At cloud level, the Hollywood adaptation follows the formula and journey of Lansdale's The Thicket. A gang kidnaps a sister, triggering the brother to hunt them down. On their trail he forms an unlikley posse: a dwarf, black man, and prostitute. Things get hairier and hairier, leading to a showdown at the titular thicket. At the ground level, however, the film departs from Lansdale's story at a couple key points, points critical to the film's success.
It's worthwhile taking a step back to consider how quietly and quickly cameras have become an everyday part of private life. How many photos do you take of quotidian, personal things—per day? More broadly, what percentage of online content is based around private lives published in the public space? Regardless the actual percent, the underlying message seems: intentional voyeurism sells. There is something that wants to both present and consume private lives—the more dramatic the better, we animals us. Riffing off this atavistic aspect of human nature is D.G. Compton's quiet masterpiece The Unsleeping Eye (1974).
The Unsleeping Eye predominantly rotates around two characters. First is Katherine Mortenhoe. What would in modern parlance be called a romance AI prompter, Katherine uses computer algorithms to generate romance fiction, and is one of the most well known and popular for it. At the start of the novel she learns she is terminally ill, with only 4 weeks to live. The other main character is Roddie. He is an NTV television reporter who, unbeknownst to everyone save his producer, has had an invisible camera installed in his eye that records everything he sees. Terminal illness a thing of the past in the book's future, Roddie's producer has the brilliant idea of inserting Roddie into Katherine's life and creating a documentary of her final days—the sadness, grief, drama, and all. Thing is, Katherine is not interested in signing the agreements which would give NTV the rights to film and broadcast, meaning NTV need to find alternate ways of getting the footage.
Speculiction does indeed harp on about the importance of style. As we get closer to AI novels on bookshelves, style is the one thing that humans can cling to as their own. Dear ChapGPT: please write a book in the style of David Mitchell. I'm not sure that (today) it could. But it could 100% write a book in the style of Martha Wells, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and many, many others. I don't discredit these writers' imaginations or success, only that their writing lacks a certain spark, an intimation the writer knows that you know that they know this word is being used because... This is all a long winded way of saying, Jeff Noon and Steve Beard's 2024 novel Gogmagog will likely not show up on bestseller lists, but if mood and style are as important to you as imagination and story, read on.
Gogmagog is the cantankerous tale of cantankerous Cady Mead. A tough old bat, she is an irascible, foul-mouthed, pipe-smoking sloop captain with a mysterious past. Though retired and in her cups, she is one day convinced to help transport two strangers downriver to the city of Ludwich. The river alive with creatures both real and ethereal, Cady knows it's only her knowledge and experience which can get the boat through the toughest spots and avoid the most dangerous hazards. What she doesn't count on, however, is the unexpected appearance of one of her oldest enemies haunting the river.
Land of the Headless is the tale of the poet Jon Cavala. An amorous youth, he forms a tryst with an aristocrat's daughter over the course of a summer. They willingly share a bed outside of marriage, but only to be found out. The daughter and her family betray Cavala, and he is punished for his impatient penis. For in Cavala's draconian society, murder, blasphemy, and in this case “rape”, are cause for capitol punishment. And so the story kicks off with Cavala's beheading. A device attached to the spine prior captures Cavala's mind state—consciousness more or less—so that even after his noggin is lopped off he goes on living. He buys a cheap pair of electronic eyes and ears with what little money he has left and so sets off to live a new life. The headless are shunned and the going is tough. Cavala falls in with a trio of other headless, and together they agree to travel to a nearby city by foot. What Cavala does not tell his comrades is that he goes to meet the daughter who betrayed him.
