CHILDREN OF THE END

Comic-strip horror novel padded with science fantasy and no sex trimmings. Clements's debut, the paperback 6:02, was a 1988 nominee for the Bram Stoker Award. A brilliant idea runs aground as genetically engineered Alien- like humanoids run amok with religion. Joint Nobel-winners Dr. George Irving Prendergast, a biologist, neurologist, and microsurgeon, and Dr. Charles Carlton, a molecular biologist and early computer expert, whose shared prize for recombinant DNA allows them to found BioEdge, one of the world's most successful biotech companies, come up with a secret new computer chip—the biochip, made from human DNA, with which they create vaguely human monsters called Loners. Carlton apparently commits suicide, but Prendergast, a religious nut, feeds the world's religions into Vulcan, the original Loner, who becomes the Christ of the monsters. Prendergast plans to release the bloodgurglers, which have huge grinding jaws much like the Alien's of film fame, to rid the world of two thirds of its population and bring mankind back to Arcadia when the population levels settle between man and monster. But the Loners, who are force-fed TV commercials and sitcoms, mean to establish their own rule. Amusingly, the blood-soaked, bone- crushing monsters, who can change from their normal bird-legged hopping shape to human form, forever gabble away in Christian fundamentalism and cry jovially ``Ah wan mah Em Tee Vee!'' and ``And out of his mouth came a sharrrrp two-edged sssworrrrd. Neverrrr needs sharrrrpening.'' When Deborah Kosarek, a biomedical tech writer for Prendergast, finds herself laboriously rewriting a program that has crashed, and inadvertently enters the computer for the monsters, she and her baby fall into hot water with the baby- gobbling loners and must be protected by security officer Tony Garwood, who, by novel's end, is walking hamburger. Slurrrp!—or your money back.