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The
Twisted Fiction of David J. Skal By Adam
Groves
David J. Skal is a name that should be identifiable to most horror
fans. You DVD buffs will
likely recognize Skal as the guy who does the audio commentaries for
Universal’s FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA and FREAKS discs, while those of you
who read books know him as the author of several nonfiction works relating
to the genre, including THE VAMPIRE ENCYCLOPEDIA, HOLLYWOOD GOTHIC (about
the tangled history of DRACULA) and DARK CARNIVAL (a biography of FREAKS
director Tod Browning).
But I know David J. Skal best as a writer of dark fiction, and one
of the most distinctive such authors on the scene.
I base this claim on just three novels--SCAVENGERS, WHEN WE WERE
GOOD and ANTIBODIES, all published in the early to late eighties--which
established a distinct and assured voice with a real storytelling flair
and affinity for the grotesque.
Skal’s fictional output began with SCAVENGERS
(Pocket)
in 1980, an unassuming-looking sci fi paperback that must have knocked
unsuspecting readers for a loop. A
mind-blower in every sense of the term, it’s a hallucinatory look at a
future world where “mind sharing” is all the rage, a process
accomplished through a serum that allows people to inhabit each other’s
brains. This proves
irresistible to Brian, a distraught guy who’s just lost his girlfriend
Kelly. Brian happens to
stumble onto
What SCAVENGERS heralded was a sensibility as twisted and
thought-provoking as those of J.G. Ballard and David Cronenberg, packed
into a fast, furious framework and lean 204-page count with nary an ounce
of padding. It is quite simply
the ultimate story of psychic warfare, handily beating out
similarly-themed works like William Hjortsberg’s GREY MATTERS and Gene
Snyder’s MIND WAR.
The following year brought us WHEN
WE WERE GOOD (Pocket), another compact depiction of a horrific future
that’s nearly as powerful as its predecessor.
In this novel’s nightmarish world a nuclear war has hopelessly
scrambled the genetic codes of humanity.
Enter the children, seemingly perfect specimens created by the
government to be pawed and molested by all-too willing adults.
But the kids have their own malicious agenda, which becomes clear
when one of the tykes is delivered to Kevin and Linda, a childless couple
in for far more than they (or us) could possibly imagine.
Sound grim? It is,
and grows steadily more so as it advances.
It took
another seven years for Skal’s next book to appear, but the wait was
worth it: 1988’s ANTIBODIES (Congdon
& Weed) was and is Skal’s
most monumental and ambitious novel. Packed
with arresting H.R. Giger-esque imagery, it wreaked a demented twist on
the then-burgeoning cyberpunk literary movement while fully retaining the
economy of the earlier books.
Like
SCAVENGERS before it, ANTIBODIES was packaged as straight sci fi, under
the “Isaac Asimov Presents”
label, which doubtlessly freaked out many prospective readers.
From one online review: “I
have never quite forgiven Asimov for failing to mention that this wasn't
just near-future SF but a really gross and disturbing horror novel
about the hatred of the body, anorexia, and graphic self-mutilation.” ANTIBODIES
is indeed about all those things, being a disquieting look at the ultimate
consequence of humanity’s flirtation with technology: the Antibody
phenomenon, referring to those who want to put aside their “prisons of
flesh” and become robots. They’re
encouraged by a shadowy organization called the At
the book’s center is Diandra, a severely disturbed young woman caught
between these two opposing forces; she’s an Antibody to her core, yet
part of her finds the whole movement scary.
When Julian captures Diandra for a reprogramming session he’s in
for a shock, as she proves harder to break than any of his other clients.
The book excels in grotesque and surreal set pieces that reach
their apex in the final pages, wherein disease and insanity unite in a
veritable carnival of blood, viscera and technology run amok. True,
ANTIBODIES’ brand of cyber-horror has been outdone in recent years by
the likes of Carlton Mellick III
and Steve Aylett, but there was nothing else like it in 1988.
Back then I ranked it with CRASH and THE WASP FACTORY, and although
ANTIBODIES hasn’t held up quite as well as either, it has proven fairly
influential (I have no idea if filmmaker Sogo Ishii, who made 1994’s
ANGEL DUST, or Todd Haynes, writer-director of 1995’s SAFE, have read
the book, but both films appear to bear its influence).
Sadly,
ANTIBODIES was to be Skal’s last foray into fiction writing.
I’ve heard tell of a subsequent project called EAT ME, said to be
“a novel about anorexia that eats THINNER for breakfast”, but it has
yet to show up in book form--if indeed it even exists.
That leaves us with the author’s many nonfiction tomes, of which
I particularly recommend 1993’s THE MONSTER SHOW (and the revised
edition published in 2001). It’s
an alleged “Cultural History of Horror” that’s in actuality a highly
idiosyncratic survey of the genre, with a core eccentricity fully
befitting the author of SCAVENGERS and ANTIBODIES.
The book’s subjects include FREAKS director Todd Browning, the
fifties genre icon Vampira, the notorious CARRIE musical, make-up effects
artists, Fangoria conventions, transsexual surgery, Michael Jackson(!) and
the rise of splatterpunk. The
end result is a weird, wonderful and unputdownable account.
Of course THE MONSTER SHOW is still in print.
The other books outlined above are not, and nor do they receive
much air time any more, from Skal or anyone else.
I however believe it’s past time that SCAVENGERS, WHEN WE WERE
GOOD and ANTIBODIES were given their rightful due as intelligent and
unflinching classics of straight-up horror. --10/12/07
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