Book Review: Big Time by Jordon Prosser
I’ve enjoyed reading dystopian novels ever since I first read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Dystopian novels represent the world at its most extreme, thereby critiquing the world as it is now. That’s why I was interested in reading Jordan Prosser’s 2024 dystopian novel Big Time. Not only did I find its genre of Australian dystopian fiction intriguing, but I was also intrigued by its unique centring of music and psychedelics.
Big Time is set in Australia’s not-so-distant future, where Western Australia has seceded from the east. The Federal Republic of East Australia (FREA) is an authoritarian regime that shuns science and punishes coincidences. We follow Julian, bass player for The Acceptables, who, upon his return from South America, finds out that band frontrunner Ash has turned their second album into a protest album. The Acceptables are on tour for this controversial album; it ends up being their last. At the same time, a new hallucinogenic drug called F is spreading like wildfire across FREA. When taken, F supposedly shows you your future. Julian has gotten hooked on F as he struggles with the future and unwillingly becomes a part of an anti-FREA resistance group with his ex-girlfriend.
As a rock music fan, I was invested in The Acceptables’ struggle to gain traction for their second album. The band’s first album was a big success in FREA because of its pop-rock, ‘propaganda’ songs with FREA-friendly lyrics and easy digestibility. But their second album takes a more political approach. I can imagine another version of this novel where The Acceptables toured this political album, and it became even more successful than the first – an army of fans rising up in revolution to the sound of a gnarly guitar riff. In my opinion, Big Time takes the better approach: the tour was a resounding failure, only to be bastardised and defanged decades later. Prosser clearly has a lot of love for music. I enjoyed the references to songs from “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell to “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine.
One of my favourite aspects of this novel is how it portrays time. Déjà vu is an existential threat in this universe, and people are addicted to knowing their fates. F is so addictive because it makes the future knowable, plaguing users with an odd fear of living in the moment.
Prosser creates a movie-like experience for the reader that is tense and mind-bending, with moments that fully immerse you in each scene. In the beginning, when Julian takes F for the first time on a plane, Prosser creates a vivid feeling of a drug-induced fever dream.
Whilst this idea of a future Australia is bleak, it is also deeply satirical and fun. Dark humour permeates the pages. I remember bursting out laughing at a major moment in the book. This humour didn’t ruin the terrifying nature of the premise, nor the messages Prosser was trying to communicate, but rather added a unique personality that I greatly appreciated.
**Spoiler alert. Skip to the next asterisk to avoid the spoiler.**
My biggest issue with this book is the unclear nature of the perspective. It is revealed to us that the narrator of this story is Wes, the band photographer who disappears from the story midway through. This may be a stylistic decision – having the band’s story told through the ‘lens’ of their photographer – but narratively it isn’t effective. I kept wondering when he would make his way back into the story he was telling, but he never showed up. Big Time is written in a way that makes you forget who is speaking, and every time Wes started speaking to the reader directly, it took me out of the book. At the end, when there was no conclusion for Wes, I wondered what the point of this narration choice was.
**Spoiler over.**
As well as this, there are too many side characters that muddy up the story. Some of the friends like Pig and Cleo and the foreign scientists Minnie, Edwina and Abel aren’t emphasised enough. It took me a while to remember who they were.
That being said, the main characters are great – Julian, Oriana and Ash, but especially Oriana. The “rockstar’s girlfriend” cliché is turned on its head when we find out she is part of the resistance group against FREA. I enjoyed how grey her character is – she’s no perfect, uncorrupted revolutionary. In fact, she is faithless and unforgiving to her friends, including Julian. The other main characters are similarly grey; Ash is arrogant and Julian is egotistical and greedy. When Oriana’s and Julian’s true natures are revealed close to the end of the book, they aren’t meant to be bad people, just people trying to survive in a messed-up world.
What flies under the radar in this story is its critique of Australian culture. Prosser mocks our underdog identity. From a brief mention of skin-whitening creams to the state’s obsession with bush poets, FREA favours a white-washed, revisionist version of history that is enforced by law rather than systemically entrenched.
There is a lot to love about Jordan Prosser’s Big Time. It is, above all, a dark comedy about music and psychedelics. It’s no literary masterpiece like 1984 or A Clockwork Orange, but I had just as much fun with it, maybe even more. I encourage everyone to ride the time-distorting, drug-induced wave that is Big Time.
You can buy the book here.
Kasey Milburn
Acquisitions Associate