Warren Fahy wears his inspirations for FRAGMENT on his sleeve — or, rather, in his acknowledgments. Among them are Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Michael Crichton, and there’s a great big helping of each to be found in his debut novel, which mixes sci-fi, horror and adventure into a semi-pleasing package that’ll make a great movie someday. It’s clearly designed with that in mind.
The Trident is a ship carrying 40 people across the globe’s oceans, for a reality show called SEALIFE. A storm has thrown it a little off course, but within range of a distress signal from an uncharted island. The reason is evident once they land: The South Pacific locale is filled with deadly creatures unlike the world has ever seen. Some enchanted evening.
Most notably, there’s a “spiger,” which is a six-legged mix of a spider and a tiger. But let’s not forget the disk-ants — those tiny, circular bugs that go from walking to spinning on their sides; the monsters that look like mutated rats; the mega-mantis; the “shrimpanzees”; the giant wasps that eat honeybees like Skittles.
Don’t get too attached to any of the characters, although it’s obvious from the get-go that this botanist Nell Duckworth is going to stick around. Despite her puking a lot, she makes for a headstrong heroine, smarter than many — oh, hell, all — of her male colleagues, especially when it comes to grace under pressure.
I don’t think 50 pages have even passed when the SEALIFE crew lands on this Henders Island, and the bugaboos begin to prove their higher level on the foodchain. That’s both to the novel’s benefit and its detriment — benefit because the reader doesn’t have to wait for things to get moving; detriment because once it gets moving, it pretty much does so in a circle for the next 300 pages: dire situation > fatal attack > repeat.
Back on land, one Dr. Geoffrey Binswanger lectures — and I do mean lectures — on sexual reproduction of the animal kingdom. He has no connection to the ill-fated Trident crew for quite some time, but you know that won’t last forever, and sure enough, his unorthodox theories make him a natural expert to help examine these freaks of nature and find out just from whence they came.
The answer isn’t as interesting as one would hope; in fact, it’s more than a little silly. I’m not even sure the question required resolution. As a viewer of many AIP films pitting man against monster, “it just is” is perfectly acceptable for this kind of mindless fare — and it is mindless, no matter how many scientific terms Fahy throws into the mix.
No stranger to this genre of popular fiction, I was ready and willing to suspend my disbelief for FRAGMENT’s MOREAU-like monstrosities, but not for the fact that a show like SEALIFE would be the second-highest-rated show on cable TV, so much so that it’s broadcast live. I’m also wondering what parents would dare name their child Ham Pound.
Those criticisms aside, FRAGMENT is a serviceable, if predictable thriller, most effective when the blood is spilled, which is often. I don’t think Fahy is the heir apparent to Crichton’s vacated throne, but I do think his first effort is better than more than half of those who try in the same field.
Let’s face it: Those beasts he’s invented are unsettling. It’s no wonder he’s included illustrations of them throughout the pages, as if he didn’t trust our imagination to quite match what he intended. And he’s right. —Rod Lott
“With a sharp crunch, the attacker sank translucent teeth into Glyn’s ribs and bit off the top of the Englishman’s body at the solar plexus.”
