Jeffrey Thomas (1) (1957–)

Bum Junkett just won’t stop turning tricks. He’s been warned by other prostitutes. He’s been warned by the Health Agency Paxton to stop. He carries the lethal and incurable STD mustav-670, but he won’t register, won’t turn himself in for the libido blockers.

Off he goes to the restroom of Punktown’s Red Station looking for customers.

Big mistake that.

There he meets a handsome man dressed in black, talks to him briefly. The man pulls out something like a cigarette lighter, scans show more Bum, handcuffs him, takes him outside, and makes him kneel.

And vaporizes him.

All perfectly legal. The man in black is our hero Montgomery Black, Health Agent.

After reading aloud the warrant for Bum’s execution, Black and his partner Opal Cowrie head back to headquarters. Their execution was recorded and their boss, Captain Nedland, fears their might be retaliation. Black isn’t worried.

Opal and Black head for the decontamination showers, together. The two aren’t just partners, but live together and have a lot of sex with each other. Though they both agree they aren’t in love with each other.

They’ve agreed to help fellow Health Agents the alien Beak and Vern Woodmere and go to some bizarre show, Cupid of Death, which may just tie in with some dead, infected mutant they found who had a ticket to the show.

It becomes clear, in the bizarre performance that includes a snuff video, moths, and self-mutilation with rapid healing, that the artist Toll Loveland is a criminal, but he escapes before he can be arrested, and, in the attempt, Woodmere accidentally kills a security guard.

It’s an eventful day. That night, in their bed, Black, not for the first time, cajoles Opal into sex.

Big mistake that.

Because the next day, when routinely going through the scanners at work, Black and Opal are pulled aside.

They both have mustav-670. It seems one of those moths at the show infected Black and many other people.

They are taken off the force. Opal leaves Black alone in their apartment. Libido blockers and counseling are offered.

Neither really believe Nedland’s assurance a cure might be discovered in time.

When Loveland’s body is found, another victim of the virus, it’s hardly comforting to the dying Black.

Then Black begins to suspect Loveland is not dead.

This is my favorite Punktown novel. Thomas says in his introduction that this his most intricately plotted Punktown novel to date. I’d say still his most tightly plotted, and I appreciated that. (I’d say of all of them). I didn’t even mind that, at its core, it’s a serial killer story since Tolland’s monstrous combination of egotistism, murderous “art”, and scientific genius makes him more interesting and consequental than such characters usually are

But what made it my favorite is Black. If I would have read this book when it came out, my emotional reaction may not have been as strong though I think Thomas earns it. But, at this point in my life, the thoughts and observations of a dying Black as he wanders a mall, alienated from all around him, and places a call to Opal, were especially moving. Likewise with the closure at the end.

Beak and Woodmere will eventually join, out of loyalty and their own reasons for vengeance, in Black’s quest.

It’s a novel about loyalty, guilt, revenge, art, and love. The dialogue is realistic and of the right length. Yes, there is plenty of violence and Punktown weirdness, even a very slight nod to Punktown’s more Lovecraftian elements at the climax. But the novel is memorable for its characters, many I’m not mentioning, and emotion. show less

It isn’t just the weird aliens and their cults or the technology of Punktown that makes it both memorable and disturbing. It’s how familiar it is in its insanity, crime, tawdriness, alienation, and vulgarity. A lot of us live in Punktowns lite.

A shotgun blast opens this noirish story which combines the Cthulhu Mythos as altered through alien religions, urban blight and social decay, folklore and sacred geometry, and an odd, but satisfying ending.

“It’s all about time. Time and show more space,” as narrator Christopher Ruby tells us when detailing the specs of each when shotgun pellets cleave the head of Mr. Dove, dealer of occult books. Not the first person Ruby has killed.

That was his girlfriend Gaby.

For a little over half the book we backtrack to how things got to that point.

