Harry Adam Knight

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.