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Bug Jack Barron
Bug Jack Barron is one of the most controversial novels ever to be labelled 'science fiction'. In a prescient foreshadowing of our present culture, Jack Barron is the star of Bug Jack Barron, a cross between Watchdog and Jerry Springer. The cynical Barron accidentally finds himself the only person in the way of multi-billionaire Benedict Howards, who is willing to go to any lengths to get his Freezer Bill through Congress, to avert "a million years of worm eaten nothingness."
Denounced in the Houses of Parliament, described as "...depraved, cynical, utterly repulsive and thoroughly degenerate" by SF author and publisher Donald A Wollheim, Bug Jack Barron is a pedal-to-the-metal savagely funny vision of a world where money tips the balance between life and death. Spinrad attacks the media, politicians and corporations in this shamelessly wicked and coruscating satire.
The text of this edition has been fully revised by the author, and features an afterword from Michael Moorcock, editor of New Worlds magazine in which the novel was originally serialised.
Denounced in the Houses of Parliament, described as "...depraved, cynical, utterly repulsive and thoroughly degenerate" by SF author and publisher Donald A Wollheim, Bug Jack Barron is a pedal-to-the-metal savagely funny vision of a world where money tips the balance between life and death. Spinrad attacks the media, politicians and corporations in this shamelessly wicked and coruscating satire.
The text of this edition has been fully revised by the author, and features an afterword from Michael Moorcock, editor of New Worlds magazine in which the novel was originally serialised.
254 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
43 people are currently reading
1671 people want to read
About the author
Norman Spinrad
369 books216 followersBorn in New York in 1940, Norman Spinrad is an acclaimed SF writer.
Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.
Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
November 29, 2014
If I gave up on books, I would have after the second sentence. This book is horribly written with run on sentences and run on words. The plot is about two megalomaniacs that both think they are right and saving the world. The book is filled with drugs, sex and violence. In the end, it's chapters of babbling insanity.
May 12, 2012
Perhaps this book is no longer politically correct, but I found it to be one of the most interesting books I've ever read. The first chapter alone was so dramatic, funny and cynical, I fell over in my chair. Literally! Then I got up and read some more. On a more serious note, the book is one of the great New Wave science fictions of the 60s. It just missed winning the Hugo, losing to THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, but hey, what can you do. It's still a fantastic book, full of socio-political commentary and proves that Spinrad had a crystal ball into the future. Ignoring the misses in technology, he very well describes the zany world of infotainment which surrounds us. Even though not everyone will understand New Wave SF, I can not give a higher rating. Everyone should read this book: whether they like it or not!
February 20, 2016
"Bug Jack Barron" drinking game
Have a drink every time:
- Jack Barron thinks of the "100 million americans" watching his tv-show
- Sara thinks Jack is a real hero
- Women are basically represented as stupid, simple "sweet honeyblondes" who look at Jack with big, worshipping and horny eyes
- You get lost in a sentence of about 50 words, try to read it again but still don't understand one word
- Somebody smokes Acapulco Gold
- Howards goes crazy
- The word JACK or JACK BARRON is written in capitals
- Jack thinks of the old times with Sara in their wild youth (Berkeley is mentioned = have an extra sip)
In the end you will be so drunk that this will actually be quite entertaining.
Have a drink every time:
- Jack Barron thinks of the "100 million americans" watching his tv-show
- Sara thinks Jack is a real hero
- Women are basically represented as stupid, simple "sweet honeyblondes" who look at Jack with big, worshipping and horny eyes
- You get lost in a sentence of about 50 words, try to read it again but still don't understand one word
- Somebody smokes Acapulco Gold
- Howards goes crazy
- The word JACK or JACK BARRON is written in capitals
- Jack thinks of the old times with Sara in their wild youth (Berkeley is mentioned = have an extra sip)
In the end you will be so drunk that this will actually be quite entertaining.
April 8, 2010
The best way to describe my reaction to Bug Jack Barron is that I simultaneously loved and hated it.
The loved is simple: it's a fairly gripping SF tale, even if the plot is occasionally predictable, and there's something about that prose that just feels alive.
The hated is a bit more complex, but can be boiled down to two main problems: the first is that the female characters are incredibly poorly developed, existing for little reason but to hero-worship the protagonist. The other is that the book is immensely dated; it is inherently, inseparably, and unavoidably tied to the '60s culture that spawned it in its world-view, its language, its predictions for the future, and everything else, all of which doesn't necessarily detract from the interest but does serve to make it far less relevant than it would have been 40 years ago.
The loved is simple: it's a fairly gripping SF tale, even if the plot is occasionally predictable, and there's something about that prose that just feels alive.
The hated is a bit more complex, but can be boiled down to two main problems: the first is that the female characters are incredibly poorly developed, existing for little reason but to hero-worship the protagonist. The other is that the book is immensely dated; it is inherently, inseparably, and unavoidably tied to the '60s culture that spawned it in its world-view, its language, its predictions for the future, and everything else, all of which doesn't necessarily detract from the interest but does serve to make it far less relevant than it would have been 40 years ago.
January 11, 2025
Check out a discussion I had with Jake from PulpMortem HERE.
This novel is fairly infamous, and I wasn’t sure what to think going into it, but I overall really liked this one. There are some things in this one that could bother people, language, sex, race issues, experimental writing, and over the top characters. But the story really had me engaged. This is a political satire with some interesting concepts of immortality, celebrities and how people handle power. Still very relevant today, probably my favorite from Spinrad so far.
This novel is fairly infamous, and I wasn’t sure what to think going into it, but I overall really liked this one. There are some things in this one that could bother people, language, sex, race issues, experimental writing, and over the top characters. But the story really had me engaged. This is a political satire with some interesting concepts of immortality, celebrities and how people handle power. Still very relevant today, probably my favorite from Spinrad so far.
May 22, 2014
'One of the most uncompromisingly adult science-fiction novels ever written', saith the back cover of this 1972 edition of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron.
While it is steeped in the sixties counterculture, Bug Jack Barron isn't the SF goes Austin Powers fluff you might assume from the artwork. It's a vehicle for Spinrad's considerable satirical talents, a Dylan-quoting caustic assault on the complacent heart of baby boomer America.
The problem for the modern reader is that the novel's intended effect is undermined by Spinrad's reactionary sexual politics and his unwise - to put it mildly - deployment of the N-word to the point of nausea. Controversial at the time, a half-century of cultural shift has left the taboo-breaking radical looking reactionary.
The plot of Bug Jack Barron could loosely be described as Sexy Nick Ferrari Saves America From Itself. Ordinary people call Jack Barron's video phone-in show with a problem, and he gets all Esther Rantzen on their behalf, grilling politicians and businessmen live on air. And by far the best - or at least the most accessible and least excruciating - parts of the book are the blow-by-blow accounts of the programme.
The novel recounts how a routine inquiry to Jack about the affordability of cryogenic freezing to the poor - especially the black poor - escalates into a story that will blow open the corruption of America's youth-obsessed, acquisitive, sell-out, complacent ruling classes. And asks Jack's viewers (and the reader) - would you be any different?
Sometimes the writing supports this. Spinrad is fond of lapsing into a Burroughsian torrent of broken sentences and repetition, which serves well to power the stream-of-consciousness monologues which define the chief 'tagonists. It humanises Jack and makes the villainous cryogenics boss chillingly memorable.
At other times I had to skip whole paragraphs, especially the sex scenes. And there is a lot of teh sexing in Bug Jack Barron, oh yes. Combine the descriptive overload of Burroughs with the sexual politics of Henry Miller, and you get page after page of worship of Jack and his sexual prowess.
Aesthetics aside, the real problem here is the subservience. The main role of women in the plot is to sleep with/validate/adore Jack Barron. Or to recognise when they are holding him back by sleeping with him. Spinrad might be merrily slaughtering sacred cows throughout the novel, but feminism is definitely the mote in its eye. Small wonder the (women) typesetters of New Worlds, the magazine in which it was originally printed, refused to work on it.
