it was a nice witty noir, which is why I liked it.

A metafictional tragi-comedy that, while generally entertaining, feels a bit directionless and never really takes off.

Niles Golan is an English writer who has moved to Los Angeles to write screenplays (he isn't very good at novels). Technology has advanced a bit, and now fictional characters are bred through DNA-manipulation and cloning into living, breathing bodies, and are known as Fictionals. So there is a real "person" that is Indiana Jones, a real "person" who is Ethan Hunt, etc.

And here the world building around Fictionals gets a bit hazy - hazier than I would've liked. Because a world where you write and then breed characters throws up a lot of questions, questions most of the novel ignores. And I kept bumping my head against this. I tried ignoring it, just accepting the world as it's presented, but then some situations and occurrences lost meaning, or became unclear.

So Fictionals are assembled clones, and the book hints that they don't grow older. Do they really not age, or only not visually? Do they die? How long do they live? Surely they're not immortal.
Not all roles in a film or TV series are filled with Fictionals, human actors and actresses still exist. Why?
Fictionals are seen as non-human, or lesser than human. Why keep them alive after a movie series gets canned? (Harsh, I know, but less so if you truly see them as semi-animals..)
Sex between humans and Fictionals is seen as repulsive (or as a deviant kink, at best), but surely there'd be a thriving business in creating 'sexual models on demand'?
Are there other industries that use these fake people - basically people bred into slavery. Does the army now consist of Fictionals?

And so on. And I know, it's not the point of the novel. But then I find it really hard to formulate what the point is. I think it's trying to say something about what makes a person 'real' or not? The characters sure talk about it a lot, repeating the same arguments over and over, never really getting anywhere (everytime the novel started one of these dialogues up again, I'd find myself audibly sighing).

Our main character is supposed to adapt a 60s screenplay about a James Bond parody into modern times, and that is about as much plot momentum as we'll be getting. Golan is also a bit of a bastard, in the mold of the male anti-hero of last decade's prestige television. It makes it hard to root for him, but maybe that's the point? I really am not sure.

There is a point towards the end of the book where our protagonist reads another author's short story, a pastiche of a 60s Twilight Zone-like story, that is really terrific. It really emulates that style of writing very well, and the story itself is really good.

So, all that said, I did enjoy my time with the novel. It's snappily written, and it did make me laugh a couple of times. In the end, I just wish it had more direction and was less vague in its world building.

Coincidentally enough, I have two titles for review that center around clones. Gene Wolfe's posthumous INTERLIBRARY LOAN is a wonderful follow-up to A BORROWED MAN that felt more like a parting gift rather than a coda when I read it last week. In it, it's 200 years in the future and clones are "recloned" by having information about deceased authors printed into their minds so they can emulate them as library resources to be checked out by their fans. Humans literally check reclones out of the library to discuss their books with them. It's a great concept and Wolfe handles it as well as he always does.

In THE FICTIONAL MAN we have an alternate 1980s where human cloning was developed for media entertainment purposes (they star in TV shows). The concept is just as original as Wolfe's but the execution was not something I could get into. The premise is our antagonist is in therapy with a "fictional man" (retired clone who played a therapist on TV) and this results in a long, whiny dialog (internal and with the therapist) that gets old fast.

I would look for another book by the author, or short stories, since the concept is appealing and this may be an author working out his approach.