Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

EUGENIC by James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan

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Written by James Tynion IV (Dark Knights: Metal, Detective Comics) and beautifully illustrated by Eryk Donovan (Constantine: The Hellblazer, Memetic), Eugenic offers an innovative take on the apocalypse: The human race may simply birth a new species that replaces us. The result is a story packed with big ideas, overall distinguishing it as a standout sci-fi horror graphic novel.

The novel begins in the aftermath of a devastating pandemic, which is now over thanks to Dr. Cyrus Crane, a geneticist who came up with a cure. But the majority of people who took the cure are having children—unnatural children . . .

Eugenic is made up of this origin story plus two more spanning three centuries after the arrival of the children, who grew up with superior strength and size, and with no artificial divisions due to their strange features making everybody equal. A new division exists, however, between the original humans and their strange cousins, a division that becomes competition as to who will rule the world.

The ideas in Eugenic are powerful. Could genetics make the human race better, and if so, will it create a new ruling class? Scientists are already talking about the potential for “designer babies,” making the possibility of both happening very real. Genetic alterations could make us smarter, stronger, more attractive, and more resistant to aging and disease, but may be only available to those who can afford it. And for those who would become like gods, would they lose their humanity? Or would they regard their inferior cousins as not being real humans?

Eugenic plays with these ideas in an original way by making the genetic alterations available to the majority while excluding an immune minority. The “numans” promise utopia. The original humans, however, accomplished many beautiful things despite their flaws, with their many mistakes being the cost of free will. Eugenic asks what it means to be human, a question that becomes all the more tangible and important when humanity gains the means to change itself.

These ideas are packaged in titillating horror. The numans are monstrous in size and appearance, breed humans as pets and manipulate genetic lines, and coddle until they lose their patience and destroy. There’s plenty of hideousness on display in Eugenic, and just enough horror to drive its points home.

With so much information and the big leaps forward in time, however, a tradeoff is some readers may find the stories heavy on exposition. In each story, a central character reflects on their world and then acts to change history. One might wish each episode was a novel in its own right, which would allow deeper characterization and a more complex story to invest the reader.

Overall, Eugenic is top-notch sci-fi, the kind of brainy sci-fi many have grown to love about Black Mirror, sci-fi that makes readers ask big questions and think. Typically, technology promises to make humanity better but often only makes us more human, accentuating our strengths and flaws. Eugenic wonders what would happen if we used technology to turn ourselves into gods, whether we might lose our humanity entirely in the process.

THE ELECTRIC STATE by Simon Stålenhag

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Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State matches the notable Swedish artist’s futuristic digital paintings with an original story to produce an awe-inspiring vision of a species committing suicide, perhaps to be reborn as something new.

Stålenhag first achieved note through his paintings of stereotypical towns and countryside of an alternative Sweden in the 1980s and ’90s, where children discover and play with abandoned robots and mysterious failing machines scattered about by a dimensional rift. The artworks, created using a Wacom tablet and computer to resemble oil paintings, evoke a stimulating juxtaposition of nostalgia and wonder, a view of yesteryear out of kilter.

Developed through crowdfunding and released as a beautiful hardbound edition in North America by Skybound Books, The Electric State is Stålenhag’s third book in the same vein. In this story, Michelle, a teenage runaway, travels through Pacifica (an alternate California) with Skip, her robot companion, to find her younger brother. Pacifica is collapsing because of mass addiction to a virtual reality system that in turn is becoming a hive intelligence with its own mysterious designs. The landscape is littered with vast structures, downed airships, and the dead. But society is not so much collapsing as merely being discarded by a species that no longer has a use for it.

“Interstate 15 was barely discernible under a soft cover of dust, and visibility was really low. Now and then abandoned cars would appear in the road . . . I took the first available exit and stopped in what I assumed was a rest stop. Outside, the wind whipped ferociously through the shrubs, and a tide of dust and sand swallowed them until I couldn’t see anything.”

The paintings provide snapshots of this apocalyptic road trip and are the main event; the text illustrates the paintings far more than the other way around. It’s an interesting reading experience, as the artwork to an extent both takes over and provides a starting point for the reader’s imagination. As both the artist and writer, Stålenhag was able to make pictures and words work together differently than what you’d find in either an illustrated book or a graphic novel. The result is bigger than the sum of its parts—paintings with narrative, postcards of the apocalypse.