Spinrad's also fonder of the N-word than a sixteen year old white gangsta wannabe. Some of this usage is in context - when the chief villain is a racist and a (sympathetic) supporting character is a black nationalist Governor of Mississippi, for instance. And - without revealing some massive spoilers - I do think Bug Jack Barron is a deeply anti-racist book from a time when a lot of SF did nothing more than reflect dominant cultural values.
But most of the usage - which easily creeps into the hundreds - feel like a gratuitous bid for shock value which added nothing to the book then and grates even more so now. When Spinrad puts the word into the mouths of characters who don't have N-word privileges - if such a thing can even be said to exist - or simply adds it to his narrative flow, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
In short - I don't question his convictions, but I do question his sincerity. I do question his strategy.
What I find most frustrating about Bug Jack Barron is that this is a brave and intriguing piece of work, more ambitious than you'll find that often in period SF. Yet it's flaws are so overwhelming that I cannot in all conscience regard as being of more than academic interest today. It's simultaneously both a deeply adult and a deeply juvenile novel.
While it is steeped in the sixties counterculture, Bug Jack Barron isn't the SF goes Austin Powers fluff you might assume from the artwork. It's a vehicle for Spinrad's considerable satirical talents, a Dylan-quoting caustic assault on the complacent heart of baby boomer America.
The problem for the modern reader is that the novel's intended effect is undermined by Spinrad's reactionary sexual politics and his unwise - to put it mildly - deployment of the N-word to the point of nausea. Controversial at the time, a half-century of cultural shift has left the taboo-breaking radical looking reactionary.
The plot of Bug Jack Barron could loosely be described as Sexy Nick Ferrari Saves America From Itself. Ordinary people call Jack Barron's video phone-in show with a problem, and he gets all Esther Rantzen on their behalf, grilling politicians and businessmen live on air. And by far the best - or at least the most accessible and least excruciating - parts of the book are the blow-by-blow accounts of the programme.
The novel recounts how a routine inquiry to Jack about the affordability of cryogenic freezing to the poor - especially the black poor - escalates into a story that will blow open the corruption of America's youth-obsessed, acquisitive, sell-out, complacent ruling classes. And asks Jack's viewers (and the reader) - would you be any different?
Sometimes the writing supports this. Spinrad is fond of lapsing into a Burroughsian torrent of broken sentences and repetition, which serves well to power the stream-of-consciousness monologues which define the chief 'tagonists. It humanises Jack and makes the villainous cryogenics boss chillingly memorable.
At other times I had to skip whole paragraphs, especially the sex scenes. And there is a lot of teh sexing in Bug Jack Barron, oh yes. Combine the descriptive overload of Burroughs with the sexual politics of Henry Miller, and you get page after page of worship of Jack and his sexual prowess.
Aesthetics aside, the real problem here is the subservience. The main role of women in the plot is to sleep with/validate/adore Jack Barron. Or to recognise when they are holding him back by sleeping with him. Spinrad might be merrily slaughtering sacred cows throughout the novel, but feminism is definitely the mote in its eye. Small wonder the (women) typesetters of New Worlds, the magazine in which it was originally printed, refused to work on it.
Spinrad's also fonder of the N-word than a sixteen year old white gangsta wannabe. Some of this usage is in context - when the chief villain is a racist and a (sympathetic) supporting character is a black nationalist Governor of Mississippi, for instance. And - without revealing some massive spoilers - I do think Bug Jack Barron is a deeply anti-racist book from a time when a lot of SF did nothing more than reflect dominant cultural values.
But most of the usage - which easily creeps into the hundreds - feel like a gratuitous bid for shock value which added nothing to the book then and grates even more so now. When Spinrad puts the word into the mouths of characters who don't have N-word privileges - if such a thing can even be said to exist - or simply adds it to his narrative flow, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
In short - I don't question his convictions, but I do question his sincerity. I do question his strategy.
What I find most frustrating about Bug Jack Barron is that this is a brave and intriguing piece of work, more ambitious than you'll find that often in period SF. Yet it's flaws are so overwhelming that I cannot in all conscience regard as being of more than academic interest today. It's simultaneously both a deeply adult and a deeply juvenile novel.
August 15, 2013
This book is an intriguing contradiction, first you have all the talk of its criticism and denouncement. At the time it caused a stir (not on the scale of Lady Chatterley’s Lover – but in the science fiction work it certainly did) gaining the comments such as from Donald A Wollheim' that it is "depraved, cynical, utterly repulsive and thoroughly degenerate", however that was 1969/70. Now it seems hard to see why such a book would gain such a reputation. The tone, the language, even the characters actions seem rather tame when compared against the media of today. So much so that, what was once seen as criticism is now used as a promotional tool.
BUT there is another side to this book, where business, politics and personal beliefs clash often with the greatest cost to the average person in the street. It seems ironic that attitudes when this book was written were being shown as cynical, self serving and even potentially evil are now considered acceptable and even admirable in the arena of corporate power plays. This I think is where the book has its strengths – not as a dated book on the edge ready to shock and offend but more a premonition of where money and ego and business can take not just themselves but everyone else. This I will admit has been a poor shot at capturing my comments, there are much more said on this book online if you wish to dig further.
BUT there is another side to this book, where business, politics and personal beliefs clash often with the greatest cost to the average person in the street. It seems ironic that attitudes when this book was written were being shown as cynical, self serving and even potentially evil are now considered acceptable and even admirable in the arena of corporate power plays. This I think is where the book has its strengths – not as a dated book on the edge ready to shock and offend but more a premonition of where money and ego and business can take not just themselves but everyone else. This I will admit has been a poor shot at capturing my comments, there are much more said on this book online if you wish to dig further.
May 10, 2013
-Cuando el gigante tímido perdió la vergüenza-.
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. “Incordie a Jack Barron” es el programa estrella de la televisión. Cada semana, y para una audiencia de cien millones de personas, el presentador Jack Barron recibe videollamadas de espectadores que narran situaciones que les molestan, que les “incordian”, a partir de las que nuestro protagonista va generando un sucedáneo de espectáculo y programa de investigación/denuncia muy polémico e influyente. Y esa influencia es la que un grupo privado de criogenia quisiera usar en su propio beneficio…
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. “Incordie a Jack Barron” es el programa estrella de la televisión. Cada semana, y para una audiencia de cien millones de personas, el presentador Jack Barron recibe videollamadas de espectadores que narran situaciones que les molestan, que les “incordian”, a partir de las que nuestro protagonista va generando un sucedáneo de espectáculo y programa de investigación/denuncia muy polémico e influyente. Y esa influencia es la que un grupo privado de criogenia quisiera usar en su propio beneficio…
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
August 23, 2013
This was really hard to read with all the racial slurs floating about and the blatant sexism. Also, though the tension built up well it went downhill halfway through when you pretty much knew what would happen. The book just ended up being a leftie's wet dream of single-handedly taking down an invincible mega-corporation.
July 27, 2025
Αριστούργημα πολιτικής επιστημονικής φαντασίας.
Αν με το κλασικό πιστόλι στον κρόταφο μου ζητούσαν να πω τα 10 έργα Ε.Φ. που θα έπρεπε να χαράξουμε στο εσωτερικό διαμαντιών για να επιβιώσουν από την καταστροφή της γης, μετά το Gateway, θα έλεγα το Bug Jack Barron (Ο Jack Barron και η αιωνιότητα για το ελληνικό κοινό).
Το Bug Jack Barron δεν είναι απλώς ένα μυθιστόρημα – είναι ένα λογοτεχνικό σοκ υψηλής τάσης, μια εμπρηστική καταγγελία του πολιτικού κατεστημένου, ντυμένη με τον ηλεκτρισμό των ΜΜΕ και την αμείλικτη ενέργεια της δεκαετίας του ’60. Ο Norman Spinrad δεν έγραψε απλά επιστημονική φαντασία. Έγραψε μια αδιαπραγμάτευτα ριζοσπαστική κραυγή ενάντια στη διαφθορά, το χρήμα και τον κυνισμό της εξουσίας.
