Predator: Forever Midnight by John Shirley

Predator: Forever Midnight
by John Shirley
2006, DH Press

Space Marines visiting an alien colony get attacked by Predators, who have been using the planet as their hunting ground for centuries.  In addition to a race of alien telepaths who were stranded there, there is a culture of descendants of Brits kidnapped in 1804.

Some good work with the alien ecosystem.  The planet Midnight is locked in perpetual day, with a hard canopy of trees on top, rain forest like tangle of greenery in the middle, and tunnels leading to underground rivers below.  Same with the creatures: grubs with acidic digestive systems used as weapons, creatures who stun their prey with humming, flying piranhas, etc.

The Predators, or Hish,  themselves get some elaboration.  They are sequential hermaphrodites, changing sex back and forth from male to female.  They have a "kill gland" that causes agrressive behavior and berserker rages.  Much of Hish culture derives from channeling this aggression.  Their culture is centered around hunting and combat, of course, and they enslave other alien races for their advanced technology.

Some good action, and would have made better source material than the last couple of Predator movies.  The text dips into juvenile one-liners at times, but I did just read a tie-in novel for a Schwarzenegger film after all.

Paperback from AbeBooks, currently at outrageous prices.

In Darkness Waiting by John Shirley

In Darkness Waiting
by John Shirley
2013 Night Shade Books
Originally 1988 Oynx

A human potential est guru type, seeking to free the human ego, unleashed Grey Pilots inhabiting the brains of certain individuals.  These Pilots burst out of exploding eyeballs and manifest as giant flies with human faces, spreading murderous sociopathy like a plague.

Not as silly as it sounds.  I don't know why it took me so long to read Shirley, but I definitely intend on catching up.  He makes it just hallucinogenic enough to work, walking that tightrope between exposition and just letting the crazy happen.  If anything he explains a little too much for my taste, but he doesn't completely spell out other connections, like the otherworldly Lord of Dark Corners.

Not an easy task, given that the premise is part It Conquered the World and part The Tingler.  Shirley's mood-setting helps, along with multiple scenes of random violence.  In a way, it manifests as a thinking-man's version of the Devil series, with victims having intrusive thoughts of violence before committing cold-blooded murder.  A favorite scene of mine had some infected children and an elderly woman in a wheelchair at a roadside snake farm.  By the end, we're literally knee deep in blood and feces.

There were several points where the plot threatened to dip into cliche, but Shirley resisted temptation. In particular, I'm proud of him for having several Native American characters and not have a "my people have a name for this creature" scene.

Shirley seems like a cool cat, and his writing has lived up to this vibe so far.

The 2013 version has some of the usual "updating", though the mention of "cell phones" and Sum 41 were outdated even then.  I have to wonder if these small press publishers have a macro that inserts "I can't get a connection on my phone" at certain plot points.

Currently set at "we'll sell ebooks but we don't want anyone to buy them" prices by Simon and Schuster - I grabbed it off Hoopla through my library.

Sado-Nation with John Shirley - Yeah You

Here's John Shirley, cyberpunk and splatterpunk pioneer, being a punkpunk.  Also the author of some of the Traveler and Specialist Men's Adventure.