Book Review: Antibodies

Book Review: 'Antibodies' by David J. Skal

2 / 5 Stars

'Antibodies' (220 pp.) was first published in hardcover in 1988; this paperback version was released by Worldwide Library in April, 1989, one of the books in the 'Isaac Asimov Presents' imprint. 

The cover illustration is uncredited, but is almost certainly by Vincent DiFate.

'Antibodies' is one of three sf novels published by David J. Skal in the 1980s, the others being 'Scavengers' (1980) and 'When We Were Good' (1981). All received critical acclaim, but Skal discontinued writing fiction after 'Antibodies', and instead concentrated on film history and criticism, particularly horror films.

'Antibodies' is a satirical novel, set in San Francisco in a near-future USA, in which 80s consumerism and pop culture pervade every aspect of life for those who are white and affluent. Lead character Diandra (we are never told her last name) is a young woman who works as a fashion designer for Croesus, an upscale clothing store associated with all that is trendy in fashion and art.

Diandra suffers from alienation, not just from society, but from her family, and from humanity in general. Luckily for Diandra, she has been contacted by an underground cult called the Cybernetic Temple. The cult has no physical presence per se, but rather, dispenses its doctrine via videocassette tapes filled with subliminal messages, and carefully managed social gatherings in which participants dress as exotic androids and eat a tasteless nutritional paste designed to promote their identification as 'artificial' persons.

The Cybernetic Temple has gained considerable notoriety by promulgating a theology that is the complete antithesis of humanism: the human body, and its functions, emotions, and morals, is little more than 'meat' doomed to gradual decay and dissolution. The Temple offers its acolytes access to new, cutting-edge technologies for organ replacement and, by extension, immortality.

As 'Antibodies' opens, Diandra is struggling to survive her final day at work, before leaving for the Central American enclave of Boca Verde, where the Temple's state-of-the-art facility will remake her as a cyborg, visually perfect, and immune to the sorrows and indignities of the flesh.

As the novel unfolds, we are introduced to a cast of California eccentrics, all of whom interact either with Diandra and the Temple. Some of these eccentrics, like the egomaniacal cult 'deprogrammer' Julian Nagy, see the Cybernetic Temple as an abomination that must be eliminated - particularly if so doing brings fame and fortune. 

Others, such as the artist and style dictator Venus Tramhell, are advocates for the Temple and ruthless in promoting its goals....which are quite different from those that the naive Diandra has been conditioned to believe.......

The back-cover marketing blurbs for 'Antibodies' describe it as a collage of ideas and concepts from David Cronenberg, Harlan Ellison, and J. G. Ballard, and to some extent, this is true, particularly in light of the inclusion of some splatterpunk scenes that counterbalance the satirical passages that take up much of the narrative.

However, sf novels that successfully pull off the trick of embracing satire for their entire length are few and far between, including those in the sub-genre of humorous sf, and the works of Ron Goulart and Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, all of which I have found underwhelming, if not tedious. And while I consider 'Antibodies' to be superior to anything from those authors, even at only 220 pp. in length, I found the plot beginning to tire by the time the final 30 pages unraveled.

'Antibodies' does succeed at mingling cyberpunk-era sf and social satire, and is worth picking up if you are a fan of either genre. But it remains very much a product of the time and place of the late 80s, and I'm not sure contemporary readers would find it particularly appealing.

Car Warriors issue 1

Car Warriors
issue 1
Epic Comics / Marvel, April, 1991

'Car Warriors' was a four-issue miniseries published from April - September 1991 by Marvel's Epic Comics imprint. The series was based on 'Car Wars', an RPG first released in 1980 by Steve Jackson Games. The game probably drew heavily, in turn, from the 1975 low-budget, cult classic movie Death Race 2000.

The game was subsequently expanded for use with Jackson's GURPS system in the late 1980s, and in 1991 a card game based on 'Car Wars' was released; this may have been the impetus for the publication of the comic book series. 

