Allreaders.com

Message Board

Norman Spinrad Message Board
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Spinrad has written!

Author Spinrad's Book Reviews

Bug Jack Barron
Got a problem? Bug Jack Barron, the television personality with one-hundred million viewers. Got $50,000.00 in liquid assets? Contact the Foundation of Immortality and Benedict Howards will have you frozen until technology can bring you round and cure your ailment – forever. So a Negro without his assets in a suitably liquid state bugs Jack Barron, and complains he's been refused a place in the Foundation of Immortality's freezers, that he's being racia...
Greenhouse Summer
The greenhouse effect has expanded the desert-like regions of the world, submerged others (such as New Orleans and much of the Mississippi Valley), and turned Paris into a tropical paradise with honeysuckle, bougainvillea, African finches, and a Seine filled with alligators. The French capital is the setting for the latest world conference on climate change, and something big is brewing. Monique Calhoun, VIP services operative for Bread & Circuses (the t...
Journals of the Plague Years
This story is told by the four main characters: Dr. Richard Bruno, a physician trying to find a cure for AIDS (here referred to as the Plague, because it has mutated and become widespread among heterosexuals); Linda Lewin, an infected prostitute; John David, an army deserter and serial rapist; and Thomas Bigelow, a closet homosexual turned virtual U.S. dictator. Bruno finds a cure for AIDS, which can be spread sexually; Bigelow, misled by Bruno's greed...
No Direction Home
This is a collection of short stories dealing with such things as mass mind control through rock-music to initiate a nuclear holocaust; a world in which being off drugs is the nightmare; a lightning storm that transports a travelling biker into an alternative reality inhabited by mutant killer bikers; another planet visited by a newly married couple who are forced to choose the one to die by the planet's inhabitants; a television producer of sports progr...

Spinrad booklist

The Druid King
Knopf, Aug 2003, 24.95, 413 pp. ISBN: 0375411100 In Ancient Gaul, after watching treachery lead to the defeat and subsequent death of his tribal leader father, Vercingetorix flees, taking shelter with the Druids. The Arch Druid Guttuatr and the swordswoman Rhia become the lad's teachers training him in the art of magic and war. Gaius Julius Caesar recruits the young man to become Rome's client ruler over Gaul. Vercingetorix accepts the posit...
The Iron Dream
In a post-nuclear world filled with mutations of every kind, humans who can breed true are at a premium. One such "Trueman" is Ferric Jaggar, an exile who is finally allowed to return to the island of genetic perfection that is Heldon. Disgusted with what he finds, Jaggar recruits a gang of motorcycle-riding toughs and takes control of the border town. Feeding on the natural hatred humans have for their mutated neighbours, Jaggar founds a political pa...
The Void Captain's Tale
The Void Captain's Tale begins drily enough, a nice description of the infancy of warp space drive in which the only persons foolhardy enough to attempt such travel, are the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It is also the pentultimate in "heroics" as it symbolises human mastery over the universe that is forever expanding. It is Humanity's shining hour; it is humanity's Raison d'etre. Genro, the Captain of the pleasure and luxury liner, has erroneously ...