New Pulp Review Techno-Thriller

Book review: ‘Fragment’

Warren Fahy's "Fragment"Warren Fahy‘s “Fragment” is part of the “techno thriller” genre (though perhaps a better term might be “science thriller”) that I feel is part of the larger New Pulp movement.

I first heard of the book when I saw notices in Pulp Coming Attractions for his sequel that has just come out, “Pandemonium.” That sounded interesting, so I felt I should check out the earlier work first. I am glad I did.

I thought the line of it being ” ‘Jurassic Park’ for the ‘Lost’ generation” a bit funny. Less “Jurassic Park” than perhaps Conan Doyle‘s “The Lost World,” or perhaps Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ Caspak or King Kong‘s Skull Island.

The story starts with the cast and crew of a science-based reality show called SeaLife who respond to a distress signal from a nearby island. This island is isolated in the South Pacific, and hasn’t been visited since 1791. The island (like Caspak) is nearly inaccessible due to high cliffs, and it hides a deadly secret.

The island, called Henders Island, is a remnant (or fragment) of one of the past “supercontinents,” It is the home to a whole ecosystem of very deadly and dangerous lifeforms that have evolved over millions of years in isolation there. Most of the shore party do not make it off alive. Because they were filming live, the U.S. government steps in and quarantines the island so that it can be investigated.

What is found is scary. Life is hard and vicious on this island. Everything tries to eat everything else. It seems many of the larger lifeforms are somehow decedents of mantis shrimp. This included the small “hender rats” and the large buffalo-size “spigers.” What are thought to be plants are actually stationary animals, like giant coral or sea anemone. No life from the outside is able to survive in this environment, and if any life from the island gets out, it would destroy our ecosystem. So it’s decided to nuke the island to wipe out the biohazard. But before this happens, the main characters discover a startling secret.

I was very impressed by the novel and the background work that was done on it. A lot of thought was put into the lifeforms of this island, and the author’s website (warrenfahy.com) has a lot of supplemental information. Check it out to fully appreciate the novel. I see that there are plans to turn it into a movie. With today’s special effects, it should be easy to do this story justice and avoid being a cheesy SyFy Channel “movie of the week.”

The sequel novel, “Pandemonium,” takes some of the main characters of “Fragment” into a new environment: a large cave system in the Ural Mountains that has another deadly ecosystem. I look forward to reading that work. You can see some of the preliminary works on the author’s website.

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