Everybody Scream!, by Jeffrey Thomas
Book Review by Paul Goat Allen
Have you read this book?
If Jeffrey Thomas' Everybody Scream! were a literary recipe, it would be
equal parts Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of
Cthulhu and Aleister Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend -- with a pinch of Simon
R. Green's Deathstalker saga.
Paxton (aka Punktown) is a lawless city located on the colony planet of Oasis. During Punktown's annual fair, the defecation hits the rotating oscillator as a cast of drug dealers, nymphomaniacs, career criminals, serial killers, mutants, aliens and naïve teenagers converge to create unparalleled havoc. Serving as a kind of thematic eye in the center of the swirling violence, sex and drug-saturated storm is Del and Sophi Kahn, a down-and-out musical icon and his wife, owners and managers of the traveling carnival. As the carnival quickly spirals out of control -- shootings, drug overdoses, serial killers on the loose, packs of bloodthirsty monstrosities stalking innocents, etc. -- so too does Del and Sophi's relationship come unraveled. While Del struggles with his quickly fading fame and shrinking fan base, his cheating wife is blackmailed by a member of a powerful drug cartel. As visitors to the carnival live out their wildest fantasies -- or for some, their deepest nightmares -- high on mind-altering drugs like gold-dust and purple vortex, and produce dangerously high levels of adrenaline on rides like the Vomit Comet and the Puker, alien invaders join the fray looking for creatures to harvest.
With a practically limitless (and virtually unexplored) landscape on which to paint on -- the planet of Oasis -- and a vast supply of bizarre characters, Thomas' Punktown saga could be as popular and long-lived as series like Robert Asprin's Phule's Company saga and Green's aforementioned Deathstalker sequence. Alex, the savage, sex-crazed protagonist of the Burgess classic, unintentionally describes Everybody Scream! perfectly: "... a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolent."
Paul Goat Allen is the editor of Barnes & Noble's Explorations science fiction/fantasy book review and is the author of Burning Sticks, Old Winding Way and Warlock Dreams.
Paxton (aka Punktown) is a lawless city located on the colony planet of Oasis. During Punktown's annual fair, the defecation hits the rotating oscillator as a cast of drug dealers, nymphomaniacs, career criminals, serial killers, mutants, aliens and naïve teenagers converge to create unparalleled havoc. Serving as a kind of thematic eye in the center of the swirling violence, sex and drug-saturated storm is Del and Sophi Kahn, a down-and-out musical icon and his wife, owners and managers of the traveling carnival. As the carnival quickly spirals out of control -- shootings, drug overdoses, serial killers on the loose, packs of bloodthirsty monstrosities stalking innocents, etc. -- so too does Del and Sophi's relationship come unraveled. While Del struggles with his quickly fading fame and shrinking fan base, his cheating wife is blackmailed by a member of a powerful drug cartel. As visitors to the carnival live out their wildest fantasies -- or for some, their deepest nightmares -- high on mind-altering drugs like gold-dust and purple vortex, and produce dangerously high levels of adrenaline on rides like the Vomit Comet and the Puker, alien invaders join the fray looking for creatures to harvest.
With a practically limitless (and virtually unexplored) landscape on which to paint on -- the planet of Oasis -- and a vast supply of bizarre characters, Thomas' Punktown saga could be as popular and long-lived as series like Robert Asprin's Phule's Company saga and Green's aforementioned Deathstalker sequence. Alex, the savage, sex-crazed protagonist of the Burgess classic, unintentionally describes Everybody Scream! perfectly: "... a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolent."
Paul Goat Allen is the editor of Barnes & Noble's Explorations science fiction/fantasy book review and is the author of Burning Sticks, Old Winding Way and Warlock Dreams.
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