How can paranoia be so appealing? I was struck by this conundrum while experiencing a frisson of equal parts dread and pleasure on reading "Incarceron" (Dial: $17.99, ages 12 and up), a new young-adult novel by Catherine Fisher.
A dark view of the world has been a constant thread in literature for teenagers. This is understandable for an audience moving out from under the wings of the family and confronting the real world. The dark themes that began a few decades ago with the so-called problem novels (concerning divorce, alcoholism, abuse and the like) have been squeezed out by a spate of dark fantasy novels. Supernatural horror has become standard fare in teen fiction; vampires, werewolves, witches, psychics, evil fairies and, above all, ghosts have invaded to an overwhelming degree.
Notions of the future also have gone very dark with a type of fantasy known as "steam punk," a sort of science fiction dressed up in medieval garb. Clean lycra suits and smoothly humming machines are a passé future; the new future holds grubby, recycled high-tech parts, chain mail (eternally cool!) and medieval weaponry.
A few years ago I began noticing occasional young-adult books that stood out as a different kind of fantasy. I now think of them collectively as "novels of the paranoid." They are stories in which characters live in a weird, oppressive world with arbitrary rules; a general sense of dread gradually resolves into a certainty that there is an evil force in charge, and that the evil force is out to get us, personally. (Doesn't this sound like a surly teenager's view of life?)
What makes these novels different from the literary children of George Orwell's "1984" is that the oppression is entirely apolitical. Suzanne Collins' current bestsellers, the first two books in "The Hunger Games" trilogy, take place in a dreadful, oppressive world, but the rules are clearly human-made, for human goals, and a human rebellion can topple the nasty president who holds it all in place.
In the "novels of the paranoid," the evil force is deeper, more mysterious and certainly harder to confront. It makes cool noises, usually grinding metal, and it's definitely not human. Compare these descriptions:
"I just woke up. That was all. It was black and silent and my mind was totally empty and I had no idea who or where I was. . . . And there was always the Eye. At first I didn't know what it was, only noticed it in the night, a tiny red point glowing near the ceiling. Slowly I realized it was there all the time, came to imagine it was watching me, that there was no escape from it. I began to think there was an intelligence behind it, curious and cruel." (From "Incarceron")
"He began his new life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air. Metal ground against metal; a lurching shudder shook the floor beneath him. He fell down at the sudden movement. . . . With another jolt, the room jerked upward like an old lift in a mine shaft . . . My name is Thomas, he thought. . . . that was the only thing he could remember about his life." (From "The Maze Runner")
Incarceron is the name of a prison in a far-future society. It was established centuries before as an experiment in rehabilitation, a sealed world so enormous it contains forests, towns and seas. No one has entered since its establishment, and no one has ever escaped -- except, perhaps, one legendary member of a monk-like group called the Sapienti. Finn is a prisoner who is persuaded he came from Outside because he has memories. When he acquires a mysterious crystal key that allows him to communicate with a girl Outside -- Claudia, daughter of the warden of Incarceron, no less -- he attempts an escape, only to discover that the prison is sentient, that it devours and recycles all it contains, and will not willingly relinquish its inhabitants: "The Prison was alive. It was cruel and careless, and he was Inside it."
In James Dashner's "The Maze Runner" (Delacorte: $16.99, ages 12 and up), the boy who wakes up in an elevator finds himself on his way to the Glade, a kind of labor camp peopled entirely by teenage boys. The living compound is surrounded by an enormous maze. Life in the Glade has been meticulously organized to allow "mazerunners" to seek daily for a way out. They must return before dark, when the unthinkably high stone walls grind shut through an unseen mechanism and shut the boys in from the horrible creatures that patrol the maze at night. What have the prisoners done to be sent here? Who could have devised this environment? What could possibly be its purpose? Are the fragmentary memories that prompt the boys' desire for escape true or implanted? There is no solid ground for any thought, only suspicion.
