British writer Smith's first US publication, an action fantasy
about a future dystopia. Ex-soldier, ex-detective Jack Randall, 39,
is a victim of The Gap, a weird area in rural Virginia where
collapsing computer codes of the "virtual world had grown too heavy
and sloughed off the wires and coalesced into something solid."
Computers have long since been given the job of writing code, of
programming themselves, because, the narrator notes, "They were
better at it, much better than us." However, "their motivations
were sometimes uncertain, and after the code was sealed it was
impossible to tell what was in there. Perhaps. . . a conversation
humans weren't invited to eavesdrop on anymore." Twenty years ago,
when The Gap was first discovered, Jack and his buddy Mal and
Johnny Vinaldi were soldiers sent into the area to secure it; they
emerged two years later, their psyches scarred by The Fear, a
weapon generated by The Gap to protect itself. Jack and Mal became
cops, while Vinaldi began his rise to drug kingpin. Meantime, in
The Gap, Jack had become an addict of Rapt, the only know drug that
was able to fight The Fear. Eventually, Jack ends up working at a
complex where he guards Spares, clones of living people who are
cannibalized when their originals require replacement parts. Jack
grows attached to a group of Spares and, trying to save them, takes
them to New Richmond, a fabulous, five-mile-square MegaMall 200
stories high, a cubic city that has the power of flight. When his
Spares are kidnapped, Jack races about the vast hallways and
villages of the MegaMall, pursued by weird figures from The Gap and
involved in a series of increasingly bloody encounters leading to a
surprising showdown. Newcomer Smith has originality plus and a
wicked flow of philosophic twists. If a novel was ever destined to
follow Ridley Scott's classic filming of Philip K. Dick's Blade
Runner, this is it. (Kirkus Reviews)
'Spares' – human clones, the ultimate health insurance. An eye for an eye – but some people are doing all the taking.
'Spares' – the story of Jack Randall: burnt – out, dropped out, and way overdrawn at the luck bank. But as caretaker on a Spares farm, he still has a choice, and it might make a difference…if he can run fast enough.
'Spares' – a breathless race through strange, disturbing territories in a world all too close on our own.
'Spares' it’s fiction. But only just…
“ Comic, cruel, twisted and surreal.”
EMPIRE
“Some books stretch the imagination.This one mugs it.”
DAVID BADDIEL
“Tense, exciting and at times very, very funny…He’s worth every penny.”
TIME OUT
“Witty, hard – edged and coruscatingly imaginative…Compellingly off – kilter.”
NEW SCIENTIST
“'Spares' blurs imaginative surrealism and hard – bitten horror with a storytelling skill that can only be described as pure genius.”
'VENUE'
“A compulsively readable melding of hardboiled narrative and hardware invention.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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