While I'm always skeptical of the quality of comic books based on tie-ins to licensed properties, I was quite pleased with 'Car Warriors'. It's filled with quirky little touches of originality and flair. 

For example, the setting is not your usual Mad Max - inspired desert landscape, but rather, the US Heartland, albeit reduced to an economic and ecological wasteland, beset with anarchy and the threat of mass starvation. How many action comics have sequences set in Council Bluffs, Iowa ? Or Green Bay, Wisconsin ? 

The actual 'Death Race' locale is Michigan's Upper Peninsula, not the place one would ordinarily think of for such an event. The course goes from Fort DeLorean, on the shore of Lake Superior, south to Lansing. The betting is high, and some of the racers are among the nation's best. But the homicidal motorcycle gangs and cannibal tribes of the Upper Peninsula's wastelands are well-armed, well-informed, and looking for fresh meat among the contestants......

The hero is an alienated young Mexican man named 'Chevy' Vasquez, aka 'The Meaner Beaner' and 'The Mad Mex'. Once, long ago, when he was a child, Chevy Vasquez had a run-in with one of the Upper Peninsula tribes.....an encounter that left him with nightmares, night sweats, and a growing desire for bloody revenge.

While it offers a good dollop of explicit violence with each issue, 'Car Warriors' also provides plenty of sarcastic humor, which gives these comics extra appeal (to me, anyways).

It also helps that penciller Steve Dillon's artwork is well done, and well complemented by the inks of Phil Winslade and the colors of Steve Buccellato, giving the 'Car Warriors' comic books the appropriately gritty, 'entropic' sensibility this type of tale requires.

So, posted below is the entire contents of the first issue of 'Car Warriors'. Look for the remaining three issues to be posted in the coming months here at the PorPor Books Blog.

 

Winter World by Dixon and Zaffino

Winter World by Chuck Dixon (writer) and Jorge Zaffino (artist)

'Winter World' was a three-issue, black and white comic published by the indie company Eclipse Comics from September 1987 - March 1988. [Dixon had plans with Marvel comics to publish a three issue sequel, 'WinterSea', but the project never came to fruition.]

This 2014 IDW hardbound volume compiles all the issues of 'Winter World' and 'Wintersea', along with some extra material in the form of cover artwork and pinups by artist Jorge Zaffino (1960 - 2002).

'Winter World' is set in the near-future; the Ice Age has returned and most of the planet is shrouded in snow and ice.

Scully, the lead character, is a trader; sort of a New Ice Age version of Han Solo. Scully wanders the wastes in his oversize snowcat tracked vehicle. His companion is an oversize, highly intelligent badger named Rahrah. Rahrah is an unusual sidekick, and a cool character.

Life in this environment is akin to that of the 'Mad Max' movies, where self-interest is the key to survival, and double-crosses, atrocities, and ongoing acts of inhumanity are par for the course. 

As 'World' opens, Scully saves a wisecracking redheaded girl named Wynn from an unrewarding life at the hands of a particularly smelly and treacherous tribe of ice-dwellers.

However, Scully suffers from bad luck, and soon he and Wynn are in the hands of a group of slavers who have no compunctions about working their captives to death. It's up to Scully and Rahrah to save the day......with lots of explosions, and severed fingers, along the way.

'WinterSea' finds our two heroes heading south, in search of a mythical land where volcanic activity renders the land free of snow and ice, and where strange things called plants are able to thrive. 

Of course, double-dealers and fate conspire against the hapless Scully, and he winds up a member of the living larder (!) of a tribe of ice pirates. Only heroic action from a reluctant Scully can save Wynn and the mythical land of Earthfire.

Dixon's script is well-done, mingling sarcastic humor with plenty of action, odious villains, a believable post-apocalyptic world, and moral ambiguity - Scully isn't the traditional hero type, but a hustler who is more than willing to put his own agenda first and foremost. 

