A witty tribute to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this surreal, futuristic narrative explores the highly topical relationships between obesity, government health care, pop culture, and body image. In a world where chocolate is worth more than cocaine on the black market, government-sanctioned vigilantes known as Good Humor Men patrol the streets, seeking to immolate all fattening food products as illegal contraband and summarily cancel the health insurance of any offenders. An evil nutraceutical company controls the food market with products engineered to keep the population painfully thin, while a mysterious wasting plague threatens to starve humanity. An ex-plastic surgeon whose father performed a secret liposuction surgery on Elvis Presley may hold the key to humanity’s future. Incorporating a colorful cast of characters—a civil servant with questionable motives, an acquisitive assassin, a power-mad preacher evangelizing anorexia, a beautiful young woman addicted to liposuction, and a homicidal clone from an experiment gone terribly awry—this satirical romp asks the question Can Elvis save the world 64 years after his death?
Andrew Fox was born in Miami Beach in 1964. His earliest exposure to the fantastic was watching the epic Japanese horror flick Destroy All Monsters at the age of three in the back of his parents' convertible at a drive-in. In 1994, he joined award-winning science fiction author George Alec Effinger's monthly writing workshop group in New Orleans. In 2003, Andrew married Dara Levinson; they now have three sons, Levi, Asher, and Judah. In 2009, he relocated his family to Northern Virginia so that he could take a job with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, after having worked many years for the Louisiana Office of Public Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He has also worked for Sagamore Children's Psychiatric Center in Long Island, taught musical theater and improv to children, overseen student programming at the New Orleans Hillel Foundation, and sold Saturn cars and trucks.
Andrew's first novel, Fat White Vampire Blues, published by Ballantine Books in 2003, was widely described as "Anne Rice meets A Confederacy of Dunces." It won the Ruthven Award for Best Vampire Fiction of 2003. Its sequel, Bride of the Fat White Vampire, was published in 2004. His most recent book to hit print, The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501, was published by Tachyon Publications in April, 2009. It was selected by Booklist as one of the Ten Best SF/Fantasy Novels of the Year and was first runner up for the Darrell Award, presented for best SF or fantasy novel written by a Mid-South author or set in the Mid-South. In 2006, he was one of the three winners of the Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation Short Fiction Award for his story, "Raoul Wallenberg in Space." Recent projects include: The Bad Luck Spirits' Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a fantasy novel which intertwines a supernatural secret history of New Orleans with the events of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath; Fire on Iron, a steampunk dark fantasy novel set aboard ironclad gunboats during the Civil War; Ghostlands, an alternate history science-fantasy novel set in a world where the past refuses to remain buried; and The End of Daze, a theological/political fantasy-satire about the return of the Old Testament God to Earth.
Andrew Fox's website and blog can be found at:
www.fantasticalandrewfox.com
