Lot and Lot's Daughter by Ward Moore

First published as short stories in 1953 & 1954; published by Open Road Media on June 6, 2017

Ward Moore was far from prolific, but some of the science fiction he generated has achieved classic status. The short story “Lot” (1953) and its sequel “Lot’s Daughter” (1954) certainly deserve to be enjoyed by each new generation of sf fans.

“Lot” is the perfect antidote to all of the loathsome prepper porn and self-published survivalist literature that has become so popular with a certain segment of society. Moore seems to have anticipated the genre and savaged it before it was born.

The Jimmon family, car packed full of essentials, no room for the dog, flees Malibu, along with countless others who are heading north from the LA area. David Jimmon is pretty pleased with himself because he put his own selfish interests ahead of those of his neighbors and, for that matter, his family by pushing ahead of the pack on the crowded highways. He views himself as a romantic hero, the individualist who survives while the docile masses perish. His family views him as a tyrant who has gone off the deep end.

David is enormously frustrated with his wife and kids, who (in his view) don’t understand the enormity of the war that has destroyed LA and Pittsburgh, inevitably leading (he believes) to primal battles among the survivors as they try to steal food, weapons, and women from each other. David’s family, on the other hand, is fed up with his “there is no law but the law of survival” attitude. When his son brightly asks if it is now okay to steal cars, only David's wife seems to understand that the breakdown of society is a choice, not an imperative.

The war, and the chance it gives him to show off his planning skills, is the only thing that has gone right in a life as a buttoned-down accountant that is primarily defined by David’s insecurity. But the story’s payoff comes in just how far David is willing to go to bring about his vision of a brighter survivalist future.

“Lot’s Daughter” takes place several years later. David is still awash in the constructs of his antisocial mind. His daughter, who believes that humans have an instinct for cooperation, clearly did not inherit her father’s craziness gene. All of David’s survivalist preparations reveal his ineptness at pretty much everything. He is much better at theorizing how to survive than at acquiring the practical skills that might allow him to thrive.

Both “Lot” and “Lot’s Daughter” involve a shock. In “Lot’s Daughter,” the shock arrives when it the reader realizes just what a hypocritical dirtbag David really is. Both stories excel at giving the reader just enough information to appreciate the themes while allowing the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps.

The quality of Moore’s prose and the depth of his thought set "Lot" and "Lot’s Daughter" apart from most modern post-apocalyptic fiction. The stories are small and personal but they hold up a mirror to an outsized, vocal segment of society that, I’m sure, would be just as useless in a crisis at David proves to be. The second story drips with irony, a perfect counterpart to the first, but both stories illustrate the consequences of a misguided philosophy, an eagerness to abandon civilization, that is just as prevalent today as it was when Moore created David Jimmon.

RECOMMENDED

Binary Storm by Christopher Hinz

Published by Angry Robot on November 1, 2016

Binary Storm is a prequel to Liege-Killer. Binary Storm introduces the Jeek Elemental known as the liege-killer, but it sets up a good bit of background before reaching that point.

In 1995, Nick Guerra was nearly stabbed to death. One hundred years later (after napping from 2010 to 2086), Guerra is in the unsecured part of Philadelphia to meet Ektor Fang, a Paratwa assassin. Like all the Paratwa, Ektor occupies two bodies. From Ektor, Guerra learns that the Royal Caste, consisting of a special breed of genetically engineered binaries known as the Ash Ock, is scheming to create a world in which the Paratwa rule.

Guerra works with the nonprofit Ecostatic Technospheric Alliance (E-Tech), an organization dedicated to “putting the brakes on unfettered science and technology.” Christopher Hinz nevertheless envisions some cool futuristic tech that E-Tech hasn’t managed to suppress.

Guerra is trying to get intelligence information to the E-Tech leadership when the leadership changes. After that, his self-imposed mission is to go after the Paratwa. He hits upon a scheme to turn a Paratwa against other Paratwas. The rest of his scheme involves training a specialized team of four fighters in a special technique to defeat the Paratwa.

