Green Eyes

by Lucius Shepard

A project that uses bacterially induced artificial personalities to bring the dead back to life, runs into problems when one of the subjects escapes

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Zombies, Speculative Fiction, Novels

275 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1984

About the author

Brief biographies are, like history texts, too organized to be other than orderly misrepresentations of the truth. So when it's written that Lucius Shepard was born in August of 1947 to Lucy and William Shepard in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised thereafter in Daytona Beach, Florida, it provides a statistical hit and gives you nothing of the difficult childhood from which he frequently attempted to escape, eventually succeeding at the age of fifteen, when he traveled to Ireland aboard a freighter and thereafter spent several years in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, working in a cigarette factory in Germany, in the black market of Cairo's Khan al Khalili bazaar, as a night club bouncer in Spain, and in numerous other countries at numerous other occupations. On returning to the United States, Shepard entered the University of North Carolina, where for one semester he served as the co-editor of the Carolina Quarterly. Either he did not feel challenged by the curriculum, or else he found other pursuits more challenging. Whichever the case, he dropped out several times and traveled to Spain, Southeast Asia (at a time when tourism there was generally discouraged), and South and Central America. He ended his academic career as a tenth-semester sophomore with a heightened political sensibility, a fairly extensive knowledge of Latin American culture and some pleasant memories.

Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.

In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shepard shows incredible talent even on his first novel. Matching Robert Stone’s terrific dialogue and ability to make any situation pregnant with threat and meaning, a metatextual weaving in of a Jack Vance grotesque fantasy, and main story involving zombies, science, magic, a bizarre labyrinth of a house(almost as weird as the castle in The Golden), voodoo, and sense overloading description of Louisiana bayou country. There are fully formed characters that will linger in your brain, unbeatable dialogue, and terrific prose making this not only great as genre bending work of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and literature, but also a great novel of the south.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently found this book again after 30 years. The first time I read it was about the time my youngest boy was born, 1984. I bought several new paperbacks by Ace. They were some sort of special edition & looked pretty cool together with great teasers. One was Neuromancer by William Gibson & this was the other that I still remember. Somewhere along the way I lost this one, though. It's great to get another chance to read it.

Well, I see why Neuromancer survived the purges of the past 3 decades & this one didn't. It was a pretty good book, definitely a different take on zombies. There was quite an interesting mix of voodoo & science. I'm not really sure if it was a fantasy, SF, or a mix. Normally such uncertainty would make it a favorite of mine, but I just couldn't work up any real empathy for the main characters. There was also some CIA involvement that was just a shame.

I'm still going to recommend it. This isn't gory flesh-eating zombies. It's a scientific look at the 'scientific truth' (in the book) behind how zombies are created, their psychology, & voodoo. It's a pretty interesting blend of SF & horror. Just where reality stops & psychosis starts is an interesting question. While it didn't really ring my bell, your mileage may vary.

[Dfordoom · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re the kind of person who likes a good zombie love story (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) then I highly recommend Lucius Shepard’s novel Green Eyes. These are definitely not the kind of zombies you find in most horror movies. This is a story with a definite science fiction slant to it. It’s very emphatically not a gorefest. As always with Lucius Shepard it’s beautifully written, highly original, intelligent and very entertaining. Not his best book, but it was first novel and as first novels go it’s pretty damned good.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it's the first (and maybe only, ever) Lacanian zombie biopunk Louisiana bayou love story. Well written, eerie and melancholy more than terrifying, and, well...a Lacanian zombie tale. (And, no, there's no brain-eating...at least in the usual way) Isn't that enough to make you want to read this?

