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Post by Calenture on Nov 5, 2007 18:01:31 GMT
Abomination by Guy N Smith First published 1986. My copy Arrow 1987. I'm going out on a limb here because GNS is hardly my favourite author (I've had to really work to finish 3 of the 4 novels by him that I've got through, Manitou Doll being one that I'd hesitate to re-read even if I still had it, as I'm afraid it might not live up to my memory of it.) But it's time I posted something substantial, and maybe some will find this useful. Could hardly believe that it's not reviewed here already! ;D Les Earnshaw, his wife Diana and daughter Emma live on their farm, the Dingle, in Pen-Y-Cwm, on the Welsh border. Les and Diana are firm believers in organic farming, but on the hill above the Dingle is Roeder Agrochemicals Limited, where the latest pesticide sprays are being tested. The testing area is supposedly shielded from the rest of the valley, but everyone knows that there's always a ‘fall out’ whenever the Roeder plant tries a new spray. The latest spray has already been the cause of disagreement between Roeder and Holden. But Roeder persuades the younger chemist that it might be better for his career if he rewrites his report on the new chemical. The chemical is intended to work on the same principle as some weed killers, encouraging insect life to outgrow itself until it dies. The problem, Holden says, is that the insect and animal life being tested in the laboratory is growing, but shows no sign of dying yet. The first sign that something is definitely wrong is when little Emma goes down to the pond and is terrified to discover herself facing frogs as big as rabbits. Pretty soon, various inhabitants of Pen-Y-Cwm find themselves facing oversized earwigs, flying ants, and other nasties, and realise that they have more to worry about than losing their latest crop of cabbages. As usual with Smith’s books, the cardboard characters are introduced routinely and despatched as horribly as possible, and it’s often difficult to remember just who’s left in the storyline and who’s dead. Sometimes, there’s a paragraph of quite vivid writing, like the emergence of giant stag beetles on a beam above a church congregation. A funeral interrupted by giant worms boiling up under the coffin is also memorable. And the giant slugs are imbued with such a memorably evil quality that I was resisting the thought that a handful of salt would have made short work of them. I'd never thought that slugs were meat eaters, but either I'm wrong or in the tradition of all pulp hokum this is vaguely explained away by some lines about the chemical's tendency to change these creatures' 'nature'. This is where a lot of the menace falls apart: it’s very difficult to believe that frogs – even frogs as big as rabbits – would present a real threat to anyone. Worms and slugs likewise are unpleasant rather than unnerving. One girl has to get crushed under a horse before the frogs can finish her off! But Smith reminds us repeatedly of the disaster that struck Bopal in 2004, when a chemical leak at Union Carbide killed thousands and ranks as the worst industrial disaster in human history. I had the impression that Smith has genuinely strong feelings on the subject of chemical misuse and the need for organic farming, and there’s a certain irony that this lurid little thriller is one of the few memorials to the real tragedy of Bopal.
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Post by erebus on Feb 1, 2009 20:18:02 GMT
Always one of his better books in my opinion. Have'nt read it for coming up a decade now. Its sitting up there on the shelf as I type these words. If my memory serves me correct is there a bit were some female is terroised by some beetles ( in a kitchen perhaps ) and they crawl up her ...erm ...her nipsy ? Just springs to mind thats all.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 3, 2010 13:03:29 GMT
Blurb
Something diabolical hangs over a small hill village on the Welsh borders. A new miracle pesticide has gone terribly wrong... and now drifts over the neighbouring farmland in a deadly cloud. Homesteads and fields, church and schoolroom - all are prey to a seething, slithering, flying, creeping abomination from hell.
Stripping the warm flesh from your bones...
Virtually every 'when animals attack!' nasty disguises itself as social commentary - look what we're doing to the planet! - whereas we know they're just an excuse for scene after scene of young women being eaten alive by mutant cockroaches, but with Abomination you get the best/ worst of both worlds. Guy N. Smith really does hold strong views on the use of super-pesticides (he favours organic farming) and Abomination is not only a protest novel but also one of his finest horror offerings.
Against the advice of his tame whizz-kid scientists, Franklin Roeder, the ruthless despot behind the successful Roeder Agrochemical Plant, tests his miracle DD7 insecticide on the outskirts of Pen Y Cwm village. The foul-smelling spray is intended to mutate insect and amphibian life so that the creatures fast outgrow their bodies and die, leaving the farmers to put their feet up while their crops flourish blight-free. The first part works, but the beefed-up mutants don't die. Instead, they develop a vicious hatred for mankind and wage war upon the villagers. Only our hero, Les Earnshaw, organic farmer, is prepared to take on Roeder, but Les, wife Diane and young daughter Emma are new to the village and doubtless have London ways about them, so no-one listens.
Then, the mysterious murders begin. Old Martha Vickers is earwigged to death although it's first believed she was killed by her garden gnome (because it looks evil). Savage slugs do for old Tom 'Obediah' O'Dyer. Alan Marsden, 17, loses his virginity and his life within an hour when he and Maggie Lane the village bike enjoy an open-air shag, closely observed by a squadron of giant ticks. Flying ants attack the infant school - brave Sue Richards, head teacher, saves the day - before ambushing councillors Edna Millichip and Randolph Egbert in their car (Edna dies in ecstasy: i think this was the bit you were refering to, erebus?). Even Les suffers the indignity of having to yank fistfuls of giant earwig out of his arse. Toads are also involved, mostly in a cheerleader capacity to begin with, but soon they're masterminding the whole campaign. or, as Guy memorably puts it. "The King beasts of cold slime had become harbingers of death"! Meanwhile, St. Victor's church is besieged by evil stag beetles. Will the nightmare never end?