Binary Storm takes place on Earth, before humanity’s flight from Earth that precedes Liege-Killer. Hinz fleshes out the background that gives rise to his earlier, post-apocalyptic Paratwa novels. The ease and prevalence of gender change is one of the points he emphasizes, giving it an interesting twist with the notion of “gender vacations.”

Guerra brings with him the guarded optimism of the late twentieth century as he confronts the pessimistic sense of doom that dominates the late twenty-first, providing a philosophical spark that gives depth to the story. For the most part, however, this is an action story, and there is enough futuristic fighting to keep action fans happy. Hinz delivers the action in a fluid writing style that makes Binary Storm easy to read. Some aspects of the lengthy novel come across as filler, but Binary Storm is a strong introduction to the earlier Paratwa books, which are more intense and, for that reason, somewhat better.

RECOMMENDED

Feral by James DeMonaco and B.K. Evenson

Published by Anchor on April 4, 2017

Feral isn’t marketed as a young adult novel, but it has all the trappings: an adolescent female who has little experience with boys, although a definite interest in them, finds herself in a dangerous situation and has to survive by her wits while learning about herself and, in the process, finding a boy who makes her feel special. It isn’t a formula I seek out because I’m not a young adult and novels of that ilk too often devolve into trashy romance fiction, but readers in the appropriate market might like Feral more than I did. I can only say that this is not what I expected from co-author B.K. Evenson, who is a fine writer of adult fiction.

Feral begins in a way that suggests the beginning of a zombie novel. A fire at a place that does genetic manipulation has made something like a virus airborne, making males at Allie Hilt’s school behave aggressively. Eventually all males treat females as prey. Fortunately, Allie is athletic and pretty aggressive even without the virus that turns men into feral killers. And fortunately, the feral killers aren’t zombies, although they aren’t far removed from zombies.

The story that follows is post-apocalyptic. Three years have passed. The only goal men have is to kill women. Women have banded together in camps to protect themselves. This seems likely to be the last generation of human life, since normal reproduction is, under the circumstances, out of the question. Allie and her sister are the scouts for one of the camps. Dr. Zeman, who once worked at the company that manufactured the virus, is experimenting on captive feral men to see if she can neutralize the virus before the human race ends.

Point of view shifts from Allie to her sister to Dr. Zeman to a foul-mouthed woman named Jacky. Allie, however, is clearly the main character. And of course, this wouldn’t be a YA novel unless Allie met an uninfected boy who soon says “it was like I knew you” when he talks about seeing her for the first time. You know it’s a YA novel when the authors feel compelled to add a cheesy romance between two dreamy young people. And you really know it’s YA when, after they have sex, everyone wonders why the young woman is glowing. After that, of course, she becomes jealous, as if she’s entitled to his exclusive attention when he’s the only normal male in a world full of fertile women. The gak factor in this book repeatedly caused a bit of bile to rise in my throat.

Feral isn’t all bad, by any means. The story reminds us of the small things that distinguish humans from each other (the things humans lose when they become feral), and in that sense the story has poignant moments. But some of it is a bit silly and all of it is disappointingly predictable.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Defectors by Joseph Kanon

Published by Atria Books on June 6, 2017

Simon Weeks is running a publishing company, having been forced out of the State Department after his brother Frank, a CIA agent, defected. Now, in the Khrushchev years, Simon has the chance to publish Frank’s “tell all” book. But first, he needs to meet Frank, for the first time in years. To that end, Simon travels to Moscow.

There is tension between the brothers that goes beyond Frank’s defection. Some of it involves Frank’s wife, who traveled with Frank to Moscow. But the tension mounts when Simon learns that Frank wants to defect … again … this time betraying the Soviets by returning to the US.