[Fred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmmm. This is a very interesting work, one of the few that transcends the dialectic of traditional narrative and post/modern experimentalism. If this actually were a "zombie" novel it would be the best one ever written, but the zombie conceit is incidental to the work, used as a wedge with which to introduce the Louisiana milieu in all of its miscegenated glory.
This would be a nice companion piece, although far superior, to the Angel Heart film of Mickey Rourke. It depicts a world of faith healers, gothic decadence and poverty with devotion and care. The zombies are of the voodoo variety, and the Gods are West African. These are intelligent zombies not the flesh eating, head exploding variety. Really this book has so little to do with zombies that I can almost guarantee that if you love zombies and dress like one, you will not like this book. Unless of course you are a zombie loving humanities major, then you may read away with abandon.
The biggest problem I had was the last third of the book; i just wasnt buying Otille and crew, Mansion characters Clea, Baron, Simpkins and others are left unexplored and uninteresting. The doctors in the hospital are very well drawn, the people in the town and swamp, the other zombies, are all excellent. For me the book thuds to a stop when they arrive in Maravillosa, and it took me forever to slog through the last 100 pages.
I would say the first 2/3 of the book are five stars for me, and the last 1/3 is two stars. So I compromised and gave it three overall. Shepard falls for my hoary complaint of poorly drawn female characters; every woman is lovely, smart, mysterious, blah, blah, blah. Im currently reading some Dickens and it is quite humorous to me how, in an age when women couldnt vote and were barely schooled, these male 19th century heterosexual writers presented women with more agency, diversity, and realism than a single writer of our age can accomplish. I dont get it, a skilled craftsman like Shepard, one of the bright lights of the last 25 years, draws up yet another barbie with a clipboard as the female lead. Gene Wolfe does the same thing but at least he has made a parody of himself, made the females so vapid and the writing so smart that there is no way to level a PC critique of his work with a straight face. So there is some failure but much success in this first novel by one of our great contemporary novelists. Well worth reading for the metaphysics, the atmosphere, and the narrative structure.

[Kamakana · Rating 3 out of 5]

??? 80s: i had not put this on! i read this when it came out, so thirty-three years ago... review by memory: really liked the first half, really disappointed in the second half, that is, the strange half-life and titular green eyes is absorbing in a surreal way, could have been the book in itself... but then he created an entire other world to make it make sense... i preferred it to remain unexplained and weird. oh well...

[Ubik · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't finish it. It's extremely rare that I don't at least get through a book even if I didn't like it all that well, but this never held my interest and then got really annoying really fast. What's interesting is that when I got to the carnival scene I realized I was reading Stranger in a Strange Land again and the last book I didn't finish was Farnham's Freehold -- another book that features shallow characters, muddled motivations, great plot that draws you in only to be left as background noise, and, finally, female characters portrayed as placating naive love slaves. Front!

We're never told how this project came to be, how they're getting funding and bodies, etc. The opening scene is a hot female "psychologist" (think Tara Reid with glasses in the hopefully-never-made film adaptation) who is just about to let her newly awakened horny zombie patient have sex with her right before he "burns out" and drops dead

A three-ton copper replica of a vodou god? Riiight.

A strictly worse Stranger in a Strange Land...and I didn't even like that all that much...

[Tomislav · Rating 3 out of 5]

A reclusive research project is experimenting with a strain of bacteria that re-animates the recently dead. Each zombie is assigned a therapist, who is encouraged to use subtle sexual attraction to manipulate their subject to normal functionality. But zombie Donnell Harrison and his therapist Jocundra, disgusted by the behaviors of the sleazy researchers, slowly acknowledge the growth of a real relationship and escape to the nearby Louisiana bayou country. I don't read much horror, and am not sure how this book would stack up in that category, but I found Shepard's descriptions of the lush decadent plant life and people of that place to be evocative and chillingly creepy. They fall in with faith healers, and find Donnell has powers beyond human experience, except possibly in the traditions of Voudou. From the faith healers onward, their lives grow increasingly bizarre and grotesque.

I would be giving this book a high rating, for its narrative quality, but unfortunately Shepard stepped onto one of my personal landmines. I am a biomedical engineer working in design of applications of magnetic resonance imaging systems. My peeve is when a writer picks up a few random words and concepts of nuclear magnetic resonance, and proceeds to demonstrate that they totally do not understand it. While it is true that the broadcast of electromagnetic energy at the correct frequency will affect the spin of the nucleus of certain isotopes like Hydrogen-1, this does not cause whole cells or even molecules or atoms to move and align - just takes the nucleus to a higher energy state right where it is! It is a confusion of NMR with plain old-fashioned electromagnetism. And while we're at it, human illness cannot be cured by manipulating eddy currents in the Earth's magnetic field. I wish it could, because then we could treat people by just making them wear magnets in the right places. I know sf writers use scientific terminology to create suspension of disbelief; but it has to be done accurately or it is just techno-gibberish. Shepard would have been better off just sticking with his story.

[Kristin Myrtle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just some free form thoughts as I craft my review:

A beautiful book... a hefty read! The language is dense... long languid sentences. Shepard's power of description is... something other worldly??? An exuberant magical joy to read... I took my time, I put the book down for a long time but always wanted to come back to it. Passages left me reeling, clutching my chest at the beauty he just casually lays on the page like it's no big deal! His prose emits a golden glow that is warm and welcoming and smells of vanilla and passionfruit.