Well, it will but .... that's not quite the ending if you get my meaning as GNS has one more nasty trick up his sleeve.
Bad sex, Blue Nun, giant toads exploding messily and a pipeful of Bogey Roll - this really is top notch stuff and goes some way toward wiping the turgid Doomflight from memory.
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Post by erebus on Jun 8, 2010 18:57:23 GMT
I recall the slugs making nightly visits to the various window panes of the folks at the farm if I'm not mistaken. Plus the Moths too.
And do those Flying ants pop out of a cupboard in the classroom ?
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Post by dem bones on Jun 12, 2010 9:07:56 GMT
I recall the slugs making nightly visits to the various window panes of the folks at the farm if I'm not mistaken. Plus the Moths too. And do those Flying ants pop out of a cupboard in the classroom ? Yeah, right on all counts. Don't open that cupboard! Just our bad luck that headmistress Sue Richards and Mary the dinner lady are around to save the infants.
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Post by killercrab on Jul 7, 2010 0:07:45 GMT
A slow burner for me. I thought the loooong rant against pesticides almost derailed the drama being set up. Thankfully the copulating couple in the spinney getting eaten alive has righted the ship from the moral reef it was foundering on. Onwards , earwigs ahoy !
KC
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Post by killercrab on Jul 13, 2010 17:00:50 GMT
I must agree with the consensus here that Abomination is one of the higher echelon books from Guy's vast output. It certainly vies for top spot in the nature amok sweepstakes - any book that includes a frog french kissing a victim to death has to be worth something! Guy obviously has strong opinons on manufactured pesticides and doesn't let any opportunity slip to put his point across including direct association with the Bhopal disaster when Agrochemicals' cyanide plant goes up in flames .
Wether you think a decidely pulp horror is the place for campaigning or not - nobody can spin a yarn of ecological horror quite like Mr Smith. A good companion piece to this might be the little discusssed Carnivore.
KC
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Post by kooshmeister on May 21, 2012 3:23:54 GMT
Read this. Found it to be a bit on the meandering side somehow. I don't even remember what happened to Les and his family, they were so dull I started skipping the scenes involving them midway through. Also, I'm unsure Smith knows what a transvestite is. As regards Holden, I think the word he wanted was actually transsexual. Whatever.
I rather liked the bleak ending although the DD7 working after all right after they kill Roeder seemed like a copout. I would've rather had the freed vermin descend upon the town and eat everyone than the ending we got. As with so many of these books it seems Smith ran out of steam at the end after all the buildup.
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Post by dem bones on May 21, 2012 19:05:31 GMT
For me, Abominations is one of his very best. GNS is the master of the rubbish ending, but on this occasion i think he fades out on exactly the right apocalyptic note.
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Post by noose on May 21, 2012 19:07:47 GMT
I have a real fondness for how bad BLOODSHOW is...
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Post by bluetomb on Jun 28, 2017 14:22:00 GMT
Finished this a few days ago. I got off to a rocky start on Guy N Smith a few years ago with The Pluto Pact, which has an awesome premise (evil wizard threatens nuclear annihilation) and builds quite nicely for nearly half its length before really fizzling out (as if the budget was slashed), never going for the mayhem it should have and leaving its biggest impression being the louse of a lead protagonist. Fortunately Abomination is quite a bit better. The set up is a classic, experimental pesticide DD& drifts down from its testing fields at the sinister Roeder Agrochemicals compound, over the small Welsh border village of Pen-Y-Cwm and surrounding countryside. DD7 is supposed to make creepy crawlies outgrow themselves and burst, or outgrow their own strength and collapse (the intended mechanism isn't completely clear), but unfortunately it doesn't kill them, just makes them really big and really hostile and really hungry. Flesh hungry! For a while this all goes rather well. Old timer Obediah has presentiments of doom, a farmer and his wife argue over use of chemicals, and nominal hero Les Earnshaw is introduced, an outsider who still farms the old way and won't budge even if most of the old locals do. Les's daughter Emma is menaced by a big frog, a difficult (but blameless) old lady is hideously devoured by woodlice, and then we meet the human villain, Franklin Roeder, who orders a report on the truth of DD7 changed. Soon enough the gruesome vignettes start mounting...
Alas this didn't quite keep up the fun for me. The first issue I had with it is that the plot doesn't really come together and mount in as much of a suspenseful, compelling way as I would have liked. Les Earnshaw doesn't actually have much to do when when things really get moving, he isn't just ineffective, he's not even around. Curiously, heroic local school headmistress Sue Harris actually does more (actively saves lives) but is treated as much more of a side character. Franklin Roeder and his scientists aren't around for around 3/4's of the novel, and none of them meet any goodies. The book just settles into vignettes and keeps at them until an ending that seems to come just because an appropriate length had been reached. The second is that very few of the characters are either sympathetic in their thoughts and deeds, or sympathetically drawn. After a while events felt a bit sour to me, I prefer the largely sympathetic touch of a Halkin or the boldly scuzzy, trashy approach of a Hutson. Here there's something more a bit aloof and unkind.
Still, overall the goods are delivered. The pace is fast and length ideal. The deaths lack Hutson style ultra gore but are often drawn out and nightmarishly painful, with some striking bad taste in a couple of scenes. There are some effectively atmospheric or suspenseful scenes, like the beetle gathering Calenture mentioned above, or the schoolroom ant attack, and a good smattering of memorable lines like "Randolph winced, knowing now what it felt like to be circumcised and castrated at the same time", or "The kingbeasts of cold slime had become harbingers of Death". The climax is in quality b movie thrilling style, and the coda is effectively chillingly bleak. So it all works out quite well, and is recommended. It just has a few little nags for me that hold it back.
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