Enemy Mind: 5 Books Where Madness is Power

When the world is going mad, sometimes sanity (which is relative anyway) is kind of a liability. Especially in science fiction and fantasy, where the world is usually mad (check out Discworld’s cosmology sometime), and sometimes only gets crazier from there.
But in some books, madness and delusion takes on its own kind of power, either because the world is already so insane, or, because it needs something to fill it, it reaches out to its inhabitants, allows their delusions and imaginations to run wild, and makes them real. This is certainly true in Michael R. Fletcher’s insanity-powered low fantasy epic Beyond Redemption, in which minds can bend reality and concentrated belief can create a god. Inspired by this latest crazy read, here are 5 more books in which insanity becomes all too real.

The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman
It’s the 1800s, and a land much like the United States (except with demons and monsters, and bordering on nonexistence—literally) is ripped apart by a war between two forces: on one end, the Brazil-esque order of The Line, and on the other, the violent anarchy of The Gun. In the middle is Liv Alverhuysen, a lone psychiatrist who must navigate this treacherous world, a land where strong enough belief can cause gods to manifest, and where everything may be the dream of one comatose general. The belief of the people spawns everything from utopian cities ruled by stage magicians, to a hospital whose pacifist rules are strictly enforced by a violent, invisible spirit. Gilman wrote a sequel, The Rise of Ransom City, that picks up with the same weird world, if not the same main character.

Pandemonium, by Daryl Gregory
The world is overrun by powerful “demons” who force their human hosts to take on the roles of superheroes, child pranksters, insane artists, and even a version of the angel of death. Without giving too much away (and after all, it’s already on this list), the demons aren’t necessarily demons, but spawned from the delusions, dreams, and, in some cases, mental difficulties of various people around the world (one man turns into a lawyer-friendly hero reminiscent of Captain America). The book follows Del Pierce, a former victim of possession by a mischievous boy demon known as the Hellion, who may not be as cured as he thought. Through this alternate America, Daryl Gregory explores themes of living with mental illness and trauma, as well as the idea of the collective subconscious—that all our ideas exist in the same communal space.

Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick
With all this death and destruction, let’s nudge things in a more lighthearted direction, with more…destruction (okay, so maybe I didn’t plan that out so well). Dick’s dark comedy masterpiece is set on a moon of Alpha Centauri where the former inmates of a mental asylum have formed clans based on their delusions (Manics, Paranoids, etc). When a CIA agent decides to bump off his ex-wife during a mission to reestablish a colony on the moon, he starts a deranged, disastrous chain of events that drags in a telepathic slime mold whose idea of helping his friends involves blackmailing them, a talk show comedian turned arms dealer, a tribe of schizophrenics with psionic powers, and the Alphane natives themselves, none of whom are too happy about the humans running rampant over their corner of space. I swear to all that is dear and fluffy, this book is so much funnier than it sounds.

The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
Two formerly human gods, one dark and the other light, fight a battle that rages over the United States, leaving tons of unexplained phenomena in its wake. Exhausted, they finally crash down in a small town in California. When, decades later, they awaken to resume their battle, neither of them is strong enough to face the other head-on, so they resort to extracting the dreams and nightmares of the people around them, manipulating their human pawns through their innermost thoughts and desires. As the gods drag in various avatars, their half-human children, and a variety of others, they rush towards an epic conflict that threatens to destroy dreams and reality alike. Even at its most horrific, the book exhibits a poetic quality and a strange beauty to its prose. As an added bonus, Harry D’amour (protagonist of the long-awaited, just-released The Scarlet Gospels) is a pivotal character in both The Great and Secret Show and its sequel, Everville.

Zod Wallop, by William Spencer Browning
A lesser-known cult novel, but loved by most who read it, Zod Wallop is the story of a blocked children’s book author, who wrote a highly successful book called Zod Wallop to cope with the loss of his daughter. As he navigates his life and struggles with depression, the book’s world slowly infiltrates the real one, with an assist from his former friends from a psychiatric support group and their shared delusions. As more and more people are swallowed up by the story, it falls to its author to unravel the threads of his own creation (and the depressing earlier draft), and finally face the things he dreads. At times the book is tearjerking, beautiful, grotesque, and funny, sometimes all at once.
What other books drive you to madness?