This book is about many things. But at heart it's a simple zombie love story haha

There's an institute that has learned to reanimate the dead. They found this magic bacteria stolen from graveyards and they like inject it into corpses and this bacteria has like bits of old souls in it?? I think?? So it's like a corpse but with someone else's soul in it.. I think thats what's happening lol.. The language is very technical and beautiful and Holy fuck Lucius Shepard are you an alien???

An icy psychiatrist and a zombie patient with crazy psychic powers fall in love, escape the institute and go on a road trip and blah blah blah yes it is formulaic and predictable but along the way you get like the whole unnatural history of voodoo and this crazy beautiful ancient magical language that is such a part of Voodoo... is Voodoo even the correct word I don't know???

A. WILD. RIDE.

Oh ya and it is so romantic and sexy and sensual and the love story is real and true and believable and honest and the main female protagonists name is fucking: Jocundra 💜💜💜 how do you even pronounce it. I loved it

Some quotes:

Love was a shadow that vanished whenever you turned to catch a glimpse of it.

He lowered his head, looked up at her through his brows, and brought her aura into focus: an insubstantial shawl of blue light, frail as the thinnest of mists, glimmering with pinpricks of ruby and gold and emerald green.

He rested his head on her forearm and was amazed by the peace that the warmth of her skin seemed to transmit, as if he had plunged his head into the arc of a prayer.

......

Haha one last note because there were a lot of words in this book that were new to me, that I had to look up and I love that so much. But one word that Lucius Shepard used like 4 times was 'empurple' and I fucking love that word now

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to approach this book systematically in order to finish it. After the first third I lost any desire to read on, but didn’t want to give up on it. So I made myself read a chapter or two every night. And sadly the interest which I had at the very beginning never returned. I didn’t like this one in the least.

[Kaiju Reviews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Green Eyes (2.75 stars) has a lot of problems: it’s over-written, the female characters are underdeveloped (though better developed than in other Shepard outings I’ve read), the themes and narratives are all over the place, and yet, at some level, it still captivates. There are glimpses here into some of the amazing writing Shepard would put out later in his career, but also examples of the pitfalls that would continue to plague him.

The presumption that this is ultimately a zombie story is false. Honestly, the presumption that this has a cohesive plot is false. The imagery and concepts take center stage, while the cohesion and characters powder up in the dressing room. Later, when Shepard hones in on just concept and imagery for a novella length tale, it’s enough to pull you in by itself. But with Green Eyes, it just goes on for too long. Sadly, the trippiest most interesting moments occur near the ending, and require a patient reader to slog through an overly standard and boring beginning. There were times I thought I wouldn’t make it, but I persisted.

Look, if you’re reading this review (and I doubt you are), you probably already know something about Lucius Shepard. You don’t need me to tell you he’s one of the great novella writers of science-fiction fantasy of all time, and you probably also don’t need me to tell you he can be hit or miss. I’m glad I read Green Eyes, and for the Shepard enthusiasts out there, I’d recommend it to you. But if you just stumbled across this somehow, I’d recommend getting a collection of his stories, like Beast of the Heartland, first. Test the waters. If that works out, maybe come back to Green Eyes when you’re curious to see how it all started.

Side-note: I think this would make a great TV show. It has a gigantic cast of kooky characters, lots of interesting sets and weird side stories (not west side stories, but a musical episode could totally work here!). Something along the lines of Falchuk and Murphy. Call me, I’ll bungle the script.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Green Eyes was originally published in 1984 as part of Ace Books landmark "New Science Fiction Specials" series. The series consisted of first novels by a group of up-and-coming new novelists. I feel like Green Eyes was a good try on Shepard's part, but flawed in execution.

Green Eyes' premise is quite strong... that a somewhat shady group of researchers has isolated a strain of bacteria that will colonize a human corpse and reanimate it, producing "zombies." Most never regain full consciousness, and die again in about an hour, but a few "slow burners" become fully conscious and develop mysterious personalities and memories that do not match the experiences of their bodies.

Unfortunately, the last half of the novel is slow-moving and muddled, as Donell (the reanimated protagonist) escapes the research facility and becomes entangled with a Lousiana Voodoo cult. The novel careens from thriller-style action scenes, to rumination on the nature of religious zealotry, to surreal journeys into alternate worlds, to creepy gothic horror. The rambling, jumbled nature of the final chapters left me dissatisfied that such a promising concept was not better developed.

