Press Kit

 Paul Di Filippo at Locus Magazine

Michael Martineck has had the kind of respectable bubbling-under career that many writers enjoy—but which they also might ambitiously seek to surpass. (Has any writer ever been truly satisfied with his or her current status?) He sold his first story in 1999, then several novels, with the most recent being The Link Boy in 2017. Good track record and productivity, but not quite enough to get on award ballots and the must-buy lists of fans. So it's wonderful to discover that his newest, The Tongue Trade, seems to me to be a breakout book, apt to get much well-deserved exposure and plaudits. (It's already got a rave from PW.) It's witty, clever and fresh. It's got a great stefnal novum. Its first-person narrator is engaging and real. It moves like Wile E. Coyote wearing Acme Rocket Skates (without encountering any of the Coyote's disasters).

The telling is masterful. In sum, a near-perfect package. But before digging into the specifics, let me compliment the cover artist, David Willicome. Boldly cubist, with a gorgeous palette, his art for this book also perfectly symbolizes the fractured nature of the protagonist. Very eye-catching. One simple premise: in the future about a century or so from now, the English language has splintered into a babel of jargons, each dialect barely understandable by outsiders. Bankers speak one lingo, firemen another, and dancers another. And so forth through a thousand classes of citizens. Naturally enough, a corps of professional interpreters has sprung up to mediate between citizens. The client speaks only medico, his interlocutor speaks only car repairman, but the interpreter handles both easily. Also, like priests or psychiatrists or lawyers of old, the interpreter is forbidden by oath from divulging anything he learns during a session. Now, to me, the invention of a new kind of professional or expert, especially one with civic duties, is a fascinating riff, not employed in SF often enough.

I can think of a few instances, though. Heinlein's Fair Witnesses from Stranger in a Strange Land; van Vogt's Nexialists from The Voyage of the Space Beagle; Philip Jose Farmer's joats from The Lovers; and Delany's Singers from "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones". Such heretofore-unseen professionals or guildsmen allow the writer to navigate and explore society in new ways. And that's certainly what we get in the first-person narrative of Licensed Private Interpreter William Kirst. We see him among civilians poor and rich, among his interpreter peers and superiors, with his lover—and with the police: namely a certain Detective Bremburg. That's because Kirst witnesses a murder—then inadvertently allows himself to be hired by the murderer!

Now he has the solution to the murder, but can't reveal it! Kirst's explorations into the whys and wherefores of the crime reveal that the murder was actually the tip of a conspiracy and scam. Eventually linking up with Bremburg—who's Batman and who's Robin is debatable—the undaunted investigators travel to many venues, exotic, dangerous and commonplace, before they crack the case—at peril of Kirst's life in a final showdown with the perp, high atop a zeppelin mooring tower. Did I mention yet that Martineck's future is filled with many nice touches, such as a zeppelin resurgence? Now, this murder mystery—or murder plus mystery—is entertaining enough, and will keep the reader in suspense. Basically, though, its lineaments might furnish forth a mimetic tale—there're no super computer chips or great new inventions as the McGuffin. So the real pleasures of the book are watching Kirst practice his trade. Martineck shows a dab hand in inventing jargons and creating semi-surreal dialogues, such hand in inventing jargons and creating semi-surreal dialogues, such as the one below. He also depicts quite sensitively and insightfully the effect on Kirst of having a welter of tongues in his brain. Who is he really, existentially speaking? 

 Publishers Weekly

Interpreter William Kirst is trapped between a word and a hard place in Martineck's unique and inventive science-fiction thriller. For William, language is his livelihood: as an Interpreter, he bridges the gap between parties whose languages have splintered into unique and often inscrutable dialects, based on their trade specializations. However, when William's newest client, businessman Arthur Loam, admits to murdering a man after lying to the police, he's held to a professional silence that would destroy his career if broken. Desperate, William finds himself spiraling down a dangerous rabbit hole as he searches for a way to bring the truth to light without landing himself in the unemployment line—or worse, at the wrong end of a gun.

Martineck's construction and investigation of a world where language and its barriers are paramount results in a poignant, well-conceived slab of science fiction. From the witty prose, the individual argots and how they shape the dialogue (and characters), even down to William's love of 50 Cent and other hip-hop acts—each nugget of detail is carefully considered and artfully executed. William is endlessly entertaining as a sunny inverse of the noir archetype: he stumbles through each escalating situation in a terribly vulnerable, human, and relatable way that harmonizes, rather than disrupts, the gravity driving the narrative.

Martineck (author of The Link Boy) flexes his experience in actualizing the high-concept world of The Tongue Trade, smartly written with crisp pacing, creative twists, and energetic characterizations backdropped against a sweltering semi-futuristic New York, where even those with William's specialized training can be tripped up by semantics: "Interpreters who spend too much time with the same clients, conversing in the same language, can develop expectations" he acknowledges. Martineck has crafted a sunny noir, a charming spin on a storied genre that makes for an ecstatic journey readers will struggle to put down.

Takeaway: Words speak louder than actions in this sunny-noir sci-fi thriller.

Comparable Titles: Richard K. Morgan's Thin Air, Matthew Farrer's Enforcer.