The M.D.

Good in so many ways, and truly disturbing. It's not as stylishly written as The Businessman or as focused as The Priest - it's the most self-consciously Stephen King-like one in the series, and it could be read as just a nicely plotted deal-with-the-devil story. But on second reading, I got the same sense that John Clute did (in his fine foreword to the Minnesota U.P. edition), that Disch isn't just writing about one misguided kid who makes bad things happen, but a whole world riddled with fatal flaws; Billy isn't the first to go this way, it may be happening all the time (and that would explain a lot), and the supernatural evil isn't always the worst part. (Corruption in business and bureaucracy are vividly portrayed here; ironically, show more they didn't really figure in The Businessman.) Still, amid all the despair, Disch has some love for all of his characters - even when he's making very deadpan fun of them or putting them through hell - and his world isn't just dark but full of a kind of playful mystery, a feeling that even though both your body and your spirit may be vulnerable to all kinds of horrible things, they're both pretty amazing.

(I put together some annotations I made during a recent reread here.) show less

Five stars. A truly literate horror novel that is really a wide swipe at Christianity and religion in every form, from Santa Claus to the Pope to televangelists. The novel starts in the 1950s with little Billy Michaels getting the power from Mercury (the Greek god) to presumably make things right. All he has to do is believe in the god and say the rhyme to get what he wants. The first problem is you can't trust a child any more than you can an adult to make the best choices. Billy isn't evil any more than any other child. The second problem is things don't always work out as you intended unless you are very careful about how you wish for things. Oh, and that magic wand known as a caduceus it needs to be balanced to work. It has to do show more bad to recharge the good battery in it.

Anyway the novel stretches into the near future (or what the near future might be in 1991) with the now Dr. Billy Michaels curing AIDS (to get rich) but having to create another disease to balance things out, so to speak. But he's going to cure it eventually and make everything okay again. Right. Finally you realize that everyone is doomed. The universe will have its way no matter how you manipulate it. Disch does this in a sneaky way that makes you sympathize with each character even as he is telling you he is going to knock them off. Disch's god isn't an angry god just one that proves there isn't any god in the end.

The book is as funny as it is horrid. The entire thing takes place in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) Minnesota metropolitan area. Volume two of four of the Supernatural Minnesota series. show less

This is in many ways a powerfully written novel of dark humour mixed in with horror. A huge story is packed into 541 pages, covering among other things. inherited genetic disease, climate change (very prescient for something published in 1991), mass plague and tyrannical governmental response, corporate corruption, the tobacco industry, eating disorders, religious fanaticism and racism. All these themes are woven into the narrative with sometimes breathtaking virtuosity and the characters are for the most part strong and individual.

The story begins in the 1970s with six-year-old Billy, who lives with his dad and his dad's second wife, Madge, and her older son Ned, and elderly mother. Billy, who attends a Catholic kindergarten, refuses show more to accept the assertion by the overbearing nun in charge of his class that Santa Claus is an invented figure based on paganism. We learn that Billy actually sees Santa and converses with him - though before long, Santa is revealed to be another guise of a creature that introduces itself as the god Mercury. I wasn't quite sure if this was just one more persona it took on, although as it is fairly consistent throughout the book, maybe it actually is meant to be the god. Except this version of Mercury is rather malevolent. He transforms a 'poison stick' created by Billy's step-brother Ned from twisted twigs and a sparrow's skeleton, into a caduceus, Mercury's staff and traditional symbol of the medical profession, and imbues it with the ability to charge itself with power. This power can be dispensed for good, for example, to give Billy's family members good health. But there is a catch: to charge the caduceus Billy must dispense curses as well, and the power gained is in proportion to the awful nature of the curses. Being a six-year-old boy, Billy not only dishes out curses to people who have upset him in some way, he also bungles majorly on occasion, for example, condemning his step-brother to endure many years as a 'locked in' patient when Ned inadvertently receives one meant for boys who had beaten up Billy.

The book is divided into a number of parts which skip through the stages of Billy's life from the time of President Nixon's impeachment to an imagined 1999 (the book was published in 1991). The first four sections are an enjoyable page-turning read. In the first, Billy uses his newfound powers with tragic results. In the second, he is still living with his father and family and, undeterred by what he has already done, uses his powers for both good and for evil - with an outcome that although not directly due to his curses can be seen to stem from them when his father is killed in a traffic accident while rushing Billy to hospital after another boy injured him in revenge for what Billy has done.

In the third section, Billy is living with his mother and her second husband, Ben, plus Judith, Ben's daughter by his own first marriage. Judith is bright and engaging but suffers from anorexia. At her instigation, he begins calling himself William. This section focuses on Billy's 13th birthday and his birthday dinner to which an obnoxious spokesman for the tobacco industry, who indirectly funds Ben's work, invites himself, sparking a confrontation where Billy once again uses the caduceus with devastating results. William is now focused on becoming a doctor and is working hard at school to that end, with the intent of using the caduceus for finding cures for diseases, and curing Judith of anorexia. In part 4, he's older and is trying for accelerated entry to the program that will get him into university a few years early. He has become more adept at using the caduceus - as shown when he deals ruthlessly with a teacher who stands in his way. When his mother becomes pregnant, he uses the caduceus to grant good health to the unborn child despite a hint from Mercury that it can only work within the genetic limits of the recipient, with disastrous and tragic results.

In part 5, the book takes an odd turn with the introduction of Madge's long lost first husband and the father of Ned, who does some very bizarre things. Many years have passed since the ending of part 4, and William is now married with sons of his own. Although he is doing well and the supposedly non-profit organisation he runs has produced a vaccine against AIDS, society in generally is crumbling under the pressure of a new and highly contagious disease for which his organisation is trying to find a cure.

We gradually learn in retrospect that he has been using the caduceus, initially to come up with the AIDS vaccine but, in the last ten years, to sow the seeds for the new and devastating disease, for no real reason other than it presents a fantastic business opportunity. Despite this, William has a 'clear conscience' and has no problem at all with the nationwide devastation he has caused - he has been buying up property in a particular area since he was a young man, with the intent of turning it into a vast isolation 'camp' for the unfortunate victims of the disease he presumably was planning even then to unleash.

Ironically, it is in performing an unselfish action - and there is no explanation as to why someone so callous does so - he is hoist on his own petard when he tries to help a woman shot at a roadblock for trying to escape (she has the new disease) and is arrested and sent to a detention centre where people with the disease are imprisoned.

One of the issues some readers might have with this story is the huge number of characters including various second husbands and wives and step-children. Mostly I managed to keep them clear, helped by the strong characterisation, though this started to become more difficult in the final section. However, in my opinion there is a much greater flaw. Part 5 - comprising the book's final third - falls apart in a bloodbath unleashed by a newly introduced character, and the epilogue gives a spurious 'explanation' of that character's behaviour. It is almost as if the author wanted to kill off just about everyone in a unwarranted grand guignol finale, rather than work out the implications of everything that had gone before with the wider storylines of the plague etc. There is also the odd behaviour of Madge's first husband, which introduces further complications, and the dark humour surrounding his and Madge's fate. The main problem however is that in this section, after being the focus of the story, William is largely passive and is a victim at the mercy of others, eventually pushed off to the sidelines. This final section in my opinion constitutes a large flaw after the earlier absorbing story, which was heading for at least a 4-star rating, and therefore reduces the book's overall rating to 3-stars. show less

The book started off on a promising premise - a Greek god come to life and a 5 year old boy with the power to play God himself - but the middle of the book became tangled with complex character relationships and unfocused thematic issues. It seems as though Disch was unable to decide what was most important to the story, so rather than cut certain elements out, he combined everything and hoped that it would turn out okay.

It was also hard to find a character to sympathize with, and the writing style, which jumped from character to character so frequently that it gave me literary whiplash, did nothing to help me invest in the story. Perhaps the book would have been better if Disch had limited his writing to just a few select points of show more view, but the point is moot.

Thankfully, the book came together better than I expected, and the book did have a few truly horrifying moments, mainly in the beginning. But I wouldn't bother reading this one...Stephen King may have given it a good review, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why. show less

The M.D. offers an intriguing premise: what if the ancient Greek gods were real? In mythology they often actively intervened in the lives of mortals. In this novel, the god Mercury offers godlike powers to young Billy Michaels in exchange for his worship. Billy receives the caduceus, the ancient symbol of medicine consisting of twisted sticks topped with the dessicated carcass of a bird, and with it can cast spells to heal and protect anything. However, much like anything so powerful, there is a catch. In order to keep the caduceus charged with its magical power, Billy must perform an equal amount of damaging spells with it. Hence, for ever person he saves, he must injure another. When he grows up to become a doctor, he truly plays show more god.

Thomas Disch offers many prescient insights of the "future", including a degraded environment, catastrophic plagues, climate change and worldwide economic meltdown. Impressive, considering this novel was published in 1991 and divides its setting between the 1970s and 1999.

What comes across loud and clear is Disch's dislike of religion, both the organized and fundamentalist flavors. Readers of the same persuasion may find themselves knowingly chuckling along with his sly observations. And the character of Judge perfectly illustrates blind, fundamentalist devotion to dogma and demagoguery.

While the story itself is interesting and I was excited to find out what became of the characters, the pace is uneven, flagging in the middle before picking up again at the end. The mix of politics, science, medicine, religion and family drama (almost all of the adults are remarried divorcees which makes keeping tracks of all of the family combinations a bit tedious) overwhelms the plot at times.

Recommended for fans of science-based horror, such as the novels of Robin Cook, though this is much more far-fetched and requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief. show less

The story is OK, but the writing is ... well, boring. I am not the kind of reader who requires a lot of action, but I do need the language to speak to me. Otherwise, why not just read the plot summary? Disch seems to think that his personal distaste for his characters (Catholics, racists, facists, and self-serving people of all stripes) is by itself adequate to captivate the reader, but he doesn't write with a style that connects with me emotionally. He has a kind of deadpan approach that doesn't work well for subtlety or understatement in the context of this novel. His sense of evil is sincere, but lacks drama. I am sorry I spent the time with this book, and recommend that you don't bother with it.

Back in my Stephen King days I was always trying to find a writer like him. Well Thomas M. Disch is not like him but in his own way, just as good.

It ha been so long since I've read this book (Read it in Dutch and still have a Dutch copy) but i do remember I loved this book.

So If you like King, try this book. Very good blend mixing horror and fantasy.