[Ben Thurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's no way to write a review of this novel – Lucius Shepard's first – which don't make it sound silly. Which it isn't. Entirely.

Sure, the story begins in a secret lab in Louisiana's bayou country, with the recently deceased being restored to life, only to be manipulated (to who knows what end?) through strange therapies of obsession and attraction. And when one of the "zombies", Harrison Donnell, along with his therapist, Jocundra Verrett, breaks out of the facility, the story fractures out into a gothic mosaic of fantasy, voodoo, and an almost metafictional alternate world-building. It's a little undisciplined but is quite a lot of fun, builds some memorable characters and works to a stunning climax of power and magic in the dark heart of a bayou household.

Shepard has a deft touch with description of landscapes – both external and emotional and there's a kind of haunting beauty to the relationship between Donnell and Verrett.

This is upmarket zombie/voodoo fiction with almost realised literary pretensions.

[Trace Reddell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably shouldn't have read this, Lucius Shepard's first novel, right after reading his second novel, "Life During Wartime." In retrospect, it's hard not to read "Green Eyes" as something of a dry-run for "Life During Wartime." There is a shared interest in psychic abilities; the key relationship between the male protagonist and female lead; the idea that war is the pinnacle and true revealer of human and cosmic nature; the obsession with patterns (psychical, cosmic, historical, and archetypal); the movement toward psychedelic observations of interconnectedness; hyper-detailed prose, also very psychedelic, describing both external and internal; physical and psychic landscapes; ancient/eternal warring families or parties; the machinations of untrustworthy doctors; meta-narratives and stories embedded within stories. All of these features make both novels great reads, and "Green Eyes" most likely wouldn't have felt as successful no matter when I'd read it.

Though shorter by half, "Green Eyes" felt like more of a slog at times, and I almost bailed out about half way through because I just didn't feel invested in the characters and wasn't really sure of the narrative. But I kept going and was ultimately glad that I did. The tent revival scene was a turnaround for me, and the tirade of Donnell (one of the worst first names for a character I've encountered since some of PKD's character names! -- his lover, Jocundra, is equally awkward!) against television and commercial culture was the first solid glimpse I had of this book as a speculative fiction rooted in early '80s culture, which is what I was looking for here. Up to that point, the book felt oddly like a late-'50s/early-'60s narrative, particularly with the throwback beatnik biker character. I'm not sure that the book successfully continued to work as a symptom/speculation of '80s culture, and maybe it didn't need to.

The difficulty placing "Green Eyes" in time, as a speculative exercise, seems to be one of its thematic points, in fact. But one of the appeals of "Life During Wartime" is its ability to reflect on both timeless themes (and the theme of timelessness), to refract other media, particularly the psychedelic war narrative epitomized by "Apocalypse Now," and to be speculative and forward-looking. By contrast, "Green Eyes" is set only a few years ahead of the time in which it was written, but it feels older, and it seems as run-down and degraded as the rotten bayou country so much of it takes place in. I guess I'm saying that the '80s have rarely felt older than they do in "Green Eyes," and I'm left wondering how this book would have landed for me if I'd read it at the time up against Gibson's "Neuromancer," or even closer to Kadrey's "Metrophage," and other works in the cyberpunk, or cyberpunk-adjacent, wave of '80s science fiction writers, released in the Ace Science Fiction Specials imprint kicked off by "Green Eyes."

Though neither Donnell nor David Mingolla of "Life During Wartime" are particularly likeable main characters, David is more agreeably unlikeable, and the way we peer into his consciousness over the course of the novel is more compelling. Donnell just feels flatter, more a victim of circumstance. It is as if the erasure of his original identity that occurs through his bacterially-induced reanimation and results in an overlay artificial personality that might also be a possession by a voudou entity just makes things like "character" inconsequential ... but it does diminish my sense of investment in the character, his trials, discoveries, and outcomes. Jocundra, Donnell's partner, is way less interesting than David's partner/foil Debora, while the villainous Otille, the main foil in "Green Eyes," comes across as particularly one-dimensional. Maybe Shepard gained something by collapsing the two poles of female character into one in "Life During Wartime," and so toning down the generic extremes of female support and female villain into someone more conflicted and complicated and mysterious.