It all started with the occult minded Gabby trying out an incantation from a digital copy of the Necronomicon. Said copy was provided by Maria, a dead friend of Gabby’s who lost her head -- literally in what, of course, was merely another Punktown death from the drug trade. (Right?) Ruby is a skeptic and rather annoyed by Gabby’s credulity. But the sex is good, and Gabby is hot like a “voluptuous goddess of a fertility cult”.

The thing about magic, though, is you have to pay attention. And Gabby doesn’t, calling up that which she only thinks she has put down.

Then Gabby doesn’t return Ruby’s calls and quits her job. Checking in with her, Ruby finds an oddly transformed Gabby who’s shaved her head and has a strange map of what seems to be Punktown with a geometric pattern laid over it.

It’s good riddance to another ex-girlfriend. Or, at least, it should be. But Ruby finds himself investigating Gabby’s obsession with the Necronomicon.

Then, in his job providing customer service to videogame customers, he begins to have odd visions and sense that the very geography of Punktown is changing. After visiting Mr. Dove to check out his wares, Ruby encounters a Choom prostitute. Chooms are the most human looking – apart from their very wide mouths and odd teeth – of Punktown’s alien races. Good enough for Ruby to have some consolation sex with her which will turn out to be quite consequential.
Ruby finds himself drawn into and to a web of magical intrigue as he finds out that several of the alien races on the planet Oasis have their own legends about gods wanting to breach the dimensional wall around our world.

And Ruby begins to become a believer and consider that he has a destiny and purpose. And a trip to get an illegal gun will bring a third woman into the story with surprising results.

It’s a world where schoolgirls cut throats over the merits of the Sexbot and Bloodwhore games and the news story links to an ad for the relevant brand of utility knife, organic brains serve as computers and are subject to literal viruses, where celebrity actors vie for a guest appearance on Pimp Mama T, headless chickens and other acephalic livestock are grown in vats (providing a tie in to Thomas’ later Deadstock), and you can customize a videogame to hunt down and murder avatars of your old girlfriends on the streets of Punktown.

The subways are dangerous. Punktown’s homeless live in the undercity where:

“Tiles have dropped from the corridor’s tessellated walls. I see a small dark animal dart around the corner ahead of me. I walk across a sodden mattress there in the center of the passageway. Empty cans and bottles, used condoms like dead jellyfish. Is it the maintenance crews or the youths and mutants that lurk in these tunnels that keep the utility lights functioning?”

But it isn’t just the physical infracture that’s disintegrating. The social infrastructre has its cracks too.

Punktown has its version of affirmative action where an alien, hired under some “government-run interplanetary relations program”, deliberately spits mucus at his boss who pretends not to notice.
Given its publication shortly after 9/11, the presence of the alien Kalian race is particularly interesting and central to the story. They, whether intended or not, stand in for the tensions and ambiguities surrounding Moslems in western societies including the treatment of their women.

At novel’s end, Ruby accepts a destiny of sorts. But whether he must continue his fight alone or with help is unresolved.

And he has no answer to whether an alien god makes Punktown such an awful place or whether Punktown itself corrupts that god.

Ruby, who describes his job as “so tedious, so repetitious, a numbing mindless mechanical routine”, finds a purpose and company in the world. He tells his story with a believable mix of bravado, doubt, humor, obsession, trepidation, and bravery. While it certainly has much more cosmic menace and horror than Blue War or Deadstock, this is more than just a tale of violence and occult research. It’s a vision, seen through a glass darkly, of our own world. Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with alien gods trying to bust in a dimensional doorway. show less

A shape-shifting private detective doing time in a trans-dimensional maximum security prison populated by aliens and mutants, watched over by robot guards and haunted by creatures from who-knows-where… and convicts are exploding at random. Author Jeffery Thomas turns noir on its head with a wild ride through a strange sci-fi landscape with horror riding shotgun in this fast-paced and thought-provoking novella that will leave you wanting more.

