The output of Jeffrey Thomas has rekindled my love of sci-fi with his twisted takes on the future of social relations in the face of disturbing technological advances. Often times, his novels and short stories are nightmarish glimpses into a future world that pretty much make William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick mere shrinking reflections in the rearview mirror. This is the guy who fans of those authors should be reading.

His latest, DEADSTOCK, is like H.P. Lovecraft writing the novelization of CHINATOWN, if that film were directed by David Cronenberg. It’s a monster-encrusted foray into a world of body modification, animal modification and doll modification, all leading to monstrous Godification underneath the city of Punktown, which is an Earth colony on the planet Oasis – a sprawling, crime-filled dystopia where different races mingle and often become intertwined in each other’s bullshit.

Trouble usually finds you on Punktown, and it’s found the chameleon-like private detective Jeremy Stake. He’s been hired by animal modification producer (they make chickens and cows with no heads, legs, etc.) Fukuda to find his daughter’s priceless doll. This seems like not that hard a mission, but in this world, dolls are actually flesh-modified creatures that, while alive, are far from living. Her doll is one-of-a-kind, resembling a chubby squid with demon wings. This doll is the catalyst for the series of events that draw in a gang of mutants, a homeless community, useless cloned soldiers and a rival animal modification producer, as well as Stake himself.

Thomas continues his winning streak with DEADSTOCK, providing the perfect follow-up to the short-story collection PUNKTOWN. In this novel, he expands on the cultures, rituals and fads that make this city so interesting, continuing to take us on a tour of a world on the brink of societal collapse, all the while telling a story where these facts become brutally necessary and not just page filler.

His visceral, demented take on the trends of the future is also compellingly brilliant: the aforementioned living dolls; bedsheets made from engineered human flesh and fed through a tube; a bloated, misshapen mutant named Buddy Balloon who is the biggest sitcom star in the world; even cell phones become dangerously ominous, as the other big teen fad is the Ouija Phone, that, like its name implies, allows the user to receive calls from the dead.

It’s little ideas like this that make Thomas the seminal voice of science fiction right now. –Louis Fowler

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM DEALERS by Jeffrey Thomas
• PUNKTOWN by Jeffrey Thomas