The artwork in 'Winter World' is, in my opinion, 'serviceable'; it was Zaffino's first major art assignment for a US publication. In his Introduction to the third issue of Winter World, reprinted here in the compilation, Dixon reminisces about seeing some of the sketches from the Argentinian artist Jorge Zaffino, and concluding that he absolutely had to work with such a talented artist. 

While Zaffino' indeed shows some skill in his pen-and-ink draftsmanship, there are too many panels where over-inking and poor rendering make the content difficult to make out. And more than a few panels of the 'WinterSea' comics show such a sketchy, half-finished character, that it's clear that the comic book was not ready for release at the time Marvel made the decision not to produce it. 

The verdict ? 'Winter World' and 'WinterSea' are entertaining examples of 80s sci-fi comics. Along with getting the hardback compilation, I recommend looking for the brand-new 'Winter World' series, by Dixon and artist Jackson Guice, being published as a full - color comic book by IDW during the Summer of 2014.

Book Review: Twilight of the City

Book Review: 'Twilight of the City' by Charles Platt

1 / 5 Stars

‘Twilight of the City’ was first published in 1977; this Berkley Books paperback (215 pp) was released in September, 1978. The cover art is unattributed.

‘Twilight’ is another of the most boring sf novel’s I’ve ever attempted to read. I got as far as page 83, at which point I abandoned it.

The premise is standard-issue sf: it’s the near future, i.e., 1997. The US is in the grip of a downward spiral of economic and social collapse. While the ever-dwindling numbers of the wealthy classes live in modern homes in gated communities in the exurbs, the middle classes are engaged in food riots in the city streets. For their part, the poor live in ghettos that have expanded into enormous wastelands marked by lawlessness and anarchy.

The narrative revolves around the actions of three young people. Bobby Black is the superstar singer and showman of the emerging genre of ‘Suicide Rock’. 

Bobby’s songwriting partner is the taciturn, calculating Michael. 

And then there is Lisa, who came to the City with a head full of dreams, and stars in her eyes, only to find that dreams die fast on the hard and unforgiving streets of the ghetto.

Michael invites Lisa to live with him, and introduces her to Bobby Black. Soon a skeptical Lisa joins the inner circle of artists, researchers, and oddballs who circulate around the Suicide Rock scene and engage in tedious conversations about their existential angst. 

[At some point later on in the book, these characters apparently engage in some sort of uprising against the corrupt order of the state, but I didn’t read that far enough to know exactly what happens.]

Why is ‘Twilight’ so bad ? Well, for one thing, Charles Platt (b. 1945), a prolific writer of sf novels and short fiction starting in the late 60s and continuing into the 90s, forgets how to tell a story, in favor of trying mightily to craft a ‘literary’ novel that seeks to transcend the boundaries of simple genre fiction. 

Such efforts are not in and of themselves deserving of criticism, but looking back, the cruel truth is that many such efforts made during the New Wave era of sf were mediocre, at best.

It’s a sure tip-off an author is attempting and failing at this sort of thing when some chapters of the novel, as is the case in ‘Twilight’, lead off with epigraphs of ‘Suicide Rock’ song lyrics. 

Here’s a sample:

You say I’m all you care about
To me you cling
The real world you could do without
I’m everything
You scheme and dream of an escape
From iron walls of life you hate
Well darling there’s one way to be together
Alone in love, for you and me, forever

(chorus)

Our suicide
Will be forgiven
After we’ve died
And gone to heaven !

The trite quality of the lyrics is reflected in the conversations that occupy much of the narrative. In these conversations, Bobby, Lisa, and Michael express pathos and uncertainty over the meaning of life, the collapse of the social order, the conflict between the haves and the have-nots, and What Is Art ?

These conversations simply don't work; the prose is stilted, wooden, pretentious, inane....pick your favorite adjective, they all apply.

With ‘Twilight’, author Platt was earnestly trying to craft a novel that said something Profound about the Human Condition, using a downbeat, Ballard-esque sf setting. While I have to acknowledge that he was trying to do something out of the ordinary,the reality is that ‘Twilight’ is boring. Believe me, you’re better off avoiding this novel.