‘I resemble that remark’

It used to take years to get a book into print. And during the laborious process of re-typing the manuscript, plenty of people had a go at the thing.

Today's technology has enormously speeded the process of creating a book from the author's original computer disc. But in an era when young high school graduates will argue with me that some theoretical "golden age" in which 16-year-olds knew who commanded our forces at both Yorktown and Vicksburg could never have really existed, the results can be shocking.

I'm interested in the Steampunk genre. (Think Gibson and Sterling's "The Difference Engine." Think David Lynch's film of Frank Herbert's "Dune.") So I recently picked up "The Affinity Bridge" (Snowbooks, London, 2008), by George Mann, who bills himself as "the head of a major SF/Fantasy publishing imprint."

Maybe that's the problem. Who will edit the publisher?

This is not a question of typographical errors. Mr. Mann's exercise in jaw-dropping literary incompetence goes far beyond that.

Is this -- the first in a series, my God -- a terrible book? There were enough chases and fist fights to keep me turning the pages, for a time. But I'm jealous of wasted hours. And while it may be estimable to overshoot and fail nobly, it's hard to be patient with those who have nothing new to show us and won't even put in the time to try and hone their craft -- which happens to also be my craft.

On page 18, we're informed by Mr. Mann that our protagonist, Sir Maurice Newbury, is "enamoured by" airships. The word is almost always used in the passive. Shouldn't someone have asked the author whether he didn't mean his character is "enamoured of" the vessels?

On page 68, the clerk's pale face is described as "belying his apparent displeasure at receiving customers so close to lunch." The sentence makes no sense unless the author means the face "reveals," "betrays," or even "betokens" his displeasure -- the polar opposite of "belying."

On page 89, the mechanical man's "brass fingers ... were affixed with little leather pads to prevent them from shattering the tumbler." No they weren't. They may have been "equipped" with little leather pads, or the little leather pads may have been "affixed to the brass fingers," but as little leather pads are unlikely to perform the same function as glue or (alternatively) screws and nuts, it's unclear how they could be used to "affix" the brass fingers to anything, even as mundane as the hands.

Meantime, we're assured we need not doubt the Scotland Yard inspector's discretion. Sir Maurice "trusts him impeccably."

On page 133, Sir Maurice opens his mail and realizes he and his assistant, the anachronistic but still largely useless Miss Veronica Hobbes, have only a brief time to get across town for a proposed meeting with a gentleman who claims to have vital information concerning the fiery crash of a passenger dirigible. "Let us not prevaricate any longer," Sir Maurice cries as he leaps to his feet, in a moment apparently intended to bring to mind age-old references to the game being afoot.

A not-so-subtle clue that this supposed Sir Maurice Newbury was in fact a jumped-up imposter? Nope. We must conclude our lexicographically challenged author simply meant to write "Let us not procrastinate ..."

On page 214, a character asks, "Impressive isn't it?" as he turns "to encapsulate the room with a gesture of his arms, indicating the various machines."

Well ... no. I don't think he intended to shrink the room down till it would fit in a little gelatin pill. Try "encompass."

An unlikely brass cane which can be made to emit a disabling jolt of electricity is described as a "lightening cane" when the author surely means "lightning." Minor characters speculate whether Miss Hobbes has employed her "feminine whiles."

Was this entire project merely a ploy to get the author's parents to buy him a decent dictionary?

Do I ever use one word when I mean another? Of course. In casual conversation, we usually hear our own errors and correct them before we reach the end of the sentence -- though I'm sure a few slip through.

In typing, a homophone -- a sound-alike word -- will creep in from time to time. They're evidence that the writer is "hearing" what he writes in his mind's ear. Ninety-eight percent will normally be caught on an author's first read-through. Doesn't he owe it to us to subject himself to this slight bit of bother?

I wish I could report there's some subtle joke-within-a-joke here, a parody of those who attempt to cobble together Sherlock Holmes simulacra, reaching for "big words" and constantly falling short.

Richard Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop famously said "I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries." No one worried that the playwright had "got that one wrong," any more than they feared Norman Lear had made a mistake when he had Archie Bunker express his distrust of the feminists in "the women's lubrication movement."

But there's no sign the joke here is intended.

There are clubs that gather to watch the worst films ever made, often reserving their highest honors for Ed Wood's "Glen or Glenda" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space." I'm not sure "The Affinity Bridge" rises to a high enough level of goofiness to merit inclusion in such a pantheon, but this literary equivalent of a lurching creature sewn together out of other people's cast-off plot points does share with Wood's masterpieces that odd characteristic -- the author seems so earnest yet unaware, so totally lacking in wit (self-deprecating or otherwise), that it's clear none of the humor is intentional.

Finally, why do so many reviewers seem to have let this one slip past with a modest pat on the rump, a "ripping good yarn" and all that? I haven't located the full review, but the usually reliable Guardian is cited, saying: "Steampunk is making a comeback, and with this novel Mann is leading the charge. ... An engaging melodrama that rattles along at a breakneck pace."

Members of the younger generation will likely respond by shouting (they so often do) "Oh, you know what the author meant!"

Yes, all too often we do know "what the author meant," here, as he piles one scientific absurdity on another (disembodied human brains that survive and function for months, absent any blood flow? Mrs. Shelley knew better than that), not to mention the predictable parade of perfectly able-bodied police officers and others who seem preternaturally unable to outrun the omnipresent undead. (Why, oh why, must zombies always crave human flesh? Why can't they, just this once, crave Breyer's butter pecan, or crispy chips with sea salt and vinegar?)

I wish there were some social commentary intended in Mr. Mann's decision to fill Whitechapel with sponge-brained zombies, working-class cretins inescapable by their able-bodied betters despite the fact the undead seem to be endlessly shuffling, shambling, stumbling and lurching.

But there ain't.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow" and "Send in the Waco Killers." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.