A thousand times deadlier than Legionnaire's disease? It's a delightfully dated apocalypse as disaster duo Scortia and Robinson unleash THE NIGHTMARE FACTOR! The authors had helped shape the disaster scene earlier in the '70s with The Glass Inferno, one of two novels bundled together in adaptation as the 1974 mega-blockbuster film The Towering Inferno. They followed with a timely nuclear disaster in The Prometheus Crisis, and then naturally followed that with today's offering, a disease/epidemic thriller in the best dark '70s conspiracy mode. Before Dr. Calvin Doohan has tracked his killer bug to its source he'll have fallen in with assassins and hustlers, military goons and DARPA spooks, and an unfolding plot involving spiked mayonnaise, ipecac torture, and aborted hamsters!
Scortia and Robinson write a mean machine of a thriller, blending savvy plotting with naturalistic characters. Dr. Doohan brings to mind Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a dedicated professional finding himself lost in a system that refuses to save itself, that almost seems dedicated to its own destruction. A citizen of the world penned in by clashing nationalisms, he's a nuanced, flawed character, making his victories all the more satisfying and his failures all the more human. His supporting cast follow suit, including his personal antagonist the rigid Major Hanson - the two will discover too late that they have more in common than either could have guessed at the start of this nasty business. Characters dodge and weave, lying to themselves and each other with practiced acuity for reasons personal and professional, with repercussions ranging from the pathetic to apocalyptic. The authors artfully construct a massive conspiracy involving recombinant DNA and out-of-control wargames, layering true biowarfare history like the Dugway sheep kill, US plague bombs in Korea, and Operation Sea-Spray into the background of their all-too believable Nightmare Factor. There's some brief, shocking grue here and there, but the real horror springs from the implications of unmanageable, hubristic power and the sheer suicidal madness of our "civilized" systems. The last two pages sum this up well - spoiler free:
For their ripping, gripping tale of technological terror, Scortia and Robinson's The Nightmare Factor gets four shattered test tubes out of four:
Bantam Books, 1978
The two authors also ginned up THE PROMETHEUS CRISIS, THE GOLD CREW, and BLOWOUT (their last novel). After Thomas Scortia passed away in 1986, Frank M. Robinson forged on with several more novels. Their novels were fine reads.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm quite fond of them. Really enjoyed Scortia's solo title Earthwreck too
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