This was the first Punktown story by Jeffery show more Thomas I have read. It is oddly reminiscent of Clive Barker and H.P. Lovecraft, with some James M. Cain through in. After reading this, I'm going to add the books [b:Deadstock|153073|Deadstock|Jeffrey Thomas|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348201302s/153073.jpg|147755] and [b:Blue War|2342681|Blue War|Jeffrey Thomas|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348330972s/2342681.jpg|2349389] to the top of my TBR list, to see if that comparison holds true with this character in his other books. I’ll probably end up reading the entire Punktown series in quick fashion, too. show less

Punktown has a crime problem. And it really doesn’t wanto jail its alien and human scum on the planet Oasis. So, why not imprison them in a really secure place – another dimension? So, the Trans-Paxton Penitentiary is built. Its inmates call it the Worm Hole because its housed entirely in a permanent interstitial wormhole.

Into the jail comes Edward Fetch, just another inmate, in this case he has a picture of him and his girlfriend tattooed on his arm.

Except the man is an impersonator. show more He’s really Thomas’s private eye hero Jeremy Stake. Except, Stake isn’t there to solve any crimes. He’s fallen on hard times, and he’s accepted the real Fetch’s offer to use his shapeshifting abilities to serve out Fetch’s six-month sentence.

This is a prison story and takes place mostly in the penitentiary. As you would expect, there are vicious and competing gangs and corrupt prison officials. What you don’t get is, mercifully, any onstage rape or sex and, surprisingly, most of the guards turn out to be decent sorts. In fact, half of the guards are robots to cut down on the problems of human guards.

Stake is unwilling to join any of the gangs despite threats. And it doesn’t take him long to hear about a series of mysterious deaths that have been occurring in the last three months. Multiple prisoners have been killed in their cells. Conveniently, cameras malfunction so no recording of the deaths are available.

But then Stake’s cover is blown when the real Fetch is sent to the prison. Stake meets the warden, an alien Tikkihotto named Dinhoo Cirvik. Stake is told his stunt will no doubt result in him facing charges, and he’s sent on his way with the warning to revert to his natural appearance.

But, on the way to the warden’s office, he sees that the prisons and guards are not alone in the worm hole. Through a window, he views

". . . dimly luminous white bodies out there against the blackness. Quick, darting fish-like forms, and slower drifting forms resembling trilobites fringed with rippling fins. He had heard about these creatures – differing types of interstitial life-forms – but had never seen them apart from VT programs. One ribbon-like specimen could grow to a mile in length, though he didn’t see any of that sort out there now. These apparently primitive life-forms were translucent, quasi-corporeal, and the occasional captured specimens had soon dissolved like soap bubbles. They were poorly understood, but had proved harmless.

"A new creature – larger than the others, but still white and luminescent – swam into view with oar-like strokes of its multiple jointed legs, long like those of a giant spider crab."

Once his identity is blown, pressure is put on Stake to join the prison’s mutant gang. Its leader approaches Stake with an offer he can’t refuse: get his “protection” in exchange for taking on a job. The cousin of the gang leader was one of those mysteriously killed, and he wants Stake to find out what’s going on.

Stake finds an eyewitness to one of the killings, but it’s Blur, so named because he’s a mutant with the same condition as Stake. But, while Stake can control his appearance, Blur’s face undergoes a constant change of appearance, and he’s probably crazy. But he does provide a description of a skeletal figure that can move through prison bars.

Stake arranges to talk to the prison’s sketchy doctor. On the way out, one of the robot guards, its eyes flashing red, enigmatically tells Stake “Your kind are not the only prisoners.”

Then, way too conveniently, Stake himself finds himself confronting, in his cell, that skeletal figure.

And soon the story shifts into high gear. Those creatures outside the window turn out to be far from harmless or stupid. And somebody in the prison has been talking to them.

Besides the action of this novella’s final third, there is a coda to the main story which has some concluding weird menace.

Nicely paced and focused, this is another effective Punktown story. show less