2008 books

45) Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration, 1967  ( RE-READ )
tomsdisch's The Genocides is famously one of the most depressing SF novels ever (aliens invade, they wipe us out, period.) – I remember reading it in a day and being haunted by it for a month. Disch was never as fashionable within SF as he deserved, and at the time of first publication Camp Concentration was perhaps (to take a very long view of things) outplayed by Daniel Keyes's slightly more reader-friendly novel Flowers for Algernon which had been published some months earlier, explores the same theme of artificially enhanced intelligence, is hard-hitting in its own way but then is also, undeniably, outstripped by Disch's combination of erudition, creativity and political cynicism. Camp Concentration also contains ideas that might look unnervingly close to the present dystopia: America has declared war on the world and its government is experimenting on conscientious objectors. Maybe now that Disch has sadly left us it can appear on the SF Masterworks list after all (if it's ever revived), but beyond that it ought to also end up as a Penguin 20th Century Classic: forgive the superlatives but it's a masterpiece of understated black comedy and still a deliciously wicked book.