The Furies by Keith Roberts (1966) Eons ago, when the young BQ devoured science fiction paperbacks, this book scared the living crap out of us........
Reading it again, eons later.......it still scared the living crap out of us......
The book's very comparable to the 'cozy catastrophes' dreamed up by our favorite sci-fi novelist John Wyndham ("Day Of The Triffids", "Out Of The Deeps", "The Midwich Cuckoos" turned into the 'Village Of The Damned' films.)
Keith Roberts envisioned a U.K. ripped asunder, literally, by simultaneous nukes set off by the U. S. and Russia......(much like the film "The Day The Earth Caught Fire").
As earthquakes tear apart Britain, from out of nowhere emerge giant man-sized killer wasps with bayonet-like stingers and a intelligence driven mission to wipe out most humans except the ones they enslave to do their bidding.
Just imagine those Giant Asian Hornets (you know, those evil looking little bastards the news dubbed 'murder hornets') if they were your size.
Double yikes!
This book wastes no time in plunging you into a horrific landscape where the last remaining men and women on England are either on the run from the droning, myriad insect hordes or turning the tables on the monsters by waging guerrilla warfare against them.
These perpetual thrilling and gory battles come at you almost non stop and the book only stops to take a breath when our tormented band of heroes find themselves prisoners of the wasps, who've taken to herding around humans like ants do to aphids.
We were raised on Hollywood's 'big bug' movies of the 1950's, so "The Furies", for us, was like a nightmare come true.......these wasps make the Triffids look like daffodils........
By the time we were reaching the end, we couldn't help wondering when Roberts was going to answer the two vital questions about this story......
First question: What the hell were the Furies anyway? Where did they come from? How did they come to show up jumbo-sized?
Second question: How in the hell could humankind ever defeat them?
Here's the one aspect of the book that took us by surprise. Roberts waits almost until the last few pages to detonate the BIG TWISTS that answer those two questions. And take it from us, they're whoppers.
Since 99% of the book is taken up with pure breathless action-adventure, the sudden, abrupt turn into way-out-there fantastic science fiction may strike you as jarring..........or even a cheating cop-out, a fanciful deus-ex-machina used by the author to write his way out of the corner he painted himself into........
On the other hand, if you've read a ton of sci-fi already, the climax might strike you as inevitable, clever and deeply ironic.
Whatever you think of the wrap-up, "The Furies" remains one of our favorite sci-fi adventure reads.........and if you love stuff like this, we say go for it.......we're buzzin' out 4 stars (****).
Let's all pray those Murder Hornets don't get any bigger. But in this ghastly year of 2020.......who knows?
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