“Something unbelievable has happened in the secret paradise of Cape Victory. Monsters do exist—the things moving in the mists out on the cape cannot be called anything other than monsters. I mean, you could see that they were basically build from scratch. Put together by humans. You could clearly see parts of drones: a leg, an arm, a laughing face. But they had something else—a complexity I’ve never seen before.”

Without the paintings, the story is intriguing, conveying a sense of mystery Stålenhag captures so well in his art. It’s sparse, however, more a road narrative than a typically structured novel, and likely wouldn’t be nearly as effective without the complementing art. There is very little in way of plot or characterization, and none of the plot questions appears to be answered; overall, the story is thin and even a bit flat. It seems to function similarly to the paintings, there to make an impression and evoke a purely emotional response, while providing some backstory for this dying world.

In the end, The Electric State is a striking and strangely compelling work of science fiction gothic. Providing a series of snapshots of an alternate Earth of yesteryear, it tells the story of how that world ended. For those wanting more, producers Anthony and Joseph Russo acquired the movie rights, with Andy and Barbara Muschietti slated as the adaptation’s director and producer.

Review originally published in the New York Journal of Books

BAD MAN by Dathan Auerbach

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BAD MANDathan Auerbach’s Penpal, self-published in 2012 after a series of connected short stories became popular on Reddit, is an intensely eerie story in which the innocence of childhood collides with a bad man’s obsession. Bad Man revisits some of the same themes but does not achieve the same level of creepy goodness.

When Ben was a boy, he was forced to take care of his younger brother Eric. On a visit to the supermarket, Ben looked away for only a moment, but that’s all it took. His brother had vanished. Five years later, Ben continues his search and ends up taking a job at the same store as a stocker, working the night shift. Eerie clues begin to emerge that lead Ben down a rabbit hole until he learns the truth.

From the first few pages, Auerbach sets up a horrifying story: every parent’s worst nightmare, the kidnapping of a child, with understanding and closure forever being out of reach. As with Penpal, Auerbach takes his time building characters that are likeable, flawed, and realistic, and it’s easy to root for Ben and others in the story. He takes his time building plot as well, showing normal life that is slowly invaded by a corrupting influence, in this case clues Eric may still be alive. While the story is a bit long, the clues keep the reader turning pages.

Unfortunately, the story never achieves the creepiness of Penpal, one of my favorite horror stories and admittedly a very, very hard act to follow. It’s also missing some of that story’s magic, in which the expertly portrayed wonder of childhood is contrasted with a corrupting obsession. In the end, Bad Man has a big payoff in the form of a very strong dark twist, but I found it anti-cathartic and unsatisfying as Ben simply isn’t flawed enough to justify it.

Overall, however, Bad Man gets solid marks for delivering a compelling premise, personable characters, and a well-told tale. I liked it, and I’m curious what Auerbach is going to come up with next.

ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD BY MORNING by David Moody

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moodyI was invited to join the New York Journal of Books as one of their reviewers. My first review: ONE OF US WILL DEAD BY MORNING by David Moody. It’s one of his best.

Here’s the review:

With his Autumn and Hater series, British horror/thriller author David Moody reinvented the zombie. With One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning (St. Martin’s Press), he reinvents his Hater series. This book should be read as a prequel or sidequel to the series, making it worthwhile both for series fans and those looking for a standalone read with series potential.

Hater was originally self-published back in the days when eBooks were predominantly PDF files. After Guillermo Del Toro optioned it for film, St. Martin’s Press put it into print and published three additional books, quite a success story.

In this world, a substantial portion of the population suddenly changes due a peculiar gene, becoming hateful of anybody who isn’t changed. It’s the end of the world, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but a bloodbath of epic proportions. Hater has one of the most interesting twists in a work of fiction, and its ending is both violent and exultant.

At the start of One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning, the apocalypse hasn’t begun yet. A group of executives working for a business owned by Ronan have gone to the Island of Skek, a remote patch of rock in the North Sea where Hazelton Adventures runs wilderness training and team-building programs. The executives, including the introverted Matt who wants to get home to his wife, grumble and complain as the week comes to a close.

