'Harry Adam Knight' - The Fungus

[mattofthespurs]

Kim Newman has been plugging this book on Twitter today.
Personally I'm not a fan of re-issues. I believe it goes against the Vault of Evil Charter ;-)
So I bought a second hand of the first edition off eBay today for the princely sum of £2.88.
Looking forward to getting it.

[andydecker]

This is the most boring and lousy cover I have seen lately. This is a horror novel, for the Vaults sake! Not the adventures of the pink bubble princess.

[mattofthespurs]

Received this on Tuesday and finished it today.
Had a huge amount of fun with it.
Can't see how I let this pass me by originally.
Kudos.

[dem]

Harry Adams Knight - The Fungus (Gollancz, 1990)

Jean-Francois Podevin

Blurb:
A creeping man-made nightmare has escaped from the laboratory, a deadly plague that takes over body and soul, leavng its victims totally transformed. Only a last-ditch suicide mission can save mankind from its own invention - or is it already too late?

'THE FUNGUS is excellently bizarre. I loved it and you will find it will grow on you'– Brian Aldiss

'Loud, scary, sick fun. You will never again go near mushroom soup" – Kirkus Review

A first-rate and vivid thriller"– Publishers Weekly

A spectacularly gruesome nasty, written with inventiveness, grisly wit, and considerably more intelligence than any of its competitors.' - Ramsey Campbell


Finally landed a copy at weekend. Cover not a patch on Star's definitive man-with-jungle-up-nostrils edition, but arguably shades second place from recent 'dayglo puke over London' Bruin Books reissue. Have just zipped through eighty pages and The Fungus is every bit as horribly hilarious as its reputation suggests. Steve - very brilliantly - guided us through the early stages of the epidemic - "The Spreading" - overleaf, and fair to say the plague made very short work of London. Reports suggest the bulk of Margaret Thatcher's Government is currently holed-up in a nuclear bunker below Whitehall, "But our science correspondent, Tom Southern, believes that this measure doesn't offer much protection." We can only hope and pray he's right. Virus has now spread to Yorkshire via a Scouse family on a camping holiday. Biochemist Jane Wilson, whose laboratory cultivated mushroom has thrown the entire planet into crisis, is herself missing, presumed transformed to a seething mass of fungus. Her estranged husband, Barry, a mild-mannered GP, has been abducted from his home in Ireland by the British Army, and helicoptered to Highgate with orders to retrieve Jane's working notes. Even as he's frogmarched protesting aboard a helicopter, the 'shrooms of doom take down a passenger airliner over the Norwegian coast ....

" ... unless we isolate the plague agent very soon then mankind is doomed.

The tape ended. The uneasy silence that followed was broken by Slocock saying loudly, "I say to hell with it. Let's forget the whole thing and get pissed instead."

[kooshmeister]

Ironically, this is the only one of my Knight novels that hasn't been afflicted with mold due to the high humidity in my new apartment...

[dem]

With Britain under squelchy siege, young Geoffrey Henderson, Horace Snell and Sheena Blakey - AKA , the Hastings branch of the International Socialist League - have opted to sit out the fungus apocalypse in the caves under the West Cliff. Best of luck with that, comrades.

Meanwhile:
"In my medical bag over there you'll find a jar of Vaseline. Make sure you use a lot of it."

Even though we've long left Part I behind us, the spreading shows no sign of letting up. The hapless Barry Wilson, Sergeant Slocock and Dr. Kimberley Fairchild have now arrived at Wolverhampton where their specially reinforced army vehicle - "An Alvis PV2 'Stalwart' Mk. III" awaits. It is now just a simple matter of driving 130 miles through vengeful mobs and voracious mould until they reach what was once London, and recovering Jane's notes - wherever they are. The Sarge, who has a lust for murder, was hand-picked for the mission off the back of his exploits in Belfast - he murdered three civilians in cold blood. His psychosis is fuelled by whiskey, and he had the foresight to stock up for this mission. Dr. Fairchild is sexually attracted to dangerous men, so, to add to his woes, poor Barry finds himself playing gooseberry. Fortunately, once he's torched a few human toadstools he's as insane as the best of us and Kim transfers her affections accordingly. Too bad Slocock already did for the jar of Vaseline.

There's little else I can tell you about The Fungus without resorting to usual tired blow-by-blow account, but if you are in the mood for something depraved, funny, properly horrible and oozing bad sex, Messrs Brosnan & Kettle will see you alright.

[bettyboop196]

I have just seen this post, and more than likely no one will ever see it again, but my favourite three books of all time are: SLIMER, CARNOSAUR AND FUNGUS.
Sadly i haven't been able to get any more by HAK or John Brosnan or any of his other aliases.

And just for the record, i think you will find Jurassic Park was a RIP-OFF of Carnosaur, as JP was written in 1991, while Carnosaur cane out in about 1983.
Sadly HAK, or John Brosnan is no longer with us as he passed away years ago.

[royk]

Hi Bettyboop.

I co-wrote some of the HAK (and Simon Ian Childer) books with John. I might have spares if you get back to me.

Thanks for the nice post by the way!

Roy

[kooshmeister]

I finally sat down to give this a look-see (the book sat mostly unread for some time until late last month when I read it on a whim) and I didn't enjoy it as much as Slimer and Carnosaur. Maybe because it takes so long to get to the crazy fungus people and even though it's part more apocalyptic than either of them, tenacious killer fungi just aren't as inherently interesting as shape-shifting sharks and dinosaurs. I'm also unsure why Brosnan (and Kettle?) decided to split the book into two parts, "The Spreading" and "The Journey," when the first part is so short (or the second so long) that he would've been better off dispensing with breaking them up altogether. I kept reading through "The Journey" anticipating a third part but none came, unless I skipped its title page.

[ripper]

I had a go at reading 'The Fungus' years ago, got about 1/3-1/2 way through it and just lost interest in it. I thought it started well but after a while I found I wasn't enjoying it. Same with 'Carnasaur' but I did at least manage to finish that one, though I was glad when it was all over.

[kooshmeister]

Like Slimer, it's been reprinted:



Any word on a reprint of Carnosaur...?

[royk]

Doesn't look like a reprint of Carnosaur is likely.

Weirdly, I was at a party recently and met a guy who used to work for John Aspinall, the casino owner and private zoo owner, who John Brosnan had been inspired by in creating Carnosaur.

Roy

[dem]

Jan 29, 2019 20:25:55 GMT royk said:

Doesn't look like a reprint of Carnosaur is likely.

I'm guessing the same goes for Bedlam? Doesn't seem to have attracted as much attention as the others but I had a great time with it. Deliciously unpleasant.

[kooshmeister]

Jan 29, 2019 20:25:55 GMT royk said:

Doesn't look like a reprint of Carnosaur is likely.

That's a shame. Any particular reason?

[humgoo]

Jan 29, 2019 23:52:52 GMT kooshmeister said:

Jan 29, 2019 20:25:55 GMT royk said:

Doesn't look like a reprint of Carnosaur is likely.

That's a shame. Any particular reason?

Stay tuned, friend Kooshmeister, Valancourt is doing it again ...