Από τις πρώτες κιόλας σελίδες, ο αναγνώστης βυθίζεται σε έναν κόσμο όπου η τηλεόραση είναι πιο δυνατή από κάθε θεσμό, και ο Jack Barron, πρώην ακτιβιστής και νυν τηλεοπτικός παρουσιαστής, είναι ο μοναδικός που μπορεί να κοιτάξει την εξουσία στα μάτια και να τη βάλει στη γωνία. Το κείμενο του Spinrad είναι καταιγιστικό, με ρυθμό που κόβει την ανάσα και γλώσσα που πυρπολεί. Οι σελίδες ξεχ��ιλίζουν από ωμή ενέργεια και πολιτικό δέος.
Ο Spinrad τολμά να αγγίξει θέματα όπως η αθανασία, η διαφθορά της πολιτικής και η εμπορευματοποίηση της ανθρώπινης ψυχής με μια τόλμη που ακόμα και σήμερα παραμένει προκλητικά επίκαιρη. Το Bug Jack Barron είναι ένα από εκείνα τα σπάνια βιβλία που όχι μόνο δεν φοβούνται να δείξουν τον κόσμο όπως είναι, αλλά καταφέρνουν και να τον κλονίσουν.
Ο Jack Barron είναι ένας ήρωας που δεν μπορείς να αγνοήσεις – ένας άντρας που ενώ βουτά στον βούρκο, συνεχίζει να ψάχνει την αλήθεια, ακόμα κι όταν αυτή πονάει. Είναι το είδωλο μιας εποχής που αναζητούσε εναγωνίως δικαιοσύνη μέσα από την οργή. Και ο Spinrad, με τη γραφή του, δεν συγχωρεί τίποτα.
Σε μια εποχή που η πολιτική μυθοπλασία συχνά ντύνεται με ασφαλή σενάρια, το Bug Jack Barron ξεχωρίζει ως ένα εκρηκτικό μανιφέστο που συνδυάζει άψογα την προφητεία με την πρόκληση. Είναι ένα από τα σημαντικότερα έργα πολιτικής φαντασίας του 20ού αιώνα – ένα βιβλίο που πρέπει όχι μόνο να διαβαστεί, αλλά και να συζητηθεί ξανά και ξανά.
Αν η λογοτεχνία είναι όπλο, τότε ο Spinrad το χειρίζεται σαν καλλιτέχνης και επαναστάτης μαζί.
Κοντινό σε εξαγριωμένο hater του Spinrad που μιλάει έντονα, αλλά στο Mute. Χωρίς τον ήχο μοιάζει απλώς να ουρλιάζει χωρίς νόημα, μια μορφή παραφροσύνης άξια για την περιφρόνησή μας… Ανάβουμε ένα golden joint και αφήνουμε την ίδια του την εικόνα να τον αποδομήσει ως αντίπαλο για μερικά δευτερόλεπτα πριν περάσουμε σε διαφημίσεις…
Αν με το κλασικό πιστόλι στον κρόταφο μου ζητούσαν να πω τα 10 έργα Ε.Φ. που θα έπρεπε να χαράξουμε στο εσωτερικό διαμαντιών για να επιβιώσουν από την καταστροφή της γης, μετά το Gateway, θα έλεγα το Bug Jack Barron (Ο Jack Barron και η αιωνιότητα για το ελληνικό κοινό).
Το Bug Jack Barron δεν είναι απλώς ένα μυθιστόρημα – είναι ένα λογοτεχνικό σοκ υψηλής τάσης, μια εμπρηστική καταγγελία του πολιτικού κατεστημένου, ντυμένη με τον ηλεκτρισμό των ΜΜΕ και την αμείλικτη ενέργεια της δεκαετίας του ’60. Ο Norman Spinrad δεν έγραψε απλά επιστημονική φαντασία. Έγραψε μια αδιαπραγμάτευτα ριζοσπαστική κραυγή ενάντια στη διαφθορά, το χρήμα και τον κυνισμό της εξουσίας.
Από τις πρώτες κιόλας σελίδες, ο αναγνώστης βυθίζεται σε έναν κόσμο όπου η τηλεόραση είναι πιο δυνατή από κάθε θεσμό, και ο Jack Barron, πρώην ακτιβιστής και νυν τηλεοπτικός παρουσιαστής, είναι ο μοναδικός που μπορεί να κοιτάξει την εξουσία στα μάτια και να τη βάλει στη γωνία. Το κείμενο του Spinrad είναι καταιγιστικό, με ρυθμό που κόβει την ανάσα και γλώσσα που πυρπολεί. Οι σελίδες ξεχ��ιλίζουν από ωμή ενέργεια και πολιτικό δέος.
Ο Spinrad τολμά να αγγίξει θέματα όπως η αθανασία, η διαφθορά της πολιτικής και η εμπορευματοποίηση της ανθρώπινης ψυχής με μια τόλμη που ακόμα και σήμερα παραμένει προκλητικά επίκαιρη. Το Bug Jack Barron είναι ένα από εκείνα τα σπάνια βιβλία που όχι μόνο δεν φοβούνται να δείξουν τον κόσμο όπως είναι, αλλά καταφέρνουν και να τον κλονίσουν.
Ο Jack Barron είναι ένας ήρωας που δεν μπορείς να αγνοήσεις – ένας άντρας που ενώ βουτά στον βούρκο, συνεχίζει να ψάχνει την αλήθεια, ακόμα κι όταν αυτή πονάει. Είναι το είδωλο μιας εποχής που αναζητούσε εναγωνίως δικαιοσύνη μέσα από την οργή. Και ο Spinrad, με τη γραφή του, δεν συγχωρεί τίποτα.
Σε μια εποχή που η πολιτική μυθοπλασία συχνά ντύνεται με ασφαλή σενάρια, το Bug Jack Barron ξεχωρίζει ως ένα εκρηκτικό μανιφέστο που συνδυάζει άψογα την προφητεία με την πρόκληση. Είναι ένα από τα σημαντικότερα έργα πολιτικής φαντασίας του 20ού αιώνα – ένα βιβλίο που πρέπει όχι μόνο να διαβαστεί, αλλά και να συζητηθεί ξανά και ξανά.
Αν η λογοτεχνία είναι όπλο, τότε ο Spinrad το χειρίζεται σαν καλλιτέχνης και επαναστάτης μαζί.
Κοντινό σε εξαγριωμένο hater του Spinrad που μιλάει έντονα, αλλά στο Mute. Χωρίς τον ήχο μοιάζει απλώς να ουρλιάζει χωρίς νόημα, μια μορφή παραφροσύνης άξια για την περιφρόνησή μας… Ανάβουμε ένα golden joint και αφήνουμε την ίδια του την εικόνα να τον αποδομήσει ως αντίπαλο για μερικά δευτερόλεπτα πριν περάσουμε σε διαφημίσεις…
May 9, 2025
(ελληνική αποθέωση μετά τη φλεγμαγγλική)
A Masterpiece of Political Science Fiction
If, with the proverbial gun to my temple, I were asked to name the ten works of science fiction that ought to be engraved within the core of diamonds to survive the Earth's obliteration, then—right after Gateway—I would name Bug Jack Barron.
Bug Jack Barron is not merely a novel—it is a high-voltage literary shock, an incendiary denunciation of the political establishment, cloaked in the electricity of mass media and the relentless energy of the 1960s. Norman Spinrad did not simply write science fiction. He composed a non-negotiably radical outcry against corruption, money, and the cynicism of power.
From the very first pages, the reader is plunged into a world where television wields more influence than any institution, and Jack Barron, a former activist turned television host, is the only man capable of staring power in the face and forcing it into retreat. Spinrad’s prose is relentless, driven by a breathless pace and a language that sets fire to the page. Each chapter overflows with raw energy and political awe.
Spinrad dares to tackle themes such as immortality, the corruption of politics, and the commodification of the human soul with a boldness that remains provocatively relevant to this day. Bug Jack Barron is one of those rare books that not only refuses to sugarcoat the world, but manages to shake it to its core.
Jack Barron is a protagonist one simply cannot ignore—a man who dives headfirst into the mire, yet continues to seek the truth, even when it wounds. He is the mirror-image of an era in desperate search for justice through fury. And Spinrad, in his writing, forgives nothing.
In an age when political fiction is often draped in safe, palatable narratives, Bug Jack Barron stands apart as an explosive manifesto that fuses prophecy with provocation. It is one of the most significant works of political imagination of the 20th century—a book that demands not only to be read, but to be discussed again and again.
