“The House of a Thousand Floors” by Jan Weiss

This is blatant anti-capitalist communist propaganda.

I don’t even mean that as an insult, necessarily. It just is what it is. Something like “Icebreaker,” maybe, but way more absurd, way more symbolic, and much deeper into phantasmagoria. Rich people at the bottom, suffering people above, the whole structure as a metaphor for society. Subtle? Absolutely not. Effective? Eh.

I expected something more like the Backrooms, or “Megahrush” — endless strange architecture, weird impossible spaces, some kind of early sci-fi liminal horror thing.

There is a bit of that here. The house itself is a massive, surreal, oppressive machine, and some of the sci-fi imagery is interesting. But the book is much more political fever dream than exploration of an impossible building. Less “what is this place?” and more “capitalism is a monstrous vertical prison.”

Which, okay, sure.

But it was difficult to finish. The absurdity can be fun, but after a while it started feeling more exhausting than exciting. The book keeps pushing further into allegory and nightmare, and I did not always feel like I wanted to follow it there.

I’m glad I read it as a curiosity. Early dystopian sci-fi, anti-capitalist surrealism, giant symbolic building — there is definitely something here.

But did I enjoy it? Not really. Would I recommend it? I don’t know. Maybe to someone specifically interested in old socialist sci-fi or weird political dream literature. For everyone else, probably not.