Mike McQuay (1949–1995)

Unlike with movies, it’s hard to tell what a publisher expected from a book, but I get the impression they expected this book to sell well. It was shepherded at Bantam Books by new, hotshot editor Lou Aronica. It has all the earmarks of a hoped-for bestseller. It was 406 pages of story – long for the time, has a map of the parts of the world (North America and the Arabian Peninsula) where the story takes place, a table of organization for the Light of the World corporation which runs the world, a glossary of terms (mostly Arabic and Islamic), a timeline running from 570 to 2151, and a long description of the symptomology, transmission, infection paths, and origin of the Jitterbug virus (in an oh-so 1980s, pre-HIV way, it’s a modified herpes virus). The cover art (was Mick Jagger the model for glowering character in the center?) looks like it was for a contemporary, exotic epic.

And, yet, this book has faded from thought. It was never reprinted. McQuay died at a young age which probably didn’t help.

Now, there are plenty of forgotten books. A quick look around the Web of a Million Lies doesn’t provide much reason why this is better remembered. You would expect some complaints about “Islamophobia”, but I didn’t see any. There are some people complaining about its “problematic” view of women. (Beware of any reviewer using “problematic” in any way but ironically.)

The novel was, no doubt, inspired by fears of growing Arab power after OPEC was formed and the 1974 oil embargo and the Iranian Revolution (what became of Persian Iran is left unsaid in the book).

Things start off in 1997 with the House of Saud constructing, throughout the world, a series of golden domes to demonstrate their influence. These are constructed by an elite corps of scientists and engineers who eventually become the Elite, bodyguards to the King of the World and chairman of the Light of the World Corporation (LOW). The domes’ purpose was revealed in 2005 when Is’al Dim ibn Fahad made his famous “Temple of God” speech. All those domes house the engineered Jitterbug virus which can be released at will.

In 2005 and 2006, the Jitterbug was released and Russia and Australia and New Zealand and parts of southeast Asia are hit by the plague and the Light of the World pulled its money out of world banks, crashing the world’s economy. Attempts to beat back the Jitterbug through quarantines or threatening to nuke Saudia Arabia were repelled.

By 2012, nuclear arsenals were abolished. By 2024, 90 percent of the world was either uninhabited or under LOW’s control. In 2026, unauthorized energy production, scientific research, and education became punishable by death. In 2030, plastic cards became the new monetary unit of exchange. King Faisel ibn Faisel, one the book’s villains, became the King of the World in 2151. This novel takes place shortly after that.

All this is reasonable technological speculation on McQuay’s point though having the San Andreas fault triggered by a meltdown of a nuclear reactor and creating the California Archipelago seems improbable. We never do get an explanation for the Florida Islands, the Dixie Sea between them and North America, the Isle of Rhodes where Rhode Island was, and the Straits of Wahhabi connecting the Michigan Sea to Hudson Bay.

The attitude of the Arab rulers toward engineering and maintenance is pretty credible. They are crappy about the latter except at LOW facilities. Arabs don’t seem to have much in the way of science and engineering. Unstated is that they probably get their subjects in other parts of the world to research such matters, and most of the new products are either weapons or toys for the idle rich: laser cannons (frequently deployed off the horde of dirigibles the LOW has), literal flying carpets of limited use, holograms, and Mind Match. The latter is one of those technologically mediated telepathic technologies where people enter an immersive scenario and manipulate its objects to best – and, in severe cases, kill an opponent through psychic shock. McQuay doesn’t provide much evidence of any technological spinoffs from these products – presumably because LOW doesn’t have any or care or about them.

Genetic engineering is common with “engys” altered to do various tasks. Of particular note in the modification department (though it is more of a surgical modification) are the houris, whores handed out to LOW executives including the junexes (junior executives). They are literally addicted to sex and reach incredible levels of sexual arousal by touch to their erogenous zones. After they age to a certain point, they tend to be thrown out on the street.

At the time of the novel, there are only five settlements in North America: New Mecca (fka Phoenix), Dallas, Kansas City, Houston, and Orleans (the former New Orleans – perhaps McQuay went with that name to evoke the original French city of Orleans).

There are four plots which weave themselves together eventually.

