Only Human - Hardcover

Holt, Tom

3.8

1,569 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857236939 ISBN 13: 9781857236934

Publisher: Orbit, 1999

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Something is about to go wrong. Very wrong. What do you expect if the Supreme Being decides to get away from it all for a few days, leaving his naturally inquisitive son to look after the cosmic balance of things?

A minor hiccup with a human soul and a welding machine soon leads to a violent belch, and before you know it the human condition - not to mention the lemming condition - is tumbling down the slippery slope to chaos.

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Review:

Tom Holt's popular comic fantasies began with Expecting Someone Taller in 1987: Only Human is his 15th novel in this vein. When God takes his son "Jay" on a fishing holiday in a far-off galaxy, the unpublicised younger son Kevin finally gets a chance to play with the family computer. This is Mainframe, "the PC of God that passeth all understanding," custom-built by Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits to run the world ... and definitely unsafe to tinker with. Kevin's blunders shift souls into the wrong bodies: a machine operator swaps places with his machine, a woman with an old portrait, a Duke of Hell with a vicar, and Prime Minister Dermot Fraud with a suicide-bent lemming. Meanwhile Kawaguchiya's computer system achieves self-awareness, Zxprxp the visiting alien explores Earth's weaknesses and a demonic conspiracy is afoot. Holt provides numerous funny one-liners: a heavenly fridge magnet reads "ANGELS DO IT IMMACULATELY", while Customs in Hell has green and red channels for "Nothing to abandon" and "Abandon hope here". At the same time, he's genially pessimistic about humans and their intractable stupidity. Maybe the lemmings have the right idea after all? Our world seems doomed to end, not with a bang but a snigger ... Vintage Holt. --David Langford

Review:

Excellent, sexy novel in which Abraham, Sarah and the voice of God perform a subversive, jealousy-laden dance round one another. It sounds unlikely, but Diski can spin gold from the most unpromising settings and characters, and this bookk delves into all kinds of byways - infertility, obedience, autonomy in a relationship - with wit and intelligence. (MARIE CLAIRE)

a hugely engaging and entertaining book (SUNDAY EXPRESS)

both intimate and ambitious - not only human, but also divine (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

This is Jenny Diski's best novel yet. (LITERARY REVIEW)

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