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Bug Jack Barron

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Bug Jack Barron
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
AuthorNorman Spinrad
Cover artistJack Gaughan
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherWalker & Co.
Publication date
1969
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages372
OCLC5497
LC ClassLCCN 69-16094

Bug Jack Barron is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Norman Spinrad. It was nominated for the 1970 Hugo Award.[1]

The book was serialised in the British New Wave science fiction magazine New Worlds during Michael Moorcock's editorship. Its explicit language and cynical attitude toward politicians, as well as the fact that the magazine was partially funded by the Arts Council of Great Britain, angered British Members of Parliament.[2] Jennie Lee, Baroness Lee of Asheridge, then head of the Arts Council, successfully defended the book. Later, it was banned[clarification needed] by W. H. Smith, a major British chain of bookstores.[3] Feminist typesetters at New Worlds rejected the story as sexist.[4]

Synopsis

The story takes place in the near future where an exploitative talk-show host, Jack Barron, gradually uncovers a conspiracy concerning an immortality treatment and the methods used in that treatment.

The future world portrayed in this book is chaotic and self-regulating, and Spinrad shows a future where greater freedom allows interaction via electronic democracy to bring about good results.[5]

Plot

The "Bug Jack Barron" talk show begins Wednesday evening with an on-air call from Rufus W. Johnson, who has been refused service by the Foundation for Human Immortality, an organization which allows people to have themselves cryogenically frozen. Johnson accuses the Foundation of being unwilling to offer Freezer contracts to African Americans. Show host Jack Barron is appalled to hear this and after making a few calls, finds a supporter in the Governor of Mississippi, Lukas Greene.

The following day, Barron receives a visit from Foundation Chair Benedict Howards, who tries to gain Barron's support by offering him a free Freezer Contract and immortal life. Though tempted, Barron refuses the bribe. Howards later makes the same offer to Barron's ex-wife Sara. Sara dreams about being frozen together with Jack, and being revived together after an immortality treatment has been discovered.

The next morning, the Governor of California, Gregory Morris, suggests that Barron consider running as the next President of the United States. Though Barron is reluctant, his friend Lukas Greene encourages Barron to accept. Barron then gets a call from Sara. The two argue about why they broke up and soon reconcile. Howards visits Barron again with new contracts for both Jack and Sara to sign. The new contracts not only guarantee being frozen, but also the immortality treatment. Jack cannot see any drawback in the contract, and he and Sara agree to sign.

On the next broadcast of “Bug Jack Barron”, a man named Henry George Franklin calls in and complains that he sold his young daughter to some wealthy men for $50,000. Even though the men promised to provide his daughter with a better life, Henry claims he was duped, and wants Barron to help him get his daughter back. Howards is furious that Franklin was on the show, and tells Barron to abandon the story. Intrigued by Howards's reaction, Barron flies to Evers, Mississippi to meet Franklin and speak with him. They meet in a restaurant in a low-income neighborhood and start by walking to the governor's mansion, when a sniper kills Franklin and attempts to shoot Barron as well. Barron deduces that Benedict Howards must have been behind the shooting and realizes in turn that the Foundation must also be responsible for buying Franklin's daughter. Barron later confirms his suspicion by using computer records to search for other children who are now missing.

Upon his return home, Barron shares all his suspicions with Sara. To get to the bottom of the mystery, Barron unveils a plan. He and Sara will receive their immortality treatment, and make Howards think he really has them trapped. Then when Howards admits to all his crimes, Jack will use a concealed very small portable telephone to record the confession. Sara agrees. The next day, they go to Howards's office and proceed with the treatment. When the treatment is over, Howards explains that the treatment consists of transplanting glands from the abducted children into new bodies. The children are killed off by radiation poisoning. Howards threatens if Barron exposes Howards, Howards will suborn witnesses to testify that Barron and Sara knew everything about the treatment, meaning that he and Sara will also be charged with murder.

Barron and Sara return home where he reveals to her the truth about the children and that he will support the Foundation in his next shows. When he goes to the show, he gets a call from Sara, who commits suicide in order to change his mind. With nothing left to lose, Barron reveals the truth during the show, while Howards goes paranoid on air, threatening to kill him. Barron begs the viewers to believe that he didn't know anything about the children beforehand.

Eventually, Barron does run for President, planning to give his position to future Vice-President Lukas Greene after his election.

Characters

  • Jack Barron – Protagonist and host of the talk show named Bug Jack Barron. Prior to this, he was politically active in the Social Justice Coalition.
  • Benedict Howards – Antagonist of the book. He is the President and Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Human Immortality, a private corporation that owns a monopoly on all cryogenic freezing in the United States.
  • Lukas Greene – An old political friend of Jack and the black Social Justice Governor of Mississippi. He is against the Foundation for Human Immortality because it promotes racial discrimination.
  • Sara Westerfeld – Barron's ex-wife. They met at Berkeley, and were politically active in the SJC before getting married. Sara divorced Jack two years after he became a TV star.

Reception

Algis Budrys gave the novel a mixed review, describing it as "a good book, and excellent idea and fair piece of writing." Budrys faulted the central science-fictional device as "absolute nonsense," saying that Spinrad "did not care enough about credibility to even be graceful," and noted that "Spinrad often uses representations of things, rather than the things themselves, and this doesn't always work." Still, he concluded, the book "is a flawed but acceptable telling of a magnificent story, a representation of nobility, one might say, with a Mickey Mouse ending."[6] Joanna Russ, however, found the book to be "a bad book [where] the author is not in control of his material, but is in the process of being smothered by it." She faulted Spinrad's writing style ("Everybody talks like everybody else"), his plotting ("a novel of political intrigue ought to have an intelligible intrigue in it"), and characterization (the main antagonist is "only a villain-shaped hole crammed with super-high-gear prose"), concluding that the book was a "romantic, half-innocent, youthfully bouncy, exasperatingly schlocky and ultimately silly book."[7]

In 1992, The New York Times noted that in Jack Barron, "Norman Spinrad created the talk-show host as powerful public-opinion maker."[8]

Literary style

A striking feature of the novel is its lyrical style and unique use of cut-up phrases. In this regard, Spinrad himself has talked about the influence of Beat writers William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.[9][10]

Adaptations

Spinrad adapted his novel as a screenplay in the 1970s, but it was never produced.

In 1983, author Harlan Ellison was hired to write a new screenplay for a film to be directed by Costa-Gavras for Universal Pictures. Again, the project went nowhere. In 2012, Ellison published this screenplay, titled "None of the Above," including casting suggestions that had Martin Sheen as Jack Barron and Sigourney Weaver as Sara.[11][12]

See also

References

  1. ^ "1970 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-29.
  2. ^ Michael Ashley, History of the Science Fiction Magazine, 1950–1970, Volume 2: Transformations. (Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2005) 250.
  3. ^ John J. Pierce, Odd Genre: A Study in Imagination and Evolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994) 159
  4. ^ Michael Moorcock, ed., New Worlds, An Anthology. (London: Fontana, 1983), p. 505.
  5. ^ Gregory Benford, "Reactionary Utopias," Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future, ed. George E. Slusser, Colin Greenland, and Eric S. Rabkin (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987) 82 [ISBN missing]
  6. ^ "Galaxy Bookshelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1969, pp. 149–52
  7. ^ "Books", F&SF, January 1970, pp. 38–40
  8. ^ Slade, Margot (October 4, 1992). "THE NATION; Ross Perot or Superstoe? Science Fiction Got There First" – via NYTimes.com.
  9. ^ "SFF Beats". SFF Net. Archived from the original on 2012-09-10. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
  10. ^ Norman Spinrad, Science Fiction in the Real World. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990) 112 [ISBN missing]
  11. ^ "None of the Above". HarlanEllisonBooks.com. Retrieved 2015-01-20.]
  12. ^ "BUG JACK BARRON--screenplay by Norman Spinrad (Kindle Edition)". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-01-20.]
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