Title: High Wired on
First published: June 2002
Description: Synopsis

 

Billy is precocious and sensitive. He comes from an unstable background, and suffers from bereavements. He compensates for these deprivations by studying hard and honing his ambitions. He becomes a high-ranking computer whizz-kid. His career is complemented by a relationship, with Sarah. This is initially highly dynamic and positive; her greed and ambition pressurise him, get him to 'the top' and keep him there. But the sustained pressures wear him out; cracks appear. His partner leaves him. At first he throws himself into his work, and gets harder, better. Then his work becomes riddled with errors. One day he arrives at the workplace to find that he has been dismissed and replaced, with no notification whatever. 

 

He sinks into alcohol and desolation. During his desperate pacings round the streets, he is drawn into a gathering of a crankish cult called the Society of the Quintessential Transcendence. During their ceremony, he is hypnotised and spirited away to somewhere which initially feels rather like a psychiatric hospital. But its essence is something far more sinister. There is a conspiracy to destroy the world's surplus population by luring masses of people to a remote island, site of a gigantic pop festival, which is equipped with death-ray projectors. To further its nefarious scheme, propaganda will be disseminated, to lull the participants into thinking they are the nucleus of a new, Utopian society, and numb any sense of impending peril. 

 

Billy is given the role of a puppet dictator/spokesperson, whose role is to feed the population with mind-numbing messages of reassurance and token optimism. Because he is in some ways a neutral character, his image and aura inspire uncritical trust. He 'smells a rat', and tries to wreck the destructive machinery - but no no avail. He and the transient island population are destroyed. 

 

This novella explores the areas of speculative anxiety, and the 'grey areas' of which could happen, next door but one and the day after tomorrow, if things were adjusted ever such a little - by no means far-fetched in terms of today's extremities. 

 

 
 
 
Review by Karen Smith:
 
My curiosity about this highly unusual novel was initially aroused by the cryptic blurb: ' When you read this story=2C we hope that you will become aware of the perils of mass human vivisection'. The narrative teeters on the thin 'trapeze-wire' between fantasy and reality and it is often impossible to discern whether the bizarre experiences of the protagonist Billy are dreams, delusions or true apocalyptic horrors. 
 
The story is a strange and fascinating amalgamationof science fiction=2C conspiracy theory=2C detective story and faithful account of schizoid hallucination. The writing itself is so 'sparky' and apparently electrified that the reader begins to wonder whether the author is 'wired' or 'on' something=2C but he assures that 'If you find some of this implausible=2C please take consolation - so do I'. The reader must decide where actuality ends and the imagination begins, which is no mean feat. Though events are sometimes difficult to follow, Dave Russell's images are often inspired: 'silhouetting your anxieties and suspicions spawning monsters and ancient cavernous civilisations. This book is likely to leave only a single certainty in the reader's mind: that there surelyis nothing else like it.