Tomorrow's not far off in a plastiworld (everything, by the way, does seem to be plastiformed) of acronyms, computers, cassettes, clones, spare parts, genetic variants, government-licensed pregnancies and genders, synthetic foods and drugs, cosmetics to be applied to your most intimate recesses, and chromosomatic "efs" and "ems" (i.e., females, males)—a world in which you could easily lose your mind as well as your Personhood. In fact the plaintive message on page 520 is "What will we do when the mystery is gone?" The only em you'll have to remember is Dr. Nicholas Bennington Flair—he of the Tomorrow File where ideas for the future are to be developed—like the Ultimate Pleasure pill. This is the nearest thing to a story line—the UP which will serve for jerking off or "mildifying" terrorism or increasing production or perhaps subjugating the people (if that's what they still are). (Although there's a fringe coterie of Obsos—religious or health nuts—or Beists, who believe in the Life Force.) You'll find an occasional subsidiary drama here and there: an outbreak of botulism (from licking stamps) or an attempt to preserve the brain of a great but doomed man. But mostly this is a long workup with lots of programmed manipulation, mechanical accessories, massive input of scientific gear and terminology. Sanders, as everyone knows, is a showy and inventive writer but difficult to stabilize between his best books (The Anderson Tapes; The First Deadly Sin) and his Down pills. Like this one which really sinks in the absence of a scenario. But then of course in this new order where they've thought of everything, they have their own newspeak like "Scan and Destroy." It could be self-fulfilling.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0586060634
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975
Natural storyteller Hunter knows the value of the occasional poignant scene to give his firefights breathing room. Not for a...
In the category of slam-bang, testosterone-laden, body-bag filling, hellzapoppin' potboilers, this is as good as it gets.
For those who may have wondered about the gene pool that helped produce master sniper Bob Lee Swagger, the author's demigod of a series hero (Time to Hunt, 1998, etc.), here's the tell-all prequel. Earl Swagger, valiant marine, Congressional Medal of Honor winner, is Bob Lee's demigod of a daddy. We also meet Bob Lee's brave and beautiful mama. It's the summer of 1946, and Hot Springs, Arkansas, is under the thumb of gangster Owney Maddox, who has a dream: he wants to refashion Hot Springs into an oasis of sin, a place where Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, et al., will feel safe, comfortable, and cosseted. He’s halfway there. On the surface Special Prosecutor Fred C. Becker doesn't seem much of a deterrent, but Becker has a dream too: he wants to be Arkansas's youngest governor ever. Moreover, he has a plan: to bring Owney down by recruiting and training an elite task force that can strike hard, fast, and ruthlessly. Earl Swagger—who better?—is charged with the training. At first, things go right. The recruits are eager and motivated. Aided by the element of surprise, they deliver a series of blows that shake the Maddox realm to its Sodom-like foundations. But then Maddox, with the whole of New York gangsterdom to draw from, recruits his own elite force. The stage is set for blood-drenched confrontations, during which lots of bad men are killed, some good men are betrayed, and Earl performs exactly the way Bob Lee's progenitor should.
Natural storyteller Hunter knows the value of the occasional poignant scene to give his firefights breathing room. Not for a minute to be taken seriously, but, all in all, a blast.Pub Date: July 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86360-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
An improvement over The Dead Zone, with King returning to his most tried-and-true blueprint. As in The Shining, the psi-carrier is a child, an eight-year-old girl named Charlie; but instead of foresight or hindsight, Charlie has firestarting powers. She looks and a thing pops into flame—a teddy bear, a nasty man's shoes, or (by novel's end) steel walls, whole houses, and stables and crowds of government villains. Charlie's parents Vicky and Andy were once college guinea pigs for drug experiments by The Shop, a part of the supersecret Department of Scientific Intelligence, and were given a hyperpowerful hallucinogen which affected their chromosomes and left each with strange powers of mental transference and telekinesis. When Vicky and Andy married, their genes produced Charlie and her wild talent for pyrokinesis: even as a baby in her crib, Charlie would start fires when upset and, later on, once set her mother's hands on fire. So Andy is trying to teach Charlie how to keep her volatile emotions in check. But when one day he comes home to find Vicky gruesomely dead in the ironing-board-closet, murdered by The Shop (all the experimental guinea pigs are being eliminated), Andy goes into hiding with Charlie in Manhattan and the Vermont backwoods—and Charlie uses her powers to set the bad men on fire and blow up their cars. They're soon captured, however, by Rainbird, a one-eyed giant Indian with a melted face—and father and daughter, separated, spend months being tested in The Shop. Then Andy engineers their escape, but when Andy is shot by Rainbird, Charlie turns loose her atomic eyes on the big compound. . . . Dumb, very, and still a far cry from the excitement of The Shining or Salem's Lot—but King keeps the story moving with his lively fire-gimmick and fewer pages of cotton padding than in his recent, sluggish efforts. The built-in readership will not be disappointed.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1980
ISBN: 0451167805
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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