Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things [Paperback]

Richard Calder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 1998

This extraordinary trilogy depicts a future gender war that crosses the boundaries of software, wetware, time, and reality itself in its imaginative leaps and bounds. Only love holds the future together in this tale of star-crossed teens whose transformations defy description or imagination.

To read this trilogy is to behold a strange new world, one unlike any other.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Imagine a writer who combines the stylistic complexities of Gene Wolfe with the sexual perversity of Poppy Z. Brite. Add a dash of cyberpunk and a double measure of the paranoia that fueled Philip K. Dick's best work. This might give you some dark presentiment of what Calder's fiction is like, but your imagination would probably fall well short of the mark. In his newest novel (after Dead Things), Calder imagines a future when virtual reality and the Net have created an alternate universe of artificial intelligences, many of whom have been downloaded into corporeal form. Much of the world's population, both human and virtual, has become obsessed with pornography and sado-masochism, and Earth's repressive governments have concluded that children are at the demonic center of the sexual madness that has overtaken the planet. As the novel opens, one downloaded AI, Dahlia Chan, former star of such pornographic and pedophiliac adventure films as Kung-Fu Nymphet from Hell, and Zane, her most obsessive (and sexually obsessed) fan, flee across the wastes of Antarctica in search of Cythera, a perhaps mythical Eden where humans and AIs can live as equals. In succeeding chapters, a variety of characters, many of them alternate-universe versions of Dahlia and Zane, most of them sexually perverse, undergo a variety of adventures, assignations, revolutions and tortures, all part of their grand and extremely convoluted quest for Cythera. Calder is a writer of undeniable talent, but it's hard to envision his intended audience. Perhaps he's writing for aficionados of both the Marquis de Sade and William Gibson or, conceivably, for those who prefer their Philip K. Dick mixed with a little J.K. Huymans. In any case, he's definitely an acquired taste.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Fascinating and superbly written." --Starlog

"One of the stranger SF series of recent years...Calder's mix of violent and graphically sexual images and dizzily recursive explications of SF tropes blended through a reality mixer is unsettling, genuinely exotic, and fiercely intelligent. Highly recommended. --Paul J. McAuley, Interzone

"A literary head kickc, pushing gender and bio-tech buttons as hard as something like Neuromancer pushed the romance of digital criminality." --Richard Kadrey, author of Kamikaze L'Amour

"A future world as rich, dense, and intricate as any in recent SF."--Rob Latham, The New York Review of Science Fiction

"The trilogy holds many rewards, cerebral and aesthetic." --Publishers Weekly

"Stunning...a wild trilogy" --Science Fiction Age

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (February 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312180780
• ISBN-13: 978-0312180782
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #671,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Calder was born in 1956, in Whitechapel, London. In the mid seventies he read English Literature at the University of Sussex. After graduating he travelled extensively throughout South-East Asia and Australia and, upon returning to the UK, subsequently worked in bookselling, independent television and the American Embassy's press office. He became a full-time author in 1990 after moving from London to Nongkhai, Thailand, a border town overlooking Laos. In 1998 he moved to the Philippines, where he lived for some years in Baguio City. After returning to London, he currently resides in another 'East' -- his native East End.

His novels include the 'Dead' trilogy (Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things), Cythera, Frenzetta, The Twist, Malignos, Impakto, Lord Soho, and Babylon.

He is currently adapting his novel Dead Girls into a graphic novel, to be illustrated by Filipino artist Leonardo M Giron. The graphic novel will be serialised in the quarterly magazine Murky Depths, beginning with issue #9.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Calder's techno-poetry is lyrical, haunting and masterful, August 10, 2000

By 

Trevor Rogers (Davis, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things (Paperback)

Richard Calder's DEAD GIRLS breaks new ground in a once-innovative literary movement that has unfortunately become stagnant in recent years. All of you cyberpunk fans are familiar with William Gibson's NEUROMANCER, and although we all owe the inventor of cyberspace a debt of gratitude, it is obvious that Gibson's brilliant novel spawned a slew of imitators seeking to capitalize on the popularity of hard-edged futuristic prose. Calder is different. This is not prose at all, this is high-voltage poetry; this is rampant, blood thumping word art. I couldn't stop reading. Don't bother trying to dissect the proposed technology in DEAD GIRLS, or waste energy researching the occasional windy vocabulary word, just absorb the ambience. Grant Calder his post/retro-apocalyptic-adolescent-vampire premise. Somehow he makes it work. Just be happy he let you tag along for the ride.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sex and death linked in cyberThailand, futuristic clubland, December 20, 1997

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things (Paperback)

These books are a obssesive read, once in you have to finish. Calder's world sucks you in, just as the Meta girls, boys and things suck life out of each other. Don't try to conciously keep details in mind, rather let them swirl and mingle until you can smell a Doll or see a Elohim out of the corner of your eyes. Read best at night, not for the easily moralistic or the quickly offended. I like all three as they don't seem to try so hard to be sci-fi or cyber-sexy, they just are.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dead Girls Dead Boys Dead Things, January 8, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things (Paperback)

"Dead Girls Dead Boys Dead Things" is a profound book for those with the patience, vocabulary and literary mastership to undertake it. It is not for the weak of heart; it has both graphic sexual and violent content, however they are presented in an artful (if not at all times tasteful) way. Although the plot may be difficult to follow if you're not devoted to the story, it is well worth it if you have the patience to overcome the somewhat obscure vocabulary used in the book; however, I feel that Calder's lyrical form of narration and description, founded upon his obscure but far-reaching vocabulary are one of the book's most endearing qualities. Anyone who wants a good challange, who enjoys sci-fi or who likes books which take unexpected twists and turns, finally concluding in an unforseen ending will enjoy this book immensly.