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...in this startling literary breakthrough In these apocalyptic
'scenes from a history as yet unwritten', America has become
hopelessly bogged down in a protracted Operation Desert Storm.
Elvis
has returned from the dead as a tormented political assassin,
there are aliens in the White House and giant monsters on
the rampage. Factor in crazed combat robots, the total destruction
of Japan, insane conspiracy theories and huge quantities of
mindless blood-spattered violence, then get ready for the
end of all creation in this stunning literary debut.
The
novel opens, 'It is Day 500 of Operation Desert Storm, and
everything is going according to plan.'
Hollings' thesis, explicit throughout, is that the 21st century
started here: the smart bombs wised us up. Desert Storm gave
shape and impetus to a whole new decade.
Illustrated
by legendary underground artist Savage Pencil.
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Published
the very week of the attacks on America, Destroy all Monsters
is genuinely, spookily prescient. As a novel, it is haunted
by a host of literary ghosts: Gibson, Burroughs, De DeLillo,
Ballard; as a progress report on Planet Earth, it seems to
have time-slipped onto the front pages.
Destroy
all monsters is a conservative, synoptic novel. A great many
'cult' signifiers are present and correct: Gojira movies,
serial killers, Elvis Presley (in reanimated form), the President
of the USA. Yet here they are run through, one on top of the
other, one becoming the other, with incredible confidence
and speed: we bat around the planet, each section rarely longer
than two pages: we are in Burger King in Washington, a Tokyo
night-club, a theatre in Memphis, in something approximating
to cyberspace. The writing style is clean and clear. Clip
after clip of '80s / '90s riffs are shot off: 'A jet fighter
takes off from the rolling deck of an American aircraft carrier
in the Persian Gulf. The pilot's face is hidden beneath a
dark visor that reflects nothing but the glowing instrument
panel in front of him. Lights flash, reading out the contours
of enemy air space, as the plane skims low over the pollution-crowded
sea...'
The
monsters of the title provide the engine of the plot. On Earthquake
Island a man known to us only as The Scientist has been keeping
Micronosaur (the Molecule Monster), Eiga (the Dream Monster),Manta
(the Giant Reptile Wing) and Gravaton (the Deep Monster) under
control. But The President wants to harness their powers,
to turn them into something useful, to use them militarily...'The
balance of terror. That just about summed the whole thing
up. Time to move on, he thought. Just like it was the fifties
all over again.'
'Monsters, mayhem and serial killers; it's got to be Ken Hollings'
Penguin cult books review.
read
the Bizzare
interview by Ted Thornhill
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