If literature is a weapon, then Spinrad wields it as both artist and revolutionary.
Close-up of an enraged Spinrad hater, gesticulating wildly—but muted. Without sound, he merely appears to be screaming meaninglessly, a form of madness worthy of our disdain… We light a golden joint and let his own image deconstruct him as an opponent for a few seconds before cutting to commercials…
* * * * *
Αριστούργημα πολιτικής επιστημονικής φαντασίας: .
Αν με το κλασικό πιστόλι στον κρόταφο μου ζητούσαν να πω τα 10 έργα Ε.Φ. που θα έπρεπε να χαράξουμε στο εσωτερικό διαμαντιών για να επιβιώσουν από την καταστροφή της γης, μετά το Gateway, θα έλεγα το Bug Jack Barron (Ο Jack Barron και η αιωνιότητα για το ελληνικό κοινό).
Το Bug Jack Barron δεν είναι απλώς ένα μυθιστόρημα – είναι ένα λογοτεχνικό σοκ υψηλής τάσης, μια εμπρηστική καταγγελία του πολιτικού κατεστημένου, ντυμένη με τον ηλεκτρισμό των ΜΜΕ και την αμείλικτη ενέργεια της δεκαετίας του ’60. Ο Norman Spinrad δεν έγραψε απλά επιστημονική φαντασία. Έγραψε μια αδιαπραγμάτευτα ριζοσπαστική κραυγή ενάντια στη διαφθορά, το χρήμα και τον κυνισμό της εξουσίας.
Από τις πρώτες κιόλας σελίδες, ο αναγνώστης βυθίζεται σε έναν κόσμο όπου η τηλεόραση είναι πιο δυνατή από κάθε θεσμό, και ο Jack Barron, πρώην ακτιβιστής και νυν τηλεοπτικός παρουσιαστής, είναι ο μοναδικός που μπορεί να κοιτάξει την εξουσία στα μάτια και να τη βάλει στη γωνία. Το κείμενο του Spinrad είναι καταιγιστικό, με ρυθμό που κόβει την ανάσα και γλώσσα που πυρπολεί. Οι σελίδες ξεχειλίζουν από ωμή ενέργεια και πολιτικό δέος.
Ο Spinrad τολμά να αγγίξει θέματα όπως η αθανασία, η διαφθορά της πολιτικής και η εμπορευματοποίηση της ανθρώπινης ψυχής με μια τόλμη που ακόμα και σήμερα παραμένει προκλητικά επίκαιρη. Το Bug Jack Barron είναι ένα από εκείνα τα σπάνια βιβλία που όχι μόνο δεν φοβούνται να δείξουν τον κόσμο όπως είναι, αλλά καταφέρνουν και να τον κλονίσουν.
Ο Jack Barron είναι ένας ήρωας που δεν μπορείς να αγνοήσεις – ένας άντρας που ενώ βουτά στον βούρκο, συνεχίζει να ψάχνει την αλήθεια, ακόμα κι όταν αυτή πονάει. Είναι το είδωλο μιας εποχής που αναζητούσε εναγωνίως δικαιοσύνη μέσα από την οργή. Και ο Spinrad, με τη γραφή του, δεν συγχωρεί τίποτα.
Σε μια εποχή που η πολιτική μυθοπλασία συχνά ντύνεται με ασφαλή σενάρια, το Bug Jack Barron ξεχωρίζει ως ένα εκρηκτικό μανιφέστο που συνδυάζει άψογα την προφητεία με την πρόκληση. Είναι ένα από τα σημαντικότερα έργα πολιτικής φαντασίας του 20ού αιώνα – ένα βιβλίο που πρέπει όχι μόνο να διαβαστεί, αλλά και να συζητηθεί ξανά και ξανά.
Αν η λογοτεχνία είναι όπλο, τότε ο Spinrad το χειρίζεται σαν καλλιτέχνης και επαναστάτης μαζί.
Κοντινό σε εξαγριωμένο hater του Spinrad που μιλάει έντονα, αλλά στο Mute. Χωρίς τον ήχο μοιάζει απλώς να ουρλιάζει χωρίς νόημα, μια μορφή παραφροσύνης άξια για την περιφρόνησή μας… Ανάβουμε ένα golden joint και αφήνουμε την ίδια του την εικόνα να τον αποδομήσει ως αντίπαλο για μερικά δευτερόλεπτα πριν περάσουμε σε διαφημίσεις…
A Masterpiece of Political Science Fiction
If, with the proverbial gun to my temple, I were asked to name the ten works of science fiction that ought to be engraved within the core of diamonds to survive the Earth's obliteration, then—right after Gateway—I would name Bug Jack Barron.
Bug Jack Barron is not merely a novel—it is a high-voltage literary shock, an incendiary denunciation of the political establishment, cloaked in the electricity of mass media and the relentless energy of the 1960s. Norman Spinrad did not simply write science fiction. He composed a non-negotiably radical outcry against corruption, money, and the cynicism of power.
From the very first pages, the reader is plunged into a world where television wields more influence than any institution, and Jack Barron, a former activist turned television host, is the only man capable of staring power in the face and forcing it into retreat. Spinrad’s prose is relentless, driven by a breathless pace and a language that sets fire to the page. Each chapter overflows with raw energy and political awe.
Spinrad dares to tackle themes such as immortality, the corruption of politics, and the commodification of the human soul with a boldness that remains provocatively relevant to this day. Bug Jack Barron is one of those rare books that not only refuses to sugarcoat the world, but manages to shake it to its core.
Jack Barron is a protagonist one simply cannot ignore—a man who dives headfirst into the mire, yet continues to seek the truth, even when it wounds. He is the mirror-image of an era in desperate search for justice through fury. And Spinrad, in his writing, forgives nothing.
In an age when political fiction is often draped in safe, palatable narratives, Bug Jack Barron stands apart as an explosive manifesto that fuses prophecy with provocation. It is one of the most significant works of political imagination of the 20th century—a book that demands not only to be read, but to be discussed again and again.
If literature is a weapon, then Spinrad wields it as both artist and revolutionary.
Close-up of an enraged Spinrad hater, gesticulating wildly—but muted. Without sound, he merely appears to be screaming meaninglessly, a form of madness worthy of our disdain… We light a golden joint and let his own image deconstruct him as an opponent for a few seconds before cutting to commercials…
* * * * *
Αριστούργημα πολιτικής επιστημονικής φαντασίας: .
Αν με το κλασικό πιστόλι στον κρόταφο μου ζητούσαν να πω τα 10 έργα Ε.Φ. που θα έπρεπε να χαράξουμε στο εσωτερικό διαμαντιών για να επιβιώσουν από την καταστροφή της γης, μετά το Gateway, θα έλεγα το Bug Jack Barron (Ο Jack Barron και η αιωνιότητα για το ελληνικό κοινό).
Το Bug Jack Barron δεν είναι απλώς ένα μυθιστόρημα – είναι ένα λογοτεχνικό σοκ υψηλής τάσης, μια εμπρηστική καταγγελία του πολιτικού κατεστημένου, ντυμένη με τον ηλεκτρισμό των ΜΜΕ και την αμείλικτη ενέργεια της δεκαετίας του ’60. Ο Norman Spinrad δεν έγραψε απλά επιστημονική φαντασία. Έγραψε μια αδιαπραγμάτευτα ριζοσπαστική κραυγή ενάντια στη διαφθορά, το χρήμα και τον κυνισμό της εξουσίας.
Από τις πρώτες κιόλας σελίδες, ο αναγνώστης βυθίζεται σε έναν κόσμο όπου η τηλεόραση είναι πιο δυνατή από κάθε θεσμό, και ο Jack Barron, πρώην ακτιβιστής και νυν τηλεοπτικός παρουσιαστής, είναι ο μοναδικός που μπορεί να κοιτάξει την εξουσία στα μάτια και να τη βάλει στη γωνία. Το κείμενο του Spinrad είναι καταιγιστικό, με ρυθμό που κόβει την ανάσα και γλώσσα που πυρπολεί. Οι σελίδες ξεχειλίζουν από ωμή ενέργεια και πολιτικό δέος.
