Sponsor |  marginalprophet | Oct 11, 2005 11:31am | horror-horror.group.stumbleupon.com/forum/18602/ [horror-horror.group.stumbleupon.com/forum/18602/]
67. DAN SIMMONS on GRENDEL by John Gardner (1971)
Crichton's "Eaters of the Dead" rationalizes Grendel as neanderthal. Gardner also wrote "The Resurrection."
68. F. PAUL WILSON on THE EXORCIST by William Peter Blatty (1971)
Millions of people must agree with Francis Paul Wilson. He is a practicing physican who wrote The Keep, The Tomb, and Black Wind.
69. JOHN M. SKIPP on THE SHEEP LOOK UP by John Brunner (1972)
Years have gone by since I found a copy of "The Sheep Look Up," and I have not read it. Now, is it because I haven't read the books leading up to it, or is it because John Mason Skipp scared me out of it. Here is his entire piece in two parts.
In the 1980s, the world is choking on its own excrement. Austin Train, a scientist who has spoken out on matters ecological, has been forced by the repressive US government to go underground, and `Trainites' are either committing acts of terrorism in his name or living on would-be self-sufficient communes. A mysteriously poisoned shipment of food sent as an aid package to an African nation causes an outbreak of homicidal psychosis and much home-grown controversy. Colorado, where many of the novel's large cast of characters live, is racked by avalanches, earthquakes, pollution, disease, anarchy, mutant worms and other perils directly related to man's abuse of his environment. America slides closer to martial law as resistance to the murder of the planet grows. The last in a rough trilogy of dystopian visions -- the others are Stand on Zanzibar (1968) and The Jagged Orbit (1969) -- The Sheep Look Up is one of the most frightening, plausible and angry of the many science fictional forecasts of a hellish future.
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.
-- Milton: Lycidas
Above: a sky of pale and lifeless blue. No clouds. No birds. No motion.
Below: a scorched and lifeless plane that stretches on forever. Sand baked to slats, flat brown and brittle. No motion. No hope of motion.
No hope.
All that's left of the Earth.
In the foreground, he stands: a dead man, all but naked, his body transparent, the slats bleeding through. He holds in his hand a sun-bleached skull. The skull of a sheep, in grinning profile: black socket staring, the joke long gone. Some flowers, too: the green stems bowed, red petals withered. So much for beauty.
The dead man has no face. A gas mask, only. Robotic. Horrific. The gaping holes where the eyes should be are neatly bisected by the flat horizon, where lifeless earth meets lifeless sky on the far side of that lifeless apparition ...
I've just described the cover of the Del Ray paperback edition of The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner's ultimate nightmare vision. It is without question the most horrifying novel that I have ever read.
Here at the sputtering tail-end of the 20th century, we've got a lot to be frightened about. On top of the same ol' primordial dreads that we dragged up out of the slime with us -- fear of death, and disease, and disfigurement; uncertainty as to where we stand, from moment to moment, on the food chain; fear for the fate of the soul/spark/self when the bag of meat gives up its ghost -- on top of all that, the plugged-in contemporary Homo sapiens now has the Big Picture to contend with.
continued at horror-horror.group.stumbleupon.com/forum/24831/ [horror-horror.group.stumbleupon.com/forum/24831/] |
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