
Member Reviews

Writer and activist Adam Zmith attempts a cultural history of poppers (Amyl Nitrate), particularly in relation to gay male culture, that also connects to a vision of a different future. One that might grow in response to a plea for pleasure opening up a route to fresh, radically different perceptions of queer bodies and their potential. It’s an ambitious project, and a challenging one, that never really comes together. But at the same time, Zmith’s book can be quite compelling, highlighting a number of fascinating, important stories. Zmith’s detailed account of the moral panic around poppers during the 80s, the attempts to link this to AIDs and justify horrific police crackdowns on the queer community’s just one example; as is the surprisingly lyrical discussion around poppers, masturbation and porn. The detailed description of the development of poppers as a product aimed specifically at gay men, the marketing campaigns constructing poppers as a signifier of a particular version/vision of gay masculinity also stood out. Later sections that veer off into ideas about literature, science fiction and identity display promise but stray into the blandly descriptive when a more coherent, analytical stance is desperately needed.
Zmith concludes his idiosyncratic survey of poppers through space and time with Odo, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Odo was a Changeling, a non-solid entity, able to mimic objects or creatures in their surroundings, and merge with others of their kind, possessing an identity poised between singular and plural, resisting fixity. For Zmith Odo points towards an idea of queer utopia, a space free of rigid identity categories. Odo’s also useful as a way of thinking about Zmith’s book. He’s continually shapeshifting, going back and forth between cultural and general histories of poppers, scatterings of memoir, analysis, and manifesto. The impression’s of someone free associating: abrupt segues, unexpected imaginative leaps and tangents. Zmith’s writing style’s similarly fluid, the numerous sudden changes in register can be jarring: highly subjective, passionate polemic tangled up with the more muted and formal. In many ways Zmith’s free-form style mirrors what he’s trying to formulate here. But the result is fragmented, an awkward patchwork of material. Part of the problem's space constraints, Zmith’s messy, sprawl of facts and concepts are confined to less than 180 pages. Zmith’s publisher’s Repeater Books, an innovative, indie outfit tracing back to writer and theorist Mark Fisher. Zmith’s technique sometimes reminded me of Fisher's. Fisher also mixed elements of history, cultural analysis and texts from popular culture but his ideas were firmly grounded in rigorous, theoretical frameworks. Zmith's work lacks Fisher's underlying discipline and theoretical sophistication. Zmith's an interesting, often provocative, writer but he's juggling too many disparate components, ideas spilling out at a fast and furious pace, and the end result’s more than a bit bewildering.
Thanks to Netgalley and Repeater Books for an arc.

The subject matter is interesting and I appreciate what Zmith is trying to do, but I feel like some of his ideas are underdeveloped. He makes some leaps in time and thought that are confusing; it's a pretty short book, and I wish he'd fleshed out some of those moments.

Fascinating and unusual read that while only appealing to some isa worthy read for anyone with an interest,packed full of facts and anecdotes I was constantly surprised at what was reading, a great find

Thanks to Repeater Books + NetGalley for the e-ARC.
This book combines medical history, social and cultural history and a vision of the future, to help us understand what poppers can teach us. It’s an interesting subject, and one I’m not particularly well versed in, but I loved the first half of this book - the medical and cultural history of how poppers came to be. The chapters on poppers emerging at a similar time to outspoken queerness, changing masculinity, marketing to gay men and poppers during the early HIV/AIDS crisis were all fantastic.
The second half of the book looks more at queer life now and Zmith’s vision of how the future could be, studied alongside cultural references to Star Trek and Iain Bank’s Culture novels (bit weird to read about my dads favourite books alongside a lot of sexually explicit analysis). Not being super familiar with either, this didn’t interest me as much as the earlier chapters but I liked and agreed with a lot of Zmith’s musings on identity and utopias.
Also included in this book: Jane Fonda, Poirot, Housmans bookshop, the Combahee River Collective and many other fun shout outs! Pick it up if it sounds like your very niche kind of thing.

Deep Sniff is an exploration of the history of poppers through the lens of the reality of identity and freedom and possible queer futures, starting with their Victorian discovery and moving into gay culture both face to face and online. The book moves between history, a bit of science, some science fiction, and a manifesto for the future, blending topics to show how intertwined the body, identity, pleasure, sex, politics, and history really are.
This is a multi-faceted book, telling what starts as a history of science and rapidly moves into a history of culture, politics, and sex, whilst also looking at some of the pop culture mentions and depictions of poppers. I found a lot of the history very interesting, told in an engaging way with anecdotes, and I felt like I learned a lot from it. The later part of the book focuses more on the idea of queer futures and imagining futures, looking to sci-fi and previous writing on various utopian dreams, and it had more of a call to imagine new futures than I expected, emphasising the importance of looking forward rather than back (which is quite funny for a book with 'history' in the subtitle). The queer utopia stuff was particularly interesting, though there was a lot about Star Trek and as someone who knows nothing about it, I did get a bit lost at times.
A short and readable exploration of poppers and pleasure, Deep Sniff is a deep dive into not just a particular substance and its cultural impact, but also wider implications and futures. Also, it ends with a playlist of tracks that I'm listening to whilst I'm writing this review, which is fun too, and underscores the way in which histories and futures are all tied to so many things, and looking at the future through the lens of a cultural item (e.g. poppers) can bring with it a lot of different ideas, connotations, and (in this case) music.

I’ve heard about poppers that I’ve never actually heard the story or information about them. I found this history to be completely fascinating. It’s full of interesting antidotes. I really enjoyed it

Thank you to NetGalley, Repeater Books, and Adam Zmith for the ARC of Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Wow, this book was so well researched and so well done. The archival work and storytelling intertwined into this book to illustrate queer past, present, and future through the object of something as simple as poppers was really fascinating and easy to read.
It should also be noted how short this book is, being under 200 pages and yet how the other still packs such a punch in this text, never mincing or wasting a single word.
I can’t wait to purchase this book when it comes out next month and add it as a necessary text in my queer nonfiction collection. Also look forward to being on the lookout to read more from Zmith’s works as well!