The first is Olson, a freebooter in the part of North America LOW doesn’t bother to control, who impersonates a junex (junior executive) on his way from Houston to his new assignment in Orleans. Some freebooters try to ambush him. He kills them and tries to kill Olson but dies in the attempt. His houri, Greta, (who fears she will be tossed to the street), coaches Olson on how to impersonate the dead junex in Orleans. There he will become a rival of Rennie Du’Camp who has his eye on supplanting the dying Elwood, head of LOW’s Orleans branch. Elwood discovers Olson is an imposter, but he doesn’t care. In fact, he likes that since he started out, long ago, as an imposter too and hopes Olson will try to administer Orleans like he has and keep it out of the hands of the psychopathic Du’Camp.

A second plot involves somebody skimming the tribute Orleans is supposed to pay LOW headquarters.

That gets intertwined with the third plot which is when Faisel dispatches his unmaterialistic and Bedouin loving brother Abdullah to Orleans to get his money – or release the Jitterbug from Orleans’ golden dome. To make sure he complies, Faisel sends the Elite with him. Their loyalty is ensured by surgical modifications which will blow their heads off when Faisel dies.

But what Faisel really wants is Abduallah dead so he can take his beautiful wife Nura as his own. (The theory among Abdullah and Nura is that Faisel just wants her because it’s the one thing in the world he doesn’t control.)

The fourth plot is sort of a new jihad led by a former doctor, Milander. He leads an army of the Jit on Orleans (most of the book is set in a flooding, rainy Orleans). He is charismatic, smart, and possessed by the sort of religious visions the Jitterbug can induce in those it infects. To him, the living are just mirages, and he intends to infect the world with the Jitterbug – which kills almost all it infects – to usher in an era of peace and love. The army he leads feeds on its own dead.

I had a few problems with the plot. There is the cliché of Orleans thinking Greta (who he has fallen in love with) deliberately betrayed his location so du’Camp’s faction could kill him (she was, in effect, tortured with sexual arousal without the outlet of orgasm), and the two separate. Greta, incidentally, has a sort of intuitive gift to sense secrets about people and, seemingly, predict their future.

Olson seems improbably good at unarmed combat against Junex as well as in the Mind Match. Perhaps, it’s implied, that’s because he’s not corrupted by life in a LOW city.

Neither he nor du’Camp anticipate some obvious ploys by their rivals in their deadly competition, and Olson is foolishly merciful at times.

The identity of the embezzler of Orleans’ tribute is revealed. His connection to Faisel is surprising as is his motive.

Olson develops a concern for Orleans’ inhabitants though he ends up having to do things that get a lot of them killed in the siege. He doesn’t take the threat of the Jit seriously (the Jits are regarded as prophets among the freebooters), and Elwood rightly insists they are threat to human life and civilization, and he won’t assist Olson in succeeding him until Olson puts a bullet in the head of Jit-infected baby.

An interesting motif throughout the book is the ever present tvs which fill Faisel’s palace, his constant public broadcasts to LOW’s holdings worldwide, teleconferences, the cathode ray tubes displaying Mind Matches, and even the shelter made of broken tvs that Greta finds shelter in when she separates from Olson. There are also references to junkyards of tvs and cars, another indication of poor Arab habits of repair and maintenance.

Much of the book centers on questions of honor and conflicting duty to Allah, humanity, the tribe, LOW, and one’s family. In the case of the head of LOW’s forces at New Mecca has even gone rather native in his new home.

Arab culture – with its sexual slavery of men and women, inability to maintain civilization’s infrastructure (or even try, really), corruption, and infighting are credible and not laudatory though Majid, Abdullah, and the Bedouins seem honorable though sometimes only within the context of their culture.

The novel would have perhaps been better with a more logical and tragic ending, but it’s pacing is good, and it’s not as implausibly lurid as I expected though it certainly has melodrama.… (meer)

Perfect for someone interested in Napoleon Bonaparte, time travel, and psychiatrists. That isn't me, however, so I'm giving this away after getting halfway thru. That was a good stopping point to have ended the book. Mostly I just don't like the concept of getting a current-era psychiatrist to try to treat the megalomania of a future person before he messes up history while experimenting with time travel in Napoleon's era. But the current & future times are so messed up already it's hard to see how they can be much worse. And the psychiatrists all have so many hangups you wonder how they can be much use to anyone else.
I like the quotes that open most chapters.… (meer)

Richter 10 is actually written by Mike McQuay and as such the charactershave a different, more fleshed out, feel than a typical Arthur C Clarke story. Clarke wrote a 3 page synopsis then handed it over to McQuay to write giving him free reign.

It's a pretty gripping story that draws in you and has several waves of peaks which events in the story build to then cascade from which keep you turning the pages to see where things are heading.

Unlike some books based on absurd scientific fallacies the geology use in the book is mostly spot on.… (meer)