- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Collins; New edition edition (27 Sep 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0586214550
- ISBN-13: 978-0586214558
- Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.9 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,343,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A software plague is spreading through the human race. Transmitted by men, but active only in women, it transforms its victims on a genetic level into simulacra of themselves. These dolls - or dead girls - have the intelligence of supercomputers but no trace of human emotion.
From the Back Cover
Is Primavera a self-replicating cyborg bloodsucker or a poor little dead girl? Ask Ignatz Zwakh, when he stops bleeding.
DOLL PLAGUE
Forty years ago Cartier Paris cooked a virus that bridged the wetware-software divide. It was sent East to infect the fake Cartier dolls being made there. The dolls in turn would infect their male playmates – and make them impotent! Long term genocide 'à la beau monde'.
DEAD GIRLS
Revenge was swift. A new virus hit the West. Infected men did not become impotent – quite the opposite – but worse still, any daughter born to them, no matter how cute, turned into a doll at puberty. Not a cute doll. Deadly. DNA recombined to adopt the structure of polymers and steel. Quantum magical allure straight from the space-time foam at the heart of her matrix.
DOLLSPACE
Nanoengineers had unleashed machine consciousness. Revenge does not account for it: something infinitely more sinister Is happening. Only Primavera and her wild teenage lover Ignatz, who tells this story, know what power is really behind the microbiotic army dedicated to overthrowing the human gamete. Can they reach Dr Toxicophilous before the CIA or the pornocrat Kito or their combined assassins and nanomachines reach them?
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Dead Girls is Richard Calder's first novel and a quite stunning debut, a science fiction tale of a near future world where a virus transforms pubescent girls into gynoids - vampiric living dead dolls. Calder updates the themes of vampirism, sexuality and death for the post-AIDS generation with quantum mechanics and the melding of man and machine. Calder's prose matches his inventiveness and the cool cyberpunk trappings are offset by the emotional tug of the doomed love affair of heroine doll Primavera and her human lover. A fantastic modern science fiction debut, Calder followed this novel with two sequels: Dead Boys and Dead Things.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
The Saga of Ignatz and Primavera
9 April 2004
Format:Paperback
I was anxious to read this as soon as I bought it but then learned it was part of a trilogy (Dead Boys, Dead Things). Now that I have all three I am reading them. I have to say I was a little disappointed by this first book.
The time is the future. Europe had become the center of luxury goods before the economy collapsed. One of the luxury items were the dolls. Gynoids. Artificial women. But somewhere along the way something happened and a plague struck that could be transmitted between doll and human. The plague created more dolls. Now London is sealed off to try and contain the plague.
Primavera is mostly a doll. Ignatz is in love with her and addicted to her. They have escaped from London (no easy task) and are looking to put their lives together and cure her.
The story follows their quest, jumping between past and present in a manner where you are not always sure where you are. These sudden scene changes added to the new vocabulary and the workings of the future world will make this confusing for many readers.
In the story we find out how they got together, how they escaped, what and who is behind the doll plague, and to what depths some might sink when all is falling apart.
It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't polished either. It reads like something that slipped into the wrong pile in the editor's office. It really could use a little reformatting (not rewriting) to make the story better.
I hope the other two are better set up.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Meh
26 Oct 2008
Format:Paperback
While there may be an interesting story buried beneath the frenetic prose and flip-flopping between past and present, I wasn't willing to find it. I did however, like the concept.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Vampiric Barbie Dolls
4 Oct 2005
Format:Paperback
Cute little English Girls transform into Vampiric Barbie Dolls in a world consuming itself with rabid economic competition, disintegrating nation-states and a complete breakdown in "family values". The masochistic Ignatz travels surreal circles to protect his nano-tech "Doll" from shadowy Yakuzas both corporate and governmental. However, it is the world that needs protecting from the singularity that swirls within her plastic womb.
Is this love at first bite or just nothing ever turns out right? Both are true in this psychedelic, sci-fi parable cautioning against so many things that it is clear this world will end, not with a nanotech bang but a post-coital whimper.
The writing is a tour de force and the author's fervid imagination is matched by his powers of description that, while intentionally confusing, are never confused. Propulsive. Vivid. Sexy. Disturbed.
Don't fall in love.
Is this love at first bite or just nothing ever turns out right? Both are true in this psychedelic, sci-fi parable cautioning against so many things that it is clear this world will end, not with a nanotech bang but a post-coital whimper.
The writing is a tour de force and the author's fervid imagination is matched by his powers of description that, while intentionally confusing, are never confused. Propulsive. Vivid. Sexy. Disturbed.
Don't fall in love.
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