When a co-worker dies with the cause unclear as to accident or murder, tensions rise, made worse by the fact they can’t raise anybody on the mainland by radio. Then the boat that’s supposed to bring the next group and get them home crashes into the beach, filled with dead children.

What follows is what is great about Moody’s work: a deep dive into the human psychology of fear, paranoia, and survival. His apocalypses aren’t wish-fulfillment shoot-’em-ups but more about average people crumbling or rising to an extraordinary crisis. Denial, anger, bargaining, despair, and finally acceptance—the entire spectrum of human reactions to crisis is on full display in his novels.

One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning is no exception as Matt and the island’s other people find themselves cut off and at each other’s throats. While the first two Hater sequels (Dog Blood and Them or Us) veered off into the big picture, Moody’s latest gets back to the series’ roots by isolating a group of people, introducing them to the apocalypse, and then putting them through the wringer of need, uncertainty, and survival.

The writing is crisp and the voice strong, though the first act takes its time to give us particularly likeable people to root for. There are a lot of characters, which takes a little effort to track. That and the use of omniscient narration, often in the same scene, makes it difficult to determine a clear protagonist early on. There’s a small lost opportunity in that the interoffice relationships could have been explored a little further to explain the ample antagonisms, which works so well in Mayhem (2017), and differentiate the corporate employees from the adventure staff.

Once the body count rises and the central conflict crystallizes, however, the story comes together beautifully around a clear protagonist, enormous stakes, horrifying antagonist, and emotional wringer for all as trust becomes dangerous. The pace ramps up to that of a thriller.

All the while, Moody rarely, if ever, cuts corners, always favoring a gritty realism and emotional complexity to make his characters, their decision-making, and their world more realistic—and his monsters all the more fantastic for it. There’s enough violence to satisfy even the jaded, though it’s never gratuitous. The ending delivers a morally ambiguous punch.

Overall, One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning is one of Moody’s best, presenting an original apocalyptic world where one would never want to live, but one that’s plenty fun to visit in fiction. Let’s hope this revitalization of the Hater series means we’ll get even more of these stories from this notable British author.

WAKING GODS by Sylvain Neuvel

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waking godsSylvain Neuvel’s WAKING GODS is a terrific sequel to SLEEPING GIANTS, his amazing novel about first alien-human contact. Here’s my review, though note it contains spoilers if you haven’t read the first book.

In SLEEPING GIANTS, the story unfolds as a series of interviews and journal entries compiled by a mysterious government agent who believes a giant metal hand discovered in an underground cavern is of alien origin. More, that it is part of a larger artifact. Recruiting various people, he builds a team that collects the parts of a giant robot, discovering the robot can be piloted–and is invincible.

In the sequel, the robot Themis is now under UN control. Then another robot suddenly materializes in London, followed by more. The earth is under threat.

Like SLEEPING GIANTS, WAKING GODS is extremely clever. While presented as an epistolary novel–a series of documents–it’s engaging, with great characters who really stand out and that you root for. There are tons of twists and turns, and only half of these are action and plot turns, while the rest are simple but smart reveals that rapidly propel the story in new directions. That’s the great joy of this series, that Neuevel put so much damn thought into every single thing that happens in these books. All is revealed, and the unraveling of the truth is a big part of the fun.

Recommended if you like smart science fiction.

PANDEMONIUM by Daryl Gregory

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pandemonium

Daryl Gregory’s PANDEMONIUM imagines an alternate America in which genuine demonic possession is an epidemic, resulting in a very different world. The story focuses on Del, who’d been possessed as a boy by the Hellion, a demon that enjoys making mischief. Del’s family and a psychiatrist helped him until the demon left, but years later, Del realizes the Hellion is still there, trapped inside him, and it wants out.

Del goes on a journey of self-discovery to exorcise the demon, from meeting Philip K. Dick, possessed by an entity called Valis, to finding Red Book, an organization that shows Del the truth about himself, and that the cure may be worse than the disease.

Gregory’s got an impressive body of work available, but what impressed me was this was his debut novel, published back in 2008. The characterization is great, it’s thoughtful and original, the world building and philosophical ideas about demonic possession are thought-provoking, and it has enough twists to keep one engaged and guessing.

So overall I found PANDEMONIUM to be an interesting read. I liked it.