Earth was a planet of incompetents, but Simmons was the greatest loser of all. It seemed as if the powers of the Universe were concentrated on grinding his small soul into ultimate insignificance....until the aliens came. To them, Simmons was the most important human on the planet -- for only through his mind could they overcome this world.
Review:
Review by Guy Salvidge:
An excellent and neglected book, Overlay deals with some of the material of the non-sf Underlay (which Malzberg claims, in Charles Platt’s Dream Makers, to be "the best novel I ever wrote or was capable of writing"). The novel is about the interplay between an alien (who is the narrator) and a number of down and out racetrack goers: Simmons, Mary, Tony, and Gardner.
The book is experimental in form and deserves our attention if for this reason alone, but I feel the real strength of the book is in the characterisation, particularly of Mary, who is a great and tragic Malzbergian figure.
*SPOILERS WARNING*
The alien has them blow up the racetrack in the end, of course:
"They lied to us. Every single one of them lied to us. They said we could make it and we couldn’t,"
and then
"It[s] got to blow. The whole works."
It is another example (and this is present in greater or lesser degrees in all Malzberg novels) of the postmodern in sf, insofar as the alien is actual writing some sort of report on these events, which is Overlay. Here I wish to make a general statement about Malzberg.
Most novels are told in third person in the past tense. Malzberg’s novels are (for the most part) told in the first person and in the present tense. Third person allows the writer to claim a vantage point somewhat distanced from the text itself, but first person in the present tense allows the narrator to be very close to the position of Malzberg himself. I don’t think the novels would work, for example, in first person past tense, because the narrator would know all and thus be forced to tell the tale as a sort of recollection, rather than an actual process. I can’t think of another writer who pulls this technique off so well and in such a fluid way, and it must be said that the first person very much suits Malzberg’s concerns, which are basically human concerns.
Overlay is a very humane book. Find a copy and read it.