The Fungus - Softcover

Kettle, Roy; Knight, Harry Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0988306239 ISBN 13: 9780988306233

Publisher: Bruin Books LLC, 2014

Synopsis

A brilliant London scientist breaks a genetic code that will end world hunger, but something goes terribly wrong in the lab and a plague is released upon Great Britain. The lucky ones die quickly, gruesomely consumed by a ravenous fungus, but others survive and are transformed into something . . . different. London is cut off from the rest of the world by encircling warplanes bent on stopping the spread of the deadly mutation by any means possible. Only a last-ditch suicide mission, a descent into the microbial hell of ground zero, can save mankind from its own invention. With its breakneck pace and razor-sharp wit, THE FUNGUS is a horrific tour de force that also happens to be tremendously fun to read. A cult favorite since it was first published in the mid-eighties, this reissue includes a new introduction by the author and contains the hilarious HAK Letters as an addendum. Illustrated with electron microscope imagery. What the critics say: “THE FUNGUS is excellently bizarre. I loved it and you find it grows 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 almost any of its competitors” —Ramsey Campbell “It grabs, it’s real and it keeps you reading. Taut, surprising, gripping” —Science Fiction Review

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

What would happen if, through a genetic experiment gone awry, fungi--mushrooms, toadstools, molds and yeasts--were to go out of control and grow with unprecedented vigor and speed and tenacity, and in places formerly inimicable to them? Knight has pulled out the stops to produce an imaginative and fast-paced sci-fi horror tale set in the British Isles. The protagonist is Barry Wilson, a semi-successful author of spy novels and a former mycologist. Barry's wife Jane, from whom he is separated, is the scientist whose experiment has lead to the disaster, and the British government has called upon Barry to help find Jane and her lab notes. Crossing London in an armored tank, Barry and two other volunteers observe all sorts of grotesqueries: people and animals covered with multicolored fungi, some still alive, some now quite insane; farms and buildings and forests draped in spongy shrouds; mushrooms tall as skyscrapers. Barry survives a series of hair-raising adventures and eventually locates his wife, who has gone mad and has become the high priestness of a cult of fungi-loving female separatists. But he gets the research notes. A first-rate and vivid thriller.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bruin Books LLC
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0988306239
• ISBN 13: 9780988306233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 316