All in all, "Green Eyes" filled in a missing piece of science fiction history for me, I'm glad I read it, and I'll be reading more of Shepard's books ... after a good break.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A chance discovery that certain bioluminescent bacteria can reset the brain and organ function in recently deceased bodies bringing then back to a sort of life - as zombies minus the flesh-eating etc. brings an assistant to the experiment - Jocundra - into close emotional proximity to Donnell Harrison - new type of slow-burner zombie. The zombies have new personas, created by their subconscious and sometimes have strange paranormal abilities, and when Jocundra, Harrison and two other test subjects escape they flee to the Louisiana bayous where Donnel becomes a faith healer for a while. Despite attempts to give the story a firm scientific base it is more like a voodoo fantasy as Lucius Shepard has the cast making their way to the ancestral home of Otille Rigaud - who may be seriously unbalanced - who maintains an entourage of "pet" hangers-on and friends, and who may secretly be summoning old voodoo gods (Ancient Ones) via mystical charms and diagrams called veves. Fascinating and entertaining, this Cajun fantasy rewards you with spectacular prose and a satisfactory conclusion.

[Catnip · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had a promising start, being about a research project using a fungus derivative to reanimate corpses. However, reading this from a 21st century perspective, it seemed weird that the project seemed to be primarily about science/philosophy with commercial and military interests only mentioned as an afterthought.

Unfortunately, about a third of the way through the book, the story takes a hard turn in a direction that I found much less interesting. This made it a bit of a chore to actually complete the book.

[James]

From the author of THE GOLDEN, THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, BARNACLE BILL THE SPACER and LIFE DURING WARTIME, a science fiction novel in which a 'zombie', the victim of a bizarre scientific obsession, runs amok and leaves behind him a trail of murder and miracles as he flees the Project and the horror that his 'life' has become.

[H. R. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a stinker of a first novel. Lucius later wrote some of the best short fiction of his era, but Green Eyes' style is like a really bad Victorian novelist with turrets syndrome: overly-written, endlessly introspective, meaninglessly dense.

[Brian S · Rating 4 out of 5]

OVERALL RATING: 4 stars (8 out of 10)
Plot: 3 stars
Pacing: 4 stars
Writing Style/Quality: 5 stars
Characterization: 4 stars
World Building: 4 stars

[Des · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely hard to follow, but an interesting scientific look into how zombies might work (voodoo zombies, not movie zombies, which are actually ghouls).

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant on every level. Cant wait to read more from him!

[Noah M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lucius Shepard has a real problem with length. Once his works get over about 70 pages he tends to just lapse in to meaningless and rich descriptions of settings and internal mental states... In Green Eyes, the first 150 pages or so was a nicely told, richly written gothic tale of zombies, true love, and going all Bonnie & Clyde in Louisiana.

Sadly, once we need to start moving in to a third act we just fall off the deep end...turns out, the green bacteria that brought him back to life are channeling magic powers, and starting to access another universe...and then there are epic battles...all of which is incredibly out of character for the rest of the book, which is pretty understated. The ending needed to be about the characters and not about pyrotechnics that come out of nowhere.

Maybe I should stick to short story collections with Lucius Shepard. He seems to manage his pacing and story arches a lot better in the short form.

[Gerry Watt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started so well with a plot that seemed right up my street. Scientists and psychologists of questionable morality and integrity are reanimating the dead and discovering the Z-words have memories of past lives they never had and may have precognitive or other enhanced brain functions as a result of the reanimation process. This is all accompanied by the promise of Bad Things on the horizon.

This all goes to pot once one of the Zs decides to escape the project and the whole thing veers all over the place and ends up a jumbled mess of alternative worlds, circus freaks, charlatans, and weird voodoo shenanigans.

Such a waste of a promising story.

[Hester · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would have liked this more if I had not already read "A Handbook of American Prayer." Both characters are about ambiguous poets with near divine powers with a beautiful woman in their lives who is deeply connected to a regional culture in a warm part of the United States. Green Eyes, however, is Shepard's first book and is not as well written as the novel he wrote twenty years later.

The first half of the book was fun; the last couple chapters were a slog.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it was AuntiePam who called this "a zombie love story" - got a bit complicated at the end, but was a good read. It didn't knock my socks off, but it kept my attention. Stephen King fans might enjoy this.

[Freder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again a great concept and a smashing opening section founders in the back stretch.

[Velvetink]

Zombies.

*note to self. Copy from A.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another reread from 1984. Definitely a good one, thought-provoking and different, and I liked the ending.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

read this one day while laying in bed sick. don't really remember it to be honest with you.

[Thomas Baughman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genre-fiction, but well worth reading. Shepard can flat-out write.