In the best tradition of spy novels, the reader wonders what sort of treachery is really afoot as the novel progresses. Joseph Kanon keeps the reader guessing as Simon second-guesses then third-guesses everything he is told. Suspense elevates when things get sticky, but it isn’t always clear for whom the reader is supposed to root.

The novel’s background accounts for the plural title. Guy Burgess and an assorted crew of spies spend their nights drinking and moaning about the boring lives they’ve settled into, quite a change from the exciting lives of deception they once lived. Some of the defectors and their wives play key roles as the story unfolds. Some are conflicted, prone to second-guessing the decisions that defined their lives, while others seem quietly resigned to the isolated lives that Soviet heroes live when they are never quite trusted by the Soviet government. Only Frank, an active officer in the KGB, seems to have gained the trust of his superiors, but as he well knows, nobody is trusted, and perhaps nobody deserves to be trusted.

The surprising plot ends with two tight twists. That is reason enough to recommend Defectors, but the novel’s emotional resonance comes from the complexity of its characters and their shifting relationships. Everyone seems to be betraying everyone in Defectors. Everyone is playing a role, some unwillingly, some for the love of the game. The shifting and uncertain relationship between the two brothers, in particular, is masterful.

RECOMMENDED

Skitter by Ezekiel Boone

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on May 2, 2017

I read Skitter without realizing that it is the second novel in a series, following on the heels of The Hatching. Maybe I should pay more attention to book descriptions, but Skitter is quite easy to follow, even without reading the first novel. It cannot be read as a stand-alone novel, however, because it ends in mid-action, leaving the plot entirely unresolved.

Skitter starts as an amusing “the apocalypse is coming” story and morphs into an amusing “the apocalypse is here” story. The apocalypse involves an invasion of man-eating spiders. This is the kind of apocalyptic novel in which people respond to a crisis by engaging in ridiculous behavior. In other words, it seems realistic.

The president, Stephanie Pilgrim, needs to make some hard decisions about the spread of the spiders, but she has the support of presidential adviser Manny Walchuck, with whom she is cheating on her husband. She has less support from the military, with its inevitable “nuke ‘em” advice, but there are no easy choices.

At the NIH, Melanie Gruyer has become the most important woman in the world. She knows a lot about how spiders move, although she doesn’t know why millions of them have started eating people. Melanie is the novel’s touchstone of normalcy.

In quarantined Los Angeles, Bobby Higgs has set himself up as a prophet, ranting against the government and enforcing order with an army of thugs. Of course, his true agenda is to get out of LA before he’s eaten by spiders.

Mike Rich is an FBI agent in Minneapolis until the FBI abandons Minneapolis. He frets about keeping his daughter safe in an unsafe world. The spiders have made that more difficult.

A group of intelligent misfits think they have a solution to the spiders. Their idea needs some refinement, to say the least.

There are a bunch … and I mean a bunch … of other characters. Some die. Some survive, presumably to reappear in the next novel. One or two survive but probably wish they hadn’t … or they would if they were still capable of thinking like a human. Most of the action takes place in a decimated America but spiders are also a problem in Japan, Peru, Berlin, Oslo, and other places the reader at least briefly visits. Me, I’d grab a parka and head to Alaska in the hope that the spiders will become dormant in the permafrost.

There are some very funny background moments in Skitter, such as the description of a truck stop that is emblematic of Midwestern fast food Americana. But like many amusing novels, Skitter makes a serious point. The excrement may well hit the fan (the world seems to be moving in that direction, doesn’t it?), but it won’t be the nutty survivalists and preppers who save us, because (1) they only care about saving themselves and (2) you can’t plan for everything. Rational thought and a willingness to work together offer the best hope for enduring a crisis. Arming yourself with shotguns and nutrition bars and retreating to a shack in the woods won’t stop the spiders.

Since apocalyptic fiction is seriously overdone, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Skitter. The story isn’t particularly deep, but it isn’t shallow. It is populated by lively characters and it features a number of unexpected moments. It also left me wanting to read the first and the next book, all of which is enough to earn a recommendation.

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