A clever blastoff of a seriocomic sci-fi saga that plays fecund what-if games with technology and social change.
After meddling from competing alien groups, humanity creates an astounding invention—prompting a galactic verdict that the dangerous species must be eradicated.
Fantasy/sci-fi author Hudgin (Green Grass, 2017, etc.) launches The End of Children series with the premise that eons ago, an alien expedition—captained by intelligent octopuses of the interstellar Grock Corporation—claimed prehistoric Earth for trading and natural-resource exploitation. The explorers genetically elevated primates, boosting their brain power to the degree that they would ultimately be able to make future commerce deals. But a rival ET mission from the aquatic planet Quyshargo (these aliens resemble mermaids and Black Lagoon monsters) covets Earth as well and subverts Grock’s plan with secret genetic and “dream planters” tinkering. Result: Millennia later, California graduate student Lily suddenly conceives a practical technique for instantaneous travel/teleportation she implements with her boyfriend, Kevin, and classmate Doug. Dubbed the Rosy Transmitter (for the color of its beam), the process is soon sold by a greedy professor to competing world governments, and even the White House envisions it principally as a weapon. The invention alarms the Grock aliens monitoring the planet. Homo sapiens, they believe, are too vicious for tech that could send them rampaging destructively across the universe. After briefly abducting the three students, the aliens begin using a sanctioned, nonviolent genocide technique, spreading a virus that halts human reproduction. Lily is the last woman to get traditionally pregnant (via Kevin) while both are held virtual prisoners by a panicked U.S. government. Hudgin details the next tumultuous nine months with succinct but well-thought-out strokes (whereas other authors might overpopulate the narrative with a high page count) of how Earth society reacts to the paradigm shift of the Rosy Transmitter and imminent extinction through sterility. Readers will find echoes of Kurt Vonnegut, Harry Harrison, and Philip José Farmer (especially the last’s “Seventy Years of Decpop”) in Hudgin’s smart, edgy blend of the sardonic and the apocalyptic. Some may sense a determinedly schizoid tone, as serious extinction concerns (and involved discussions on cloning) contrast with the campy Grock and Quyshargo minions behaving like maritime pirates despite their dire pursuit of enlightened capitalism of a space alien sort. The loose ends and cliffhanger ending point immediately toward the sequel, and, unlike Earth’s people, the material seems very fertile indeed.
A clever blastoff of a seriocomic sci-fi saga that plays fecund what-if games with technology and social change.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5390-1092-0
Page Count: 359
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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