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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on May 29, 2009 19:03:37 GMT
Gary Brandner - The Brain Eaters (Hamlyn 1985)Finally got this one, been after it for a while.
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Post by dem on May 14, 2010 21:18:27 GMT
Blurb:
"Never had he seen anything like what was happening to Hank Stransky.
Red blotches formed on the skin across his face. They darkened into shiny pustules - which broke like ripe boils, discharging a gooey liquid.
Hank jumped up from the barstool and span completely around like a man in some mad dance..."
First a workman goes crazy in a public bar with a broken bottle... A taxi-driver murderously slams his cab into a crowd of pedestrians... A newly-wed bride slaughters her husband in a restaurant and plunges through a plate-glass window.
Three strange, violent deaths, three different cities, and all on the same day.
But these are only the first of thousands.
For something has gone terribly, horribly wrong.
Maximum boils, pus and mindless violence in the Brain Eaters, which reads like Gary Brander's answer to James Herbert's The Fog. Up to p. 100 and, bar the obligatory few paragraphs of plot development, there's been no let up whatever.
The Biotron Laboratory, Appleton, Milwaukee. Helicopter pilots Stuart 'Stu' Anderson and Lloyd Bratz are testing a top secret pesticide over farmland in the vicinity of the Old Shawano County Road. When it fails to turn the cows purple they realise somethings wrong and abort the mission. How could they know that Biotron employee Eddie Gault has entered into a sex-for-cannister-tampering arrangement with big bosomed eco-warrior Roanne? Instead of the harmless chemical, they've sprayed the area with a colorless vapour, marked for disposal on account of its devastating effect on the human brain (see blurb). On reporting back at the plant, both men are frog-marched off to quarantine.
Corey Macklin is an ambitious journalist on the Milwaukee Herald who happened to be present in Vic's Old Milwaukee Tavern when nice family guy Hank's face erupted in boils prior to his attacking all comers with a broken bottle. Corey links this violent episode to similar recent incidents - the Bride who stabbed her husband with a steak-knife before taking a header out the window: the mild-mannered cabbie who deliberately ran into a group pedestrians, etc. In each case the perpetrators had complained of man-flu and an unbearable headache. Just as it seems Macklin's landed the story of his career, the Herald's owner leans on him to kill it.
Dr. Dena Faulkner, bio-chemist, has been involved in a no-strings-attached relationship with Stu Anderson and is miffed that he should transfer without at least telling her over a goodbye boff. Her worst fears are confirmed when Stu's co-pilot, Bratz, on the run from the Biotron infirmary, pays her a midnight visit to inform her of her lover's death - he literally tore himself to pieces. Biotron goons arrive and take Bratz away. Dr. Kitzmiller, Dena's slightly sinister German superior, extracts her promise that she'll keep what she knows to herself. But when the bulk of the Biotron go sick with the man-flu/ splitting skull virus, she seeks out Macklin ....
To be continued ....
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on May 15, 2010 0:12:53 GMT
You seem to be getting stuck in to the Hamlyns, dem. You're putting me to shame, about time I read some  . |
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Post by dem on May 15, 2010 12:21:34 GMT
nah, you're still the Hamlyn man, saucy. it's just whenever i'm lucky enough to land one, i can't rest until i've read it. Still only halfway (it's a 278 pager). i was worried that Brandner couldn't possibly write anything deserving of that genius title, but he's making a decent fist of it so far. i've only managed Death Walkers and Carrion before now (OK while you're reading them if not particularly memorable) but this is way livelier. Just when you think it's going to drag, he hits you with a second helping of ghastly vignettes. Vic's Tavern sees its second tragedy in a week: a loving husband and wife sit down to watch their favourite TV show, Dallas, and inexplicably tear each other to pieces: topping these, miserable airline passenger Norman Hastings, goes gaga on a flight from New York, attacks one of those new fangled male stewards and tears the emergency exit door off its hinges. Looks like Brandner is gearing up to blame it all on the Russians .... |
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Post by dem on May 19, 2010 17:05:53 GMT
all finished and i must say i found this infinitely preferable to Death Walkers and Carrion.
Dena Faulkner, Corey Macklin and his Herald colleague Dr. Ingersol (token burnt out veteran hack with a secret past and a booze problem) eventually learn the truth about the plague unleashed on the population all because the hapless Eddie Gault couldn't keep it in his trousers! The brain-eaters are worm-like parasites which erupt from their victim's oozing facial boils once they've devoured his or her grey matter and require a new host. They were cultivated independently in both the US and the USSR to be used versus each other in biological warfare, but neither side would dare unleash such a voracious and unpredictable abomination on the world!
A covert delegation of Russian scientists - visiting the US on 'agricultural' business - realise the truth and their first impulse is to catch the first plane home and let the Capitalist scum wipe themselves out, but one of their number, Kuryakin, has vital Brain Eater info to impart to Dr. Kitzmiller. But Kitzmiller has never forgiven the USSR for atrocities committed in his homeland at the close of WWII. Why would he trust a Bolshie?
A very Hamlyn novel. if disappointingly light on explicit bad sex scenes, although i guess with all the headaches and exploding pustule messiness going on, it's kind of understandable. Loads and loads of set-pieces, one of the best of which sees the massed-ranks of the infected coming on like extras from Dawn Of The Dead storm the Biotron complex and rip up half the staff while they're trying desperately to come up with an antidote. The schmaltzy, 'see what we can do when we put aside our differences!' allegedly happy ending almost did for me, but Brander redeems himself in the final paragraphs when we catch up with sexy Greenpeace protester Roanne Tesla.
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Post by tristan on Feb 21, 2011 21:24:48 GMT
Whatta great cover....whatta great title
BRAIN EATERS
I remember this one from school...I was given £2 by a relative for my birthday....and brought this from WH Smiths... much to my grandparent's dismay! They confiscated it...and told me this sort of stuff will rot my brain....
how right they were!
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 20, 2017 20:45:17 GMT
Anyone got a good scan of the original red cover with the screaming guy? I'm seriously considering adding it to TV Tropes.
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Post by dem on Feb 20, 2017 21:02:09 GMT
Anyone got a good scan of the original red cover with the screaming guy? I'm seriously considering adding it to TV Tropes. Have just edited it into the post at top of this thread. |
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 20, 2017 22:37:59 GMT
Thanks bunches!
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 4, 2020 21:08:15 GMT
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