Ο Spinrad τολμά να αγγίξει θέματα όπως η αθανασία, η διαφθορά της πολιτικής και η εμπορευματοποίηση της ανθρώπινης ψυχής με μια τόλμη που ακόμα και σήμερα παραμένει προκλητικά επίκαιρη. Το Bug Jack Barron είναι ένα από εκείνα τα σπάνια βιβλία που όχι μόνο δεν φοβούνται να δείξουν τον κόσμο όπως είναι, αλλά καταφέρνουν και να τον κλονίσουν.
Ο Jack Barron είναι ένας ήρωας που δεν μπορείς να αγνοήσεις – ένας άντρας που ενώ βουτά στον βούρκο, συνεχίζει να ψάχνει την αλήθεια, ακόμα κι όταν αυτή πονάει. Είναι το είδωλο μιας εποχής που αναζητούσε εναγωνίως δικαιοσύνη μέσα από την οργή. Και ο Spinrad, με τη γραφή του, δεν συγχωρεί τίποτα.
Σε μια εποχή που η πολιτική μυθοπλασία συχνά ντύνεται με ασφαλή σενάρια, το Bug Jack Barron ξεχωρίζει ως ένα εκρηκτικό μανιφέστο που συνδυάζει άψογα την προφητεία με την πρόκληση. Είναι ένα από τα σημαντικότερα έργα πολιτικής φαντασίας του 20ού αιώνα – ένα βιβλίο που πρέπει όχι μόνο να διαβαστεί, αλλά και να συζητηθεί ξανά και ξανά.
Αν η λογοτεχνία είναι όπλο, τότε ο Spinrad το χειρίζεται σαν καλλιτέχνης και επαναστάτης μαζί.
Κοντινό σε εξαγριωμένο hater του Spinrad που μιλάει έντονα, αλλά στο Mute. Χωρίς τον ήχο μοιάζει απλώς να ουρλιάζει χωρίς νόημα, μια μορφή παραφροσύνης άξια για την περιφρόνησή μας… Ανάβουμε ένα golden joint και αφήνουμε την ίδια του την εικόνα να τον αποδομήσει ως αντίπαλο για μερικά δευτερόλεπτα πριν περάσουμε σε διαφημίσεις…
August 7, 2012
Bug Jack Barron is a trip to an alternate, drug-soaked 1994, courtesy of a cynical 1969.
Merely calling Barron a media celebrity is inadequate: the host of the influential 'Bug Jack Barron' show (where 'bug' is read as a verb), Barron has gained enough respect and power to topple minor power-brokers and VIPs with his cynical wit and sharp tongue. Considered by the masses as their everyday hero and spokesperson, Barron encourages viewers with gripes to 'bug' him, after which he doggedly 'bugs' their antagonist on his or her behalf, exposing lies and conspiracies.
However, Barron is not a hero that evokes sympathy in the reader. Though we learn that he was an activist in his youth - a natural and charismatic leader, he was seen as a presidential candidate, someone to take ideals all the way to the highest office. Instead, the Jack Barron as hero of this story is cynical, womanising, egotistical and self serving, balanced on maximising his wealth and popularity whilst appearing to be the champion of his viewing public.
The antagonist, Benedict Howards, is of a similar type. Incredibly wealthy, he heads up the Foundation, a cryogenic group that, for a fee, will freeze a person until the group's ultimate goal of human immortality is realised. Of course, Howards's personal goal is to secure immortality for himself using the funds of others, by whatever means necessary.
Their conspiratorial and increasingly jaded battle is fought against a backdrop of intense racial tension and political dysfunction.
The themes of racial balkanisation in the USA (remember: this is viewed from the dying days of the 60s), corporate greed and media control are all prevalent, and do make quite an interesting read. The book was hailed as a classic of the genre, controversial adult oriented science fiction.
Time hasn't been kind to Bug Jack Barron: it's not an easy book to read, or even like anymore, for a number of reasons:
Derogatory terms for African-Americans - indeed, almost all races present in a modern western society are labeled with derogatory words at some point through the novel by one character or another. I understand the point-of-view that Spinrad was maintaining by doing this: in his novel, whole states have become single race, and his fictional American society is one of increasing racial tension - but the heavy-handedness makes it clumsy - the words lose their impact so that they become a hindrance to the reading of the novel. What would certainly have been shocking in 1969 simply sickeningly detracts from the power of the ideas in 2008.
The female characters are very poorly drawn - Sara, the main female character, seems to simply be the external embodiment of Barron's misplaced conscience (and his former lover). Other female characters just want to jump into bed with him.
The danger of crystal-ball science fiction is that, sooner or later, the future catches up to you: even in 1994 (well before the internet splintered the singular power of a talkback host) there was no single television host that could topple powers-that-be with little more than sarcasm and a probing mind. Jack Barron never came to be.
The dialogue is awful. Other writers from the late sixties (Philip K. Dick and Robert Sheckly, for example) managed to leave out all the cool, hip, happening (dig-it, man?) ultra long sentences that any cat in the 60s would have been speaking while on a drug-hazed high? What? There are so many 60s phrases and terms loaded into the dialogue that at times it's impossible to understand what the characters are talking about. And the narrative sometimes verges on stream-of-consciousness. Its typical late 60s prose and it is hard to read for those of us schooled on shorter and more direct sentence structure.
It sounds as though I hate this book - not at all, its still hard-hitting and enjoyable. In parts.
But time will continue to diminish its relevance, and I think its enjoyable parts will be fewer and fewer in years to come.
A book of a specific place and time: an acerbic caricature of late 60s USA.
Merely calling Barron a media celebrity is inadequate: the host of the influential 'Bug Jack Barron' show (where 'bug' is read as a verb), Barron has gained enough respect and power to topple minor power-brokers and VIPs with his cynical wit and sharp tongue. Considered by the masses as their everyday hero and spokesperson, Barron encourages viewers with gripes to 'bug' him, after which he doggedly 'bugs' their antagonist on his or her behalf, exposing lies and conspiracies.
However, Barron is not a hero that evokes sympathy in the reader. Though we learn that he was an activist in his youth - a natural and charismatic leader, he was seen as a presidential candidate, someone to take ideals all the way to the highest office. Instead, the Jack Barron as hero of this story is cynical, womanising, egotistical and self serving, balanced on maximising his wealth and popularity whilst appearing to be the champion of his viewing public.
The antagonist, Benedict Howards, is of a similar type. Incredibly wealthy, he heads up the Foundation, a cryogenic group that, for a fee, will freeze a person until the group's ultimate goal of human immortality is realised. Of course, Howards's personal goal is to secure immortality for himself using the funds of others, by whatever means necessary.
Their conspiratorial and increasingly jaded battle is fought against a backdrop of intense racial tension and political dysfunction.
The themes of racial balkanisation in the USA (remember: this is viewed from the dying days of the 60s), corporate greed and media control are all prevalent, and do make quite an interesting read. The book was hailed as a classic of the genre, controversial adult oriented science fiction.
Time hasn't been kind to Bug Jack Barron: it's not an easy book to read, or even like anymore, for a number of reasons:
Derogatory terms for African-Americans - indeed, almost all races present in a modern western society are labeled with derogatory words at some point through the novel by one character or another. I understand the point-of-view that Spinrad was maintaining by doing this: in his novel, whole states have become single race, and his fictional American society is one of increasing racial tension - but the heavy-handedness makes it clumsy - the words lose their impact so that they become a hindrance to the reading of the novel. What would certainly have been shocking in 1969 simply sickeningly detracts from the power of the ideas in 2008.
The female characters are very poorly drawn - Sara, the main female character, seems to simply be the external embodiment of Barron's misplaced conscience (and his former lover). Other female characters just want to jump into bed with him.
The danger of crystal-ball science fiction is that, sooner or later, the future catches up to you: even in 1994 (well before the internet splintered the singular power of a talkback host) there was no single television host that could topple powers-that-be with little more than sarcasm and a probing mind. Jack Barron never came to be.
