A TERRIBLE PLAGUE

There’s nothing Guy N. Smith loves more than a disaster; man-made or ecological, he’s really not bothered. Thirst begins with a tanker full of deadly weed killer crashing into a reservoir, sinking to the bottom and contaminating millions of gallons of water destined for the taps of Birmingham. The lucky Brummies get a form of rabies then, within a few hours, die desperately dehydrated and covered in popping boils and pustulent ulcers. The unlucky ones, more or less abandoned by the authorities, are left to fight for survival in Britain’s second city, a place torn apart by death and disease, looting, lawlessness, rape, murder and madness. Apart from the Cliff Richard film ‘Take Me High’, it’s the worst thing that has ever happened there. 

The beauty of anarchy in Guy N Smith’s fictional world is that it allows the author to pad out the story with endless vignettes about nasty people meeting nasty ends. In fact, almost three quarters of the book is dedicated to a non-stop orgy of random violence, and you sense that Smith is really enjoying himself, letting his imagination run riot along with his characters. The typical pattern is to introduce a character, then let us share his or her thoughts and feelings for a while and wonder where they fit in with the overall narrative. The character will then be pushed off a roof, set fire to, castrated or torn apart by a big dog or a big mob. We are then introduced to another character and the cycle begins again.

Halfway through this bloody insanity, Smith becomes suddenly fixated upon the restorative powers of shandy, with a few tins of the stuff taking on a talismanic quality. It’s a typical Smith detail: a fantastic mundanity. It’s a very British trait, and one of the reasons we always enjoy his work so much.   

There is a sequel to this book (‘Thirst II: The Plague’), but we’re going to have a nice rest before we tackle it. Now, where's that shandy?

MR. SMITH'S APOCALYPSE

Like most people living in the western world in the nineteen eighties, Guy N. Smith spent much of the decade with his eye on the apocalypse, mentally and physically preparing himself for a nuclear weapon assisted end of the world. Whereas others went on marches, bought Frankie Goes To Hollywood tee shirts or turned the cupboard under the stairs into a makeshift bunker, Guy did what Guy does best: he sat down at his typewriter and wrote books about the whole bloody mess. I also expect he stockpiled weapons and tinned peaches, but that’s a different issue. 

‘Warhead’ and ‘Throwback’ are from 1981 and 1985, respectively. They both deal with the total destruction of our way of life, but each have a slightly demented twist. In some of these reviews, we occasionally point out Smith’s foibles – his obsession with vomit, for instance, or the way he sometimes clumsily juxtaposes the supernatural and the mundane – but we never call him on his imagination, which is limitless and boundless and utterly bonkers. 

In ‘Warhead’, for instance, a war wipes mankind from the earth, but it is a war facilitated not by men but by ancient Gods, a pantheon of voodoo deities, vengeful Native American spirits and a red hot African lady who appears in men’s dreams and shags them senseless. 

The action centres on a US missile base in Wales, and takes in several gruesome deaths, ritual murder, supernatural sex and liberal use of the ‘n’ word (in context, of course, nasty Americans are using it). 

It’s a confusing, slightly muddled ride with simply far too many characters for the scant characterisation Smith provides (it is mainly populated with interchangeable male characters who are issued with a surname and little else. They all sound the same and, when they die, as die they must, you’re never quite sure which one has just copped it). 

Without a focal point, the narrative wanders all over the place, only really communicating a sense of deadly urgency in the last few pages; even then, Smith follows a gruesome execution and crucifixion with an incongruous potted history of a new character, a Country and Western enthusiast who has given up on his own music but has decided to see in Armageddon with a fin de everything mobile disco at the local church hall. He plays an Engelbert Humperdinck record and the villagers cling together and get off with each other as the mushroom clouds gather. 

It’s an odd coda that, nevertheless, sits well with the book’s weird ending, where Smith conjures up a post blast nightmare vision of, well, what? Hell? Purgatory? Shrewsbury? … 

‘Throwback’ takes a very different approach. Here, the UK is hit not by several megatons of nuclear hardware, but by a nerve gas which, astoundingly and very scientifically, takes everything which sniffs it back a few stages of evolution. Chickens can fly, dogs become ravening wolves and humans become savage, squat, hairy Neanderthals with a penchant for violence and rough sex (only the first half of that description sounds like a massive change). 

There are at least a few people who, having hidden in bunkers, have escaped the effects of the gas, and the story tells of their struggle to survive in a world full of angry, randy ape men. Needless to say, there is murder and sexual burglary, and quite a lot of throwing up, some of it tinged with blood. 

The author takes his time with this one, introducing the characters one at a time and providing a taut story with proper people in it, many of whom are now covered in coarse, matted hair. Smith gets inside the ridged skull of a throwback most effectively, and positively revels in the morality free anarchy that these basic bastards bring to the backwards new world unknown foreign aggressors have created (we never quite get to the bottom of who did it, and why). 

Smith dutifully ticks off the tropes of the post-apocalyptic world, including a ruthless approach from those in power, who conduct Nazi like experiments on captured throwbacks and herd the remainder northwards and hope they die out over the Winter. In the end, however, the best laid genocidal plans are blown apart by a very nasty plague which kills more or less everyone. Hurrah! 

Did we mention that you can become a throwback by having sex with a throwback? Well, you can. Did we mention that a throwback, if frightened, will emit a 'rush of liquid anal wind'? Well, it will. Did we mention that it’s set in Shrewsbury? Well, it is. 

We’ve never been, but we now associate the place with rape, murder, vomit and hirsute inhabitants who haven’t evolved since before the Stone Age. Are we far off, do you think?

SOMETHING THE COMPUTER FORGOT

You're not really alive unless you spend a small amount of time thinking about when you're going to die, and how. 

Whereas you'd like to think you might get taken out by a sniper, or sacrifice yourself saving others, it's more likely that you'll die in a hospital bed - or in the street, like a dog. A small crowd will gather, then disperse because they need to go on shopping and your lifeless body is depressing them. 

If you need cheering up about it, though, watch the above clip from 'Chosen Survivors' and be assured: whatever else happens - you won't be going out like that.

If you're intrigued by the clip, we can reveal that the film it comes from is about a group of people who are sitting out a thermo-nuclear war in a bunker two thousand feet under the ground. Unfortunately, they are sharing the subterranean space with a million pissed off vampire bats. Guy N. Smith would have been proud.

Here's a trailer.

In many ways, it's a pretty stupid film, but TOMTIT think stupid is clever. It's a coping mechanism.