Michael Hicks's Reviews > The Cipher

We're (and by we, I mean me, Richard, and Matt) are taking a deep, spoiler-filled dive into the Funhole in our latest episode of Staring Into The Abyss! As my review below inidicates, this was a pretty polarizing read for some of us. LOL You can listen to our episode on your favorite podcatcher or stream it now at https://staringintotheabyss.libsyn.com/.

Originally published over 30 years ago, The Cipher was the debut title in the Dell/Abyss horror line and earned Kathe Koja a Bram Stoker Award for Best Debut Novel, as well as a Locus Award, and has been routinely mentioned on various lists as one of the best horror novels ever written. Out of print since the Dell/Abyss line collapsed in the late 90s, available only as an ebook, The Cipher finally returns in paperback thanks to Meerkat Press (publisher of Koja's recent short story collection, Velocity) this September.

The premise is as simple as it is odd - Nicholas, and his sometimes lover Nakota, discover a black hole in his apartment building's storage room. There's no rhyme or reason to its existence, and the whys and hows of its being remain unexplored. Over the course of the book's 260 pages, the two become increasingly obsessed with the void Nakota has named, strangely, the Funhole. Although neither are scientists (he's a video store clerk, she's a bartender), they conduct their own brand of experiments on the Funhole, lowering a jar of bugs inside, a detached hand from their morgue attendant buddy, and then a video camera in search for more information. The Funhole changes things, and, in turn, Nicholas and Nakota begin to change as well.

The Cipher is a dense, dark, grungy, complex read and it's definitely not for everybody. It certainly wasn't for me, I have to admit. The Cipher is a slog to read through, the race through its pages less a marathon sprint and more a challenge of plodding endurance and a single-minded determination simply to finish, just so you can say you competed. Koja's writing style is very stream-of-conscious, narrated via Nicholas's first-person-perspective. He drones on for incredibly long stretches of time in paragraph after paragraph of oddly constructed, jumbled, punctuation be damned, run-on sentences. His thoughts are a challenge to tackle, and Koja really makes you work at understanding his ideas and concepts, as he circuitously guides you through one weird moment after the next. A poet when he's drunk, we get glimmers of his literary stylings through his speeches and Koja turns some rather marvelous phrases, like "a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night."

Throughout The Cipher, there's a strong focus on art and artists. Koja, herself an artist who creates immersive performances, attempts to apply a similar aesthetic over the course of this work. For better or worse, when reading The Cipher, you exist within it, breathing the same dank, stale air as its characters. Koja masterfully creates a certain dark mood and leaves you to wallow in it. Our characters are wannabe poets, sculptors, mask makers, and their various hangers-on from the local gallery where Nicolas and Nakota go to score free wine. The story itself has a particular art-house flavor, feeling very much like an edgy film student's art project, reveling in pretentiousness and the weird in equal measure with its indie 'Fight Club meets The Fly' aesthetic (and yes, I'm aware The Cipher predates Fight Club by a few years; just go with it, huh?). By the halfway mark, though, it all just feels much too bloated, overly long, and repetitious as each successive chapter becomes little more than a retelling of the same simple premises over and over and over. Whatever forward momentum and intrigue The Cipher possessed in its opening chapters -- and there is quite a lot of both, to be fair -- dissolves into formulaic rinse-and-repeat storytelling as Nicholas and Nakota, their obsessions over the Funhole placing them in opposition to one another, bicker and fight and grow increasingly deranged, and they continues their own experiments with the perfect black hole.

It's a real shame novellas weren't as en vogue in 1991 as they are today, because The Cipher could have made for one hell of a powerful novella, or even a long short story. There's a lot of richness to these characters, moods, and the core ideas here. As a full-length book, though, it's grows increasingly plodding. Koja is forced to not just recycle but beat the ever-loving shit out of the dead horse that are her singular ideas and scenarios surrounding the Funhole, over and over and over to hit a novel-length word count. This, too, is a shame, because there's a lot of excellent metaphors and examinations of depression, toxic relationships, and unrequited love that could have been better served by being distilled down to their essences rather than bludgeoning us over the head with the same premises chapter after chapter after chapter. What was once thoughtful and engaging in The Cipher ultimately turns boring and annoyingly repetitious, not just stalling the narrative but grinding it to a damn halt, until you're forced to wonder, exhausted with this book and its characters, just how much longer Koja's going to drag things out, when and if anything is ever going to finally happen, and when the hell is it all going to finally be over?