The dialogue is awful. Other writers from the late sixties (Philip K. Dick and Robert Sheckly, for example) managed to leave out all the cool, hip, happening (dig-it, man?) ultra long sentences that any cat in the 60s would have been speaking while on a drug-hazed high? What? There are so many 60s phrases and terms loaded into the dialogue that at times it's impossible to understand what the characters are talking about. And the narrative sometimes verges on stream-of-consciousness. Its typical late 60s prose and it is hard to read for those of us schooled on shorter and more direct sentence structure.
It sounds as though I hate this book - not at all, its still hard-hitting and enjoyable. In parts.
But time will continue to diminish its relevance, and I think its enjoyable parts will be fewer and fewer in years to come.
A book of a specific place and time: an acerbic caricature of late 60s USA.
November 27, 2016
Jack Barron è un cinico conduttore televisivo che per un'ora alla settimana mette in difficoltà nella sua trasmissione politici e uomini d'affari. Se avete un problema, se avete qualcosa che "vi scoccia" allora telefonate al buon vecchio Jack... cioè "Scocciate Jack Barron", come dice il titolo della sua trasmissione, e lui vi presterà la sua voce e la sua immagine, una voce e un'immagine che viene seguita da cento milioni di spettatori tutte le settimane. Solo che non è proprio così. Jack Barron in realtà è un ex rivoluzionario che ha trovato il modo di fare soldi. Non crede più in quello che fa, le sue sono sferzate simulate di una tigre che volontariamente non tira più fuori le unghie. Tutto però cambia quando la sua strada incrocia quella di Benedict Howards, un ricchissimo e potente uomo d'affari che gestisce una mega-corporazione in grado di congelare criogenicamente le persone che possono permetterselo con la promessa di una futura cura per la morte. Il Governo sta per varare una legge in grado di assicurare alla società di Howards il monopolio su questo trattamento e quando Howards si offre di "comprare" Jack Barron per garantirsi la sua influenza sul grande pubblico, Jack inizia a sentire puzza di bruciato.
In breve, questo libro si fa leggere con molta fatica. Da un lato ho adorato i dialoghi botta e risposta della trasmissione di Jack, dall'altro mi ha infastidito il lirismo un po' posticcio di alcune descrizioni e il flusso di coscienza continuo che percorre tutto il libro (anche se, devo dire, non l'ho odiato come in "Capitan Abisso"). C'è anche una buona dose di sessismo sotto forma della massima "gli uomini cercano il potere, le donne cercano gli uomini di potere". Pur essendo un libro del 1969 è decisamente indietro come mentalità, su questo punto di vista. Anche il linguaggio, complice una traduzione in italiano che difficilmente potrebbe rievocare l'uso di quello che è chiaramente lo slang americano, non colpisce in pieno per l'efficacia e in un paio di situazione mi sono ritrovato a sorridere. Inoltre, purtroppo, Spinrad lascia intuire troppo presto quello che con un'altra strategia sarebbe stato un ottimo colpo di scena.
Questo romanzo è molto ambizioso. Cerca di coprire tutte le bassi: sesso, potere, politica, morte e vita, sfruttatori e sfruttati, amore e odio. In alcuni casi ci riesce, in altri no. Però ho adorato l'ambiguità dei personaggi. Non ci sono buoni e cattivi, solo onesti e bugiardi. Anzi, a ben vedere, non ci sono proprio i buoni.
Un po' come nella vita reale...
In breve, questo libro si fa leggere con molta fatica. Da un lato ho adorato i dialoghi botta e risposta della trasmissione di Jack, dall'altro mi ha infastidito il lirismo un po' posticcio di alcune descrizioni e il flusso di coscienza continuo che percorre tutto il libro (anche se, devo dire, non l'ho odiato come in "Capitan Abisso"). C'è anche una buona dose di sessismo sotto forma della massima "gli uomini cercano il potere, le donne cercano gli uomini di potere". Pur essendo un libro del 1969 è decisamente indietro come mentalità, su questo punto di vista. Anche il linguaggio, complice una traduzione in italiano che difficilmente potrebbe rievocare l'uso di quello che è chiaramente lo slang americano, non colpisce in pieno per l'efficacia e in un paio di situazione mi sono ritrovato a sorridere. Inoltre, purtroppo, Spinrad lascia intuire troppo presto quello che con un'altra strategia sarebbe stato un ottimo colpo di scena.
Questo romanzo è molto ambizioso. Cerca di coprire tutte le bassi: sesso, potere, politica, morte e vita, sfruttatori e sfruttati, amore e odio. In alcuni casi ci riesce, in altri no. Però ho adorato l'ambiguità dei personaggi. Non ci sono buoni e cattivi, solo onesti e bugiardi. Anzi, a ben vedere, non ci sono proprio i buoni.
Un po' come nella vita reale...
January 26, 2016
I gave up on page 50. The story moves at a glacial pace (I can barely detect any forward motion in the plots and I am over 20% of the way through), the characters are unappealing, the constant slang is dated and seems more important than what is actually being said.
All of that I can forgive.
But it's the run-on forever sentences life sentences that never end is never in sight seeing on the shore of the lake by the pool by the ocean washing over drowning forever submerged eternally struggling...
Sorry, I meant to say that the stream-of-consciousness writing style seems more important than the story itself to Mr. Spinrad. I found it pretentious and ultimately too irritating to finish the novel.
All of that I can forgive.
But it's the run-on forever sentences life sentences that never end is never in sight seeing on the shore of the lake by the pool by the ocean washing over drowning forever submerged eternally struggling...
Sorry, I meant to say that the stream-of-consciousness writing style seems more important than the story itself to Mr. Spinrad. I found it pretentious and ultimately too irritating to finish the novel.
November 10, 2019
VOTO:4
Libro di Spinrad pungente, sagace e drammaticamente attuale come pochi altri.
Lo spaccato di società descritto dall'autore, con i suoi fantasmi, le sue ipocrisie e e le sue autoillusioni che risaltano pagina dopo pagina sono un pugno nello stomaco.
Lo stile di scrittura è talvolta bizzarro, la punteggiatura non sempre è rispettata, il,che rende talvolta la lettura abbastanza fastidiosa.
Una cosa è sicura: questo è uno di quei libri che non lascia indifferenti.
Libro di Spinrad pungente, sagace e drammaticamente attuale come pochi altri.
Lo spaccato di società descritto dall'autore, con i suoi fantasmi, le sue ipocrisie e e le sue autoillusioni che risaltano pagina dopo pagina sono un pugno nello stomaco.
Lo stile di scrittura è talvolta bizzarro, la punteggiatura non sempre è rispettata, il,che rende talvolta la lettura abbastanza fastidiosa.
Una cosa è sicura: questo è uno di quei libri che non lascia indifferenti.
October 18, 2018
While I can respect the fact that it was probably groundbreaking at the time, these days it reads like it was written by Ned Flanders' Beatnik parents.
July 27, 2025
A Masterpiece of Political Science Fiction: Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
If, with the proverbial gun to my temple, I were asked to name the ten works of science fiction that ought to be engraved within the core of diamonds to survive the Earth's obliteration, then—right after Gateway—I would name Bug Jack Barron.
Bug Jack Barron is not merely a novel—it is a high-voltage literary shock, an incendiary denunciation of the political establishment, cloaked in the electricity of mass media and the relentless energy of the 1960s. Norman Spinrad did not simply write science fiction. He composed a non-negotiably radical outcry against corruption, money, and the cynicism of power.
From the very first pages, the reader is plunged into a world where television wields more influence than any institution, and Jack Barron, a former activist turned television host, is the only man capable of staring power in the face and forcing it into retreat. Spinrad’s prose is relentless, driven by a breathless pace and a language that sets fire to the page. Each chapter overflows with raw energy and political awe.
Spinrad dares to tackle themes such as immortality, the corruption of politics, and the commodification of the human soul with a boldness that remains provocatively relevant to this day. Bug Jack Barron is one of those rare books that not only refuses to sugarcoat the world, but manages to shake it to its core.
Jack Barron is a protagonist one simply cannot ignore—a man who dives headfirst into the mire, yet continues to seek the truth, even when it wounds. He is the mirror-image of an era in desperate search for justice through fury. And Spinrad, in his writing, forgives nothing.
