METROPHAGE .. by Kadrey, Richard - 1988

[New York: Ace Books, 1988. Octavo, printed blue wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. The inhabitants of a broken down twenty-first century Los Angeles run by gangsters are threatened by a deadly new disease, apparently a biological weapon which has somehow got loose. "Not wholly assimilated influences including cyberpunk as a whole and J. G. Ballard in particular give an element of pastiche to his early work, including his first novel, METROPHAGE (1988); but the latter transcends it in a vigorous and inventive tale of a mean-streetwise drug pusher's problems in a near-future Los Angeles that is being eaten alive by urban decay, police corruption and corporate cynicism. It reads like a supercharged arcade game that appalls even its creator ..." - Peter Nicholls and John Clute, SFE (online). The author's first book. Published as a paperback original as the ninth book in the new "Ace Science Fiction Special" series. Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 4-222. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1986-2009. A fine copy. An uncommon proof. (#106045)