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The Last Redhead

L. Jay Mozdy

really liked it 4.00 · Rating details · 1 rating · 1 review

(Only Available at www.thelastredhead.com)
When the genetic trait for explosive hair on that freckled redheaded kid disappears from the face of humanity, The Last Redhead, orphaned as a child in an era of punch cards and pay phones, is captured in a product oriented, slogan shouting, genetically engineered, fashion centric social movement, whose industry, along with steali ...more

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Published January 1st 2015 by Self-Published

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Dec 12, 2018 Faith Jones rated it really liked it

“In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king”, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus said in about 1490 and what he was getting at was the eternal truth that if a commodity (talent, knowledge or object) is in short supply or perhaps even unique, it becomes priceless.

This is an author who has heard the common idea that the number and the proportion of redheads in the world is diminishing because when you mix that gene with a partner with another hair colour, the brown, black or blonde dominate “In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king”, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus said in about 1490 and what he was getting at was the eternal truth that if a commodity (talent, knowledge or object) is in short supply or perhaps even unique, it becomes priceless.

This is an author who has heard the common idea that the number and the proportion of redheads in the world is diminishing because when you mix that gene with a partner with another hair colour, the brown, black or blonde dominates the red. The author seems to think the gene itself is not copied across (characters in the story are unable to find carriers of the gene through DNA testing) but a more accurate extrapolation is that as people move between communities and genetics mix, redheads will vanish from the population even though the gene continues to be carried (they won’t vanish from the gene pool because the gene will still exist in its switched-off form, undercover - only it won’t be manifested). Have I just said the same thing twice?

This explanation is no longer scientifically accurate either because the UK Biobank survey announced (December 2018) that our understanding of how the red characteristic is passed from generation to generation has changed. Up until now, we believed the Mendel genetic model that there was one gene responsible for red hair (MC1R) and a child would only have red hair if they received one copy of that gene from both parents. The exceptions to this rule were not understood until Biobank’s latest finding that 8 genes are responsible for red hair, most of which turn MC1R on or off.

Anyway, forget the science because that gets in the way of a good story. Imagine, if you will, that there is one redhead left on the planet and the public are obsessed with finding someone, anyone else, with an MC1R gene. It’s a frenzy. This is also set in a world that is intensely shallow and celebrity-conscious, where the public hang on every word of famous models and buy every commercial product they plug. This advertising industry has become dominated by a pneumatic blonde who has become a caricature of herself, then The Last Redhead drops like a stone into her pond and everything goes splendidly out of control.

The writer works in the Bizarro school of fiction and uses a lot of free-association-thought images, which may be a difficult form to relate to unless you relax and go with the flow, so don’t resist the wave, dive through it. The events of the book are often absurdist, expanding mundane people into extraordinary butterflies that the reader can follow to see what they flap into next or whether they explode in a gas bubble of goo. Many of the characters get damaged in fascinating ways and some literally change form and blur the definition of the homo sapiens design. Some of the description is gynaecological, more than some, then that becomes absurd as well with men spurting out very small flying fish. There is an explanation but…

This book is unique. I really believe that if you are looking for something different and don’t mind stepping in occasional fluids, this is the story for you.

I liked the training of the crows, which can be filed in the mind alongside Hitchcock’s The Birds, Thomas Holt’s Poldarn and Peter Cook’s Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, who trained crows to fly underwater. At least these birds survive the novel, but it all adds to the glorious history of crow entertainment. The writer broadcasts his enthusiasm for madcap images and strange counterpositions like a one-legged man propped up by a dog because it was made too difficult to apply for financial/welfare support to be issued with an artificial leg, so he filled out all the forms until they issued him with a sight dog, so he used that to fill the gap. This particular idea is Monty Python-quality social commentary, not nonsense. There is a difference.

I also liked the strange device of not giving characters real names (apart from Amelia) but instead naming them for what they actually are, e.g. The Last Redhead, Herfather, Better Blonder Blonde and Jumper (who jumped out of a window to get a job). This reflects how people think of other people around them, e.g. “Cow from the paper shop”, which in turn reminds us that birth certificate names are artificial appellations. Nicknames might be half way between the two processes.

As an engineering idea, I absolutely loved the hyperloop tunnel along the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean, linking Scotland to the US. This is ordinary practical engineering, not science fiction, as it would be full of air (low pressure on one side of a carriage and high on the other) and therefore self-supporting. Flexibility? No problem. Pressure? Regulated. Cost? Ah, well it could be a modular design constructed gradually. Yes, let’s do it. This should definitely be built and The Law of First Dibbs says it should be called The L Jay Mozdy Expressway.

There’s a lot to like in this book. It is slightly too long and surprisingly gooey but increasing the count of redheads in the world will need a bit of that. ...more

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Jessa Julian marked it as to-read
Oct 24, 2018

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