In an age when political fiction is often draped in safe, palatable narratives, Bug Jack Barron stands apart as an explosive manifesto that fuses prophecy with provocation. It is one of the most significant works of political imagination of the 20th century—a book that demands not only to be read, but to be discussed again and again.
If literature is a weapon, then Spinrad wields it as both artist and revolutionary.
Close-up of an enraged Spinrad hater, gesticulating wildly—but muted. Without sound, he merely appears to be screaming meaninglessly, a form of madness worthy of our disdain… We light a golden joint and let his own image deconstruct him as an opponent for a few seconds before cutting to commercials…
If, with the proverbial gun to my temple, I were asked to name the ten works of science fiction that ought to be engraved within the core of diamonds to survive the Earth's obliteration, then—right after Gateway—I would name Bug Jack Barron.
Bug Jack Barron is not merely a novel—it is a high-voltage literary shock, an incendiary denunciation of the political establishment, cloaked in the electricity of mass media and the relentless energy of the 1960s. Norman Spinrad did not simply write science fiction. He composed a non-negotiably radical outcry against corruption, money, and the cynicism of power.
From the very first pages, the reader is plunged into a world where television wields more influence than any institution, and Jack Barron, a former activist turned television host, is the only man capable of staring power in the face and forcing it into retreat. Spinrad’s prose is relentless, driven by a breathless pace and a language that sets fire to the page. Each chapter overflows with raw energy and political awe.
Spinrad dares to tackle themes such as immortality, the corruption of politics, and the commodification of the human soul with a boldness that remains provocatively relevant to this day. Bug Jack Barron is one of those rare books that not only refuses to sugarcoat the world, but manages to shake it to its core.
Jack Barron is a protagonist one simply cannot ignore—a man who dives headfirst into the mire, yet continues to seek the truth, even when it wounds. He is the mirror-image of an era in desperate search for justice through fury. And Spinrad, in his writing, forgives nothing.
In an age when political fiction is often draped in safe, palatable narratives, Bug Jack Barron stands apart as an explosive manifesto that fuses prophecy with provocation. It is one of the most significant works of political imagination of the 20th century—a book that demands not only to be read, but to be discussed again and again.
If literature is a weapon, then Spinrad wields it as both artist and revolutionary.
Close-up of an enraged Spinrad hater, gesticulating wildly—but muted. Without sound, he merely appears to be screaming meaninglessly, a form of madness worthy of our disdain… We light a golden joint and let his own image deconstruct him as an opponent for a few seconds before cutting to commercials…
June 9, 2020
Flojo y mal envejecido. Huele a finales de los 60 pero en plan mal. Incluso esos arranques de escritura automática con los que busca generar novedad resultan añejos.
Páginas y páginas se extienden en monólogos interiores con mucho deje cursi y en negociaciones entre personajes masculinos que hacen chocar ácidamente sus ingenios. La representación que hace de la mujer da vergüencita ajena. Es habitual en las obras con cierta edad, pero en esta ocasión se me ha hecho especialmente incómodo.
El tema central del libro es la imposibilidad de mantenerse íntegro. Lo que tiene que ver con el poder de la televisión en la construcción de realidades es de por sí algo simplista, pero se queda del todo corto a la vista de cómo ha explotado la circulación de la información a día de hoy. 5/10
Páginas y páginas se extienden en monólogos interiores con mucho deje cursi y en negociaciones entre personajes masculinos que hacen chocar ácidamente sus ingenios. La representación que hace de la mujer da vergüencita ajena. Es habitual en las obras con cierta edad, pero en esta ocasión se me ha hecho especialmente incómodo.
El tema central del libro es la imposibilidad de mantenerse íntegro. Lo que tiene que ver con el poder de la televisión en la construcción de realidades es de por sí algo simplista, pero se queda del todo corto a la vista de cómo ha explotado la circulación de la información a día de hoy. 5/10
April 4, 2018
Let's get the elephant out of the room first. The author is misogynist, even for the standards of the day. The female characters exist largely to have sex with the male characters. In one of the few passages from a female character POV, here's a sample of what passes for internalization, a woman's thoughts: "Any chick that digs power, really feels where it's at, almost always turns out to be some kind of dyke in the end. Power's somehow cock-connected; woman's hung up on power, she's hung up on not having a cock, understands power only if she's thinking like someone who does."
Yeah, tell that to Madeline Albright.
But putting aside the female characters, and also putting aside the author's dismissal of youth radical politics as the wasting of time by "Bolshevik babies," to enjoy this book, view it as a discussion of power, those who pursue it, and what it does to them, and it can be quite enjoyable. I love the idea of an America where the Republicans are virtually irrelevant, having only elected a President once in the book's future, and that's because he was an actor who played on image (Reagan--Spinrad called that one). The Democrats are the entrenched party of corruption, and the Social Justice Coalition is what happened to all the 60s radicals who went establishment. (The book was written in 1969). Jack Barron, a founder of the SJC, has a TV talk show, where he lets folks come on and tell him what's bugging them, and then he gets those with power to come on. He'll needle the powerful, but not destroy them, because, of course, you don't want to lose your show or be sued. (The main sponsor is Acapulco Gold cigarettes--got to love it how wrong Spinrad got legalization of pot--didn't happen in the 70s.) Jack's buddy, Lucas Green, rode the SJC ticket to a governorship in Mississippi, and he feels himself a sellout, because he lives in the governor's mansion, and Mississippi is still dirt poor. The plot revolves around a wealthy businessman who is trying to get a legal monopoly on freezing people in advance of his scientists discovering the secret of immortality. The interplay between vulture capitalists, the dying remnants of the Republican Party, SJC sellouts, Democrats who occasionally develop a conscience, and the media is what makes this story. The major climax in the book was predictable, but the twist with which the book ends was not. This is a book about who sells out who, who is in whose pocket, and who has any sense of civic responsibility commentary, but these ideas are embodied in male characters that are real. The banter between the two old buddies, Lucas and Jack, in private, goes to an extreme in making fun of racial stereotyping, but good friends with good senses of humor do indeed go there in real life, so they seemed like very believable characters. The scenes from the radio show itself, the interplay between Jack's internalization, Jack's off-camera back-and-forth with his tech guy and all the tech details of how the show is manipulated, the guests who trust Barron, and the politicos out to get him, was wonderful.
As long as you suppress the cringing whenever a female character comes "on stage," this is an enjoyable book that deserves its status as a classic. Recommended.
Yeah, tell that to Madeline Albright.
But putting aside the female characters, and also putting aside the author's dismissal of youth radical politics as the wasting of time by "Bolshevik babies," to enjoy this book, view it as a discussion of power, those who pursue it, and what it does to them, and it can be quite enjoyable. I love the idea of an America where the Republicans are virtually irrelevant, having only elected a President once in the book's future, and that's because he was an actor who played on image (Reagan--Spinrad called that one). The Democrats are the entrenched party of corruption, and the Social Justice Coalition is what happened to all the 60s radicals who went establishment. (The book was written in 1969). Jack Barron, a founder of the SJC, has a TV talk show, where he lets folks come on and tell him what's bugging them, and then he gets those with power to come on. He'll needle the powerful, but not destroy them, because, of course, you don't want to lose your show or be sued. (The main sponsor is Acapulco Gold cigarettes--got to love it how wrong Spinrad got legalization of pot--didn't happen in the 70s.) Jack's buddy, Lucas Green, rode the SJC ticket to a governorship in Mississippi, and he feels himself a sellout, because he lives in the governor's mansion, and Mississippi is still dirt poor. The plot revolves around a wealthy businessman who is trying to get a legal monopoly on freezing people in advance of his scientists discovering the secret of immortality. The interplay between vulture capitalists, the dying remnants of the Republican Party, SJC sellouts, Democrats who occasionally develop a conscience, and the media is what makes this story. The major climax in the book was predictable, but the twist with which the book ends was not. This is a book about who sells out who, who is in whose pocket, and who has any sense of civic responsibility commentary, but these ideas are embodied in male characters that are real. The banter between the two old buddies, Lucas and Jack, in private, goes to an extreme in making fun of racial stereotyping, but good friends with good senses of humor do indeed go there in real life, so they seemed like very believable characters. The scenes from the radio show itself, the interplay between Jack's internalization, Jack's off-camera back-and-forth with his tech guy and all the tech details of how the show is manipulated, the guests who trust Barron, and the politicos out to get him, was wonderful.
