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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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