“Bad Monkeys” is something of a science-fiction “Catcher in the Rye.” Along with the Salingeresque details, author Matt Ruff has animated “Bad Monkeys” with the spirit of Philip K. Dick, and he’s borrowed a little seasoning from Jim Thompson and Thomas Pynchon. The real debt is to Dick, in the way Ruff expertly plays with notions of what is real and what is illusion.
"We don't fight crime, we fight evil. There's a difference. And Bad Monkeys is the name of my division. The organization as a whole doesn't have a name, at least not that I ever heard. It's just 'the organization.'"
"And what does 'Bad Monkeys' mean?"
"It's a nickname," she says. "All the divisions have them. The official names are too long and complicated to use on anything but letterhead, so people come up with shorthand versions. Like the administrative branch, officially they're 'The Department for Optimal Utilization of Resources and Personnel,' but everyone just calls them Cost-Benefits. And the intel-gathering group, that's 'The Department of Ubiquitous Intermittent Surveillance,' but in conversation they're just Panopticon. And then there's my division, 'The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons ...'"
"Irredeemable persons." The doctor smiles. "Bad monkeys."