As long as you suppress the cringing whenever a female character comes "on stage," this is an enjoyable book that deserves its status as a classic. Recommended.
October 8, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in January 2002.
This edition of Spinrad's classic novel proudly plasters Donald A. Wollheim's denunciation of it across the front cover - "depraved, cynical, utterly repulsive and thoroughly degenerate". It caused quite a fuss when originally published at the end of the sixties - its initial serial appearance in New Worlds almost led to the end of the magazine when the big chains of British newsagents refused to stock it, and questions were raised in Parliament as a result - and even now it is quite easy to see why this was the case.
Jack Barron is at the centre of the top rated US TV show, where ordinary people phone in to "bug Jack Barron", for him to then take up their cases with whoever can do something to sort out their problem, whether businesses or government. He is surprised when one current issue - a bill offering a monopoly to a private company which uses cryogenics to preserve people until treatments bringing immortality can be developed - seems to be causing more embarrassment to those he calls than his probing should merit, and he becomes embroiled in political manoeuvrings and corruption as he continues to investigate.
There may have been shocks in the details - Spinrad's America has legalised cannabis, for example - but it is the brutal cynicism of Bug Jack Barron which was almost certainly the main problem. The political history of the West in the twentieth century can be seen as one of diminishing trust in authority figures, due to a combination of corruption and incompetence; Bug Jack Barron anticipates the concerns of a post-Watergate society. Nobody really believes in what they do, except for Barron's idealistic wife; politics is about scrabbling for power not about inner belief. The novel is more or less contemporary with 2001, both internally and externally, but is in fact much closer to the reality we live in now than Kubrick and Clarke's utopian vision.
Spinrad is wrong about some things, of course. The principal thing that he failed to see is the triviality of modern popular culture. The sort of shows that are the closest equivalents to Bug Jack Barron are not about his kind of big issues, but about the lives of ordinary people. He is a combination of Jerry Springer and Jeremy Paxman, but the former is far more popular than the latter. Even on details, however, he can seem extraordinarily prophetic - he has Reagan down as a future President, for example.
Bug Jack Barron is written in a stream of consciousness style principally derived from William S. Burroughs. This makes it quite difficult to read in places, but it is certainly well worth the effort it requires.
This edition of Spinrad's classic novel proudly plasters Donald A. Wollheim's denunciation of it across the front cover - "depraved, cynical, utterly repulsive and thoroughly degenerate". It caused quite a fuss when originally published at the end of the sixties - its initial serial appearance in New Worlds almost led to the end of the magazine when the big chains of British newsagents refused to stock it, and questions were raised in Parliament as a result - and even now it is quite easy to see why this was the case.
Jack Barron is at the centre of the top rated US TV show, where ordinary people phone in to "bug Jack Barron", for him to then take up their cases with whoever can do something to sort out their problem, whether businesses or government. He is surprised when one current issue - a bill offering a monopoly to a private company which uses cryogenics to preserve people until treatments bringing immortality can be developed - seems to be causing more embarrassment to those he calls than his probing should merit, and he becomes embroiled in political manoeuvrings and corruption as he continues to investigate.
There may have been shocks in the details - Spinrad's America has legalised cannabis, for example - but it is the brutal cynicism of Bug Jack Barron which was almost certainly the main problem. The political history of the West in the twentieth century can be seen as one of diminishing trust in authority figures, due to a combination of corruption and incompetence; Bug Jack Barron anticipates the concerns of a post-Watergate society. Nobody really believes in what they do, except for Barron's idealistic wife; politics is about scrabbling for power not about inner belief. The novel is more or less contemporary with 2001, both internally and externally, but is in fact much closer to the reality we live in now than Kubrick and Clarke's utopian vision.
Spinrad is wrong about some things, of course. The principal thing that he failed to see is the triviality of modern popular culture. The sort of shows that are the closest equivalents to Bug Jack Barron are not about his kind of big issues, but about the lives of ordinary people. He is a combination of Jerry Springer and Jeremy Paxman, but the former is far more popular than the latter. Even on details, however, he can seem extraordinarily prophetic - he has Reagan down as a future President, for example.
Bug Jack Barron is written in a stream of consciousness style principally derived from William S. Burroughs. This makes it quite difficult to read in places, but it is certainly well worth the effort it requires.
April 21, 2008
I'm waffling between a 4 and 5 star for this book. It really is an amazing book if you get into the stream of consciousness rhythm of it. Spinrad just nails emotions and charged scenes. Really well done. I finished the book thinking, Wow. What a book!
What I didn't like was that the voice/speech/thought patterns were similar for all the characters. And there was some serious repetition of certain phrases/dialogue, especially near the end. That detracts, big time.
I will give it a five because even though it was published in 1969, it still delivers the goods today.
What I didn't like was that the voice/speech/thought patterns were similar for all the characters. And there was some serious repetition of certain phrases/dialogue, especially near the end. That detracts, big time.
I will give it a five because even though it was published in 1969, it still delivers the goods today.
October 2, 2010
One of Norman Spinrad's best works. The key figure is Jack Barron, a TV journalist. Much is at stake, such as the possibility, according to antagonist Benedict Howards, of immortality. The book moves ahead with an intriguing finale as Barron amounts to a great deal!
October 2, 2014
Oof. This is one terrible book. May take the prize for most excruciating style. Read it because it's on a list of 100 best sf novels. Yup.
September 10, 2015
What’s bugging Jack Barron? Jack used to be a young radical, waving signs and helping form the Social Justice Coalition. But the SJC became a legitimate political party, and Jack wasn’t really interested in playing politics. Plus, he’d gotten on television a lot, and the cameras and audiences loved him. Soon, Jack was offered his own call-in show, and it took off. The wife who kept him honest left, but his star was on the rise.
Now he’s the star of Bug Jack Barron, on every Wednesday night. You call in on your vidphone and tell Jack what’s bugging you, and if he finds your problem interesting, Jack will go on to call important people and bug them about the issue. And you’d better believe that VIPs are sitting by their own vidphones, because if you’re “not home” to Jack Barron, he will skewer you in front of one hundred million viewers.
Of course it’s all a cop-out. Sure, Jack Barron is for the little guy…as long as it doesn’t involve any of Jack’s own skin. And he’ll stick it to the Very Important People, but only to a point, just enough pain to make them sweat, but not enough to make them retaliate. After all, Jack likes making $400,000 a year, and having a penthouse apartment with the latest electronic gadgets, and free smokes from his sponsor, Acapulco Gold. And let’s not forget that TV stardom makes you a chick magnet! No, Jack knows better than to kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
Tonight’s show seems standard at first. Seems there’s a company called the Foundation for Human Immortality, owned by a fellow named Benedict Howards, a powerful billionaire. The Foundation will cryogenically freeze people to be revived whenever a cure is found for what killed them. But the process is expensive, you have to have $500,000 in liquid assets for the Foundation to use. Tonight’s caller tried to get a Freezer spot but was turned down, and he thinks it might be because he’s black.
Jack spots the logic hole right away (the man has $500K in his business, yes, but that’s not a liquid asset.) but decides to roll with it. He calls Benedict Howards–but Mr. Howards is “not home” to Mr. Barron (for good reason, we learn later) so Mr. Barron decides to turn up the heat on the Foundation a bit. After humiliating the Foundation’s PR person, Jack calls up his old SJC friend, Lukas Greene, now governor of Mississippi. Governor Greene explains that the problem here isn’t direct racism, but systemic racism; for historical reasons, there just aren’t that many African-Americans with half a million in cash and negotiable bonds. That’s why the SJC platform is to nationalize the Freezers so that all Americans have a chance to be revive in the future.
To round out the show and cool things down a bit, Jack calls Senator Hennering, who is sponsoring a Freezer Bill that will give the Foundation a permanent monopoly on their cryogenic process. The Senator’s a professional politician and an experienced bloviator, so he should be able to provide some calming words. Except that for some reason, the senator is off-script, and reacting to the call like he’s actually guilