Dead Boys

Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things #2

by Richard Calder

A strange mating has taken place between humans and mechanical sex-dolls, to create a new subspecies - the Meta - parasitic cyborgs who have now colonized much of the world, and have carried the new genus into space. The Meta play out their dark and dangerous erotic games. A strange mating has taken place between humans and mechanical sex-dolls, to create a new subspecies - the Meta - parasitic cyborgs who have now colonized much of the world, and have carried the new genus into space. The Meta play out their dark and dangerous erotic games.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Cyberpunk

187 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

Reviews

[T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dead Boys is nothing like its predecessor. It's denser, more intricate, less dialogue-heavy and much, much darker.

Six months after the death of his love, Ignatz has become a true doll junkie--he takes injections of pure allure, a mystical substance at every Lilim's disposal, from the disembodied sex organs of his long-lost dead girl, Primavera. It is through this "CPU" that he receives a letter from his daughter, Vanity St. Viridiana, in a future where she is hunted--and by none other than himself; a future where Primavera and Ignatz were never lovers but siblings; a future where a man named Dagon is terrorizing dead girls in only the way a dead boy can.

...If men turn girls into cats, cats turn men into marauders...

- Dead Boys

That's right. Dead Boys is about none other than our favorite marauder, Ignatz Zwakh, as he struggles to keep his head--and reality--straght, even taking up on Mars and taking up with a human.

It can get confusing if you don't pay attention to what's going on, but it's not terribly difficult. Harder than Dead Girls, yes, but not a deduction point. As I said before, it's dense. The first page is one long paragraph, and--being honest here--most of the pages are made up of big, long paragraphs. But it's worth the eyesore because we learn so much about the world through it. It's dark, green, sex, death, technology, cyberawesome, blood, time-travelish and even more green still. And there are Elohim--male counterparts to Lilim; reactive forces, almost. They are perfect solutions to girls who weeks death--boys who seek to kill girls who seek death.

As in Dead Girls, the writing is so powerful, so rich, so individual and so fuckin beautiful that I continually drool over it. My personal favorite quote ever of all time in life belongs to Dead Boys, in fact--

Today the city melted in a heat wave. The crystal skyscrapers glittered like knives (this is a city of knives), steel-and-glass blades inlaid with the reflections of other knives, mirrors within mirrors within mirrors, knives that thrust up at the scorched clouds, presaging that evening's little death… As always, beneath the vaulted brilliance the infernal shadows of the streets were filled with the phantoms of murdered girls.

- Dead Boys, p. 240

The skyway was a convolvulus of shadows, a helix entwining a ziggurat of smoked glass from penthouse to the killing ground of the streets.

- Dead Boys, p. 152

Yep. :D If you're expecting something like Dead Girls or lighter, you may be disappointed by how heavy Dead Boys is. However, if you're like me, and you live for this shit, and appreciate the sick, twisted universe of these Dead things, then dive right in.

ALSO POSTED AT MY BLOG.

[Snakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the first book and this sequel was almost just as good. Somehow the narrative became even stranger but in a good way. The distant future. Man and machine are at war and sex and death are the battlefield.

[Zwahk Muchoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first sequel to "Dead Girls" by Richard calendar, a cyberpunk story of nanomachine disease. The first time I read this book I absolutely hated it, after I read the third book and went back and restarted the series by the time I arrived at again I loved it because I understood what was going on, in other words that would be better to read this book as part of the trilogy bound Edition which is easy to find on Amazon, this includes all three of the books in one. Essentially what's going on in this book is time and space is breaking apart and the entire story is being told by somebody who is clearly mentally ill. A warning though, this book is extremely misogynistic, granted this is to make a point about patriarchy and how women are treated in modern society at the time of the books writing, particularly in poor countries but if that's the sort of thing that really bothers you you're not going to like this book, if you can Overlook it and you're prepared to get your mind screwed with you going to have a good time with this one oh, just make sure to read it in context with the others. I would describe the time-warping effects in this film as being similar to the experience of watching the independent film "Primer", specifically the last 20 minutes. This story is a fascinating puzzle missing some pieces.

[Kaley Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange addition to the first book. A bit hard to follow.