I know the difference between ancestors and descendants. Of course I do.  One's the one thing and the other's the other. But the occasional brainphart means I type the wrong one now and again. And possibly again. I wrote a time travel story once about a humanitarian scientist who did this and ended up killing Hitler's grandchildren. Obviously it turned out that he was one of them.  It didn't end well, then, not least because I never sold the story and the magazine went bust. I like to think the two things were connected but I suspect I wouldn't have sold the story even to a successful magazine.

It's never easy coming up with a new way of travelling in time and I didn't bother because it wasn't important.  But a while back I came up with a cunning new means of time travel involving toothpaste and I sent it to Colgate-Palmolive.  As you do.  One of my offers of product placement in a novel in return for a charitable donation.

The mean bastards never replied. And I mean bastards.

Maybe I should have offered them my idea of chocolates filled with toothpaste to solve the problem of tooth decay at source. Too late now.

Well, I never. Out of the blue here’s a review of the new edition of my cult novel THE FUNGUS published in 1985. 

http://sfbook.com/the-fungus.htm

I remember how the book came about as if it was only 30 years ago.  It was based on an idea by Kathleen Mitchell who (thinking there was actually a level to which I wouldn’t sink) asked if anyone had ever written a novel based on a compost heap.  So the book was, inevitably, about a genetically engineered fungus and, as usual, things went terribly wrong.  My own very limited experiences with athlete’s foot formed part of the opening sequence, and a lot of it is too horrible to summarise. Or presumably to read.

THE FUNGUS was my most successful and genuinely well thought of my horror novels - if any of my novels have been "well thought of" - despite much of the print run of the first British edition (which certainly had a distinctive cover shown for some reason alongside the review of the later edition) still lurking in a loft somewhere. Like all my horror books, it was published abroad in a few versions of several copies each – France (L’IMMONDE INVASION), Italy (IL FUNGO), Poland (FUNGUS – who knew?), but, most surprisingly, the USA. And in hardback. This was entirely down to my old mucker Charles Platt who was working for Franklin Watts, perhaps on a freelance basis, and who for some reason thought the book was worth their publishing. It also went on to a US paperback sale (DEATH SPORE) and another British edition with Gollancz, with an even more distinctive cover than the first.  

 

At least by then it had had chance to accumulate through its various editions some cover quotes assiduously collected from my mates:  Clive Barker - “I had a damned good time with this book”; Brian Aldiss -  “I loved it and you will find it will grow on you”; every book cover’s friend, Kirkus Review - “Loud, scary sick fun. You will never again go near mushroom soup” and Ramsey Campbell, who actually appears to have read it - “A spectacularly gruesome nasty, written with inventiveness, grisly wit, and considerably more intelligence than almost all its competitors”. And, of course, “the new Stephen King” credited to Starburst Magazine where I wrote a column under the pseudonym, John Brosnan, in which the quote may have first appeared.

And now it’s got a nice new edition from Bruin Books, available in the UK

http://goo.gl/fUtWZI

and the US

http://goo.gl/Q5rtN1

And with a cover showing the Houses of Parliament being attacked by fungal spores. What's not to like? *And* it's got the Harry Adam Knight letters as a bonus, though the least said about them the better. 

 

Unlike CARNOSAUR, SLIMER and BEDLAM, it hasn’t yet been made into a movie.  Not even a movie as bad as those.

The closest I got was when I was in Louisville recently. I was sitting having a coffee listening to a street musician, when I got an email (via the technical amazingness of smart phonery).  From Hollywood.  From a producer interested in THE FUNGUS.  Maybe it would pay for my holiday or, at worst, another cup of coffee. And to think that I was sitting only a few yards from the Seelbach Hotel, one of the inspirations for THE GREAT GATSBY. There must be something about great writers and Louisville.  But not enough of a something for the movie rights to sell and I never heard from the producer again.  It would make a better movie than Baz Luhrmann’s version of THE GREAT GATSBY though.

There are plans to build a Premier Inn just down the road from my flat.  I might have considered staying there if I got kicked out of my hovel for not paying the rent.  But then I wouldn't be able to afford a room even in a Premier Inn so that's not really much of a life plan. I *could* sneak onto the building site and -

No, I need to sell another book.  Times are hard.

Anyway, this reminded me of a letter I'd written a while back which I thought I'd share with my follower.

I'd seen this advert on TV starring Lenny Henry in a pastiche of PYSCHO.  You can stop at 13 seconds in.  Really.  Unless you're a huge fan of Premier Inns.  Then you can start at 13 seconds in instead.





I thought it might be a useful part of my campaign to do my bit for charity by encouraging companies and famous people to make donations in exchange for a brief mention in one of my latest books. You never expected Harry to sell out, eh? 

But I felt it was the least I could do given the number of times I've killed people and created mayhem in previous novels.  If there was a charity devoted to helping characters destroyed unpleasantly in horror novels, I'd be first up there with a donation. Obviously an imaginary one, but it's the thought isn't it?  And it might even have a fortuitous knock-on effect to promoting the book. What's not to like about a book in which Jeffrey Archer - just plucking a twat out of a hat - is chewed up by a giant cephalopod?

Here's the letter I sent about Premier Inns. Not unusually, I didn't get a reply. Well, it's only been five years since I sent it and the company will have had to call a special meeting of the board to discuss it which would take a while to arrange what with big businesses being so preoccupied with corporate lunches and running the country. So I'm not disheartened.

Yet.

Not sure why I chose a French edition of THE FUNGUS to head up this blog.  Maybe it's just to show that there actually were French editions of the HAK books.  Or maybe it's because many of the others were too horrible for public consumption.

Still, it's no longer available in this edition. But there's a comment about the cover in this review, which is in French, a language I only pursued at school briefly, though for a time long enough to demonstrate an incredible lack of aptitude for language.  Any language, including whatever the one is that I'm using now.

http://www.critiqueslibres.com/i.php/vcrit/29316

Well, that's easy for *him* to say. But Mr Google has kindly produced a translation:

"The end of the book is pretty incredible with these zombies covered with fungal praying in front of a giant porky Satan in a London city where buildings have been replaced by Amanita Puff balls and other giant-ha ...

"The filthy invasion" ("The Fungus" - 1985), second book in the Harry Gore collection signed Adam Knight (one of the pseudonyms of John Brosnan, author of Australian origin) reaches its goal perfectly. The reader feels a real repulsion due to the many unsavory details and scientific terms on the growth of fungus. The story is exciting and without downtime. Lovers of horror stories and nightmares invasions will be met. This is an excellent novel that Gore enjoys writing and translation quality.

Note that for the cover illustration, excellent Dugévoy has unfortunately been replaced by Roland Topor. The result is ugly and irrelevant."


'a giant porky Satan'?  If only. 

And who *is* this John Brosnan guy?