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This debut novel has the stunning tag-line THERE IS BUT ONE LAW: EAT OR BE EATEN, and is more reminiscent of Golding's Lord of the Flies than Tarzan or The Truman Show.
For years Irish Science Fiction has been considered a slightly obscure sub-set of British SF, just as British SF has been a small part of the American world of Science Fiction. The exceptions -- such as James White, Bob Shaw and the latest Hugo-winner Ian McDonald, tended to prove the exception rather than the rule, and in any event came from the North, so could claim to be British. All that may be about to change. Just as the Irish SF magazine Albedo One is slowly but surely gaining a following, so it is that Irish writers are starting to enter the scene at novel length; one of them is Peadar O'Guilin. His debut novel The Inferior has the stunning tag-line There is but one law: EAT OR BE EATEN With the exception of zombie novels, (And most readers of SF and horror alike view that sub-genre as closer to the mainstream than anything to do with speculative fiction) the confrontation of cannibalism are rare in SF. Robert Silverberg's 'The Road to Nightfall' took four years to make it into print in the 1950s. Mostly writers prefer to deal in metaphor, but O'Guilin confronts the theme head on, making the reader stare unflinchingly at the subject. O'Guilin's publishers compare The Inferior to The Truman Show, of which it is agreed, there are echoes as well as to Conan, with which the only true link is the amount of blood spilled. Oddly, they compare the novel to Tarzan, but the work it is most reminiscent of is actually William Golding's Lord of the Flies, with it's breakdown of civilization and it's unrelenting brutality. Stopmouth and the other humans in The Inferior know only one life; the daily battle for survival. To live they must hunt alien species with whom they hare their world (with it's constant depiction of the roof lighting up, their's is clearly an artificial habitat), or trade their own people with those who crave fresh meat. For Stopmouth, considered slow-witted fodder for another species by his tribe because his stammer impairs his speech, the future looks especially bleak. One day he is betrayed by the brother who he idolizes, and who has until now protected him, and a beautiful but strange woman falls from the sky. Interestingly for such a harsh, even brutal novel, The Inferior is pitched as YA novel, which is strange, but would explain the relative chastity as well as the lack of consideration about the moral imperatives; for Stopmouth there are no moral imperatives other than to survive, and this drives the novel. Because O'Guilin is a new writer it is never clear exactly clear where his novel is going, and it abruptly lurches from urban apocalypse to quest novel, although the author does keep the story going. The Inferior's sequel is awaited with some interest..
The copyright of the article The Inferior in Utopian/Dystopian Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish The Inferior in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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