Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eaters

When I first read this in the early '80s, I was a cynical undergrad with a taste for the absurd; "Mutant 59" struck me then as over-the-top and darkly funny. Nearly forty years later, I'm a bit more weathered and the world a more pandemic-scarred place. This book is still overwrought in places, leaning into territory often associated with Terry Gilliam films and morbid laughs are unavoidable where I think pathos was the aim, but this reading was more a grim experience than my first. The cautionary core of the story, though, is stronger now than in 1971, since lab researchers are actively trying to generate plastic-reducing bacteria and plastics are even more integral globally.

The pacing, characters, and slice-of-life vignettes all show more clearly demonstrate Pedler & Davis' experiences creating and writing for TV, particularly "Doctor Who" and "Doomwatch" (this book is an expansion of the first episode of the latter); the problem here is that this reads way too much like a TV story treatment than a true novel: it's difficult to develop a sense of Reader Comfort along the way. The minor plot with the jewel heist, for instance, is truly unnecessary and pedestrian. Also, the book is indeed dated, with the casual smoking, gender stereotypes, cheap gay jokes, and "Mad Men" corporate meetings, but the thick, cliched _arch-Britishness_ of it all is so.....well, it's exactly what Douglas Adams lampooned with the Vogons and Arthur Dent.

All this being said, this short, dark, fascinating, and weirdly funny novel would (in the right hands) make a brilliantly entertaining movie. As it stands, it's still a decent summer read, especially if you like "Quatermass and the Pit" or mucking about in a Tardis. show less

5/10
Starts like a disaster movie, or several disaster movies, but slowly becomes a pretty good story at its core. Unfortunately, random side-plots frequently obscure that core story. The novel is also obviously dated in terms of stereotyping.

I vaguely recall another student carrying this in (Class of '77), and as one of the few science fiction novels I didn't immediately read its stuck in my head all these years. Whilst it's a true cultural artifact, down to the Westminster type on the cover, it's also a science mystery and procedural, and a Cozy Catastrophe in the great British tradition. It's not Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce (1985) or Ron Howard's Apollo 13 (1995), but it should be.

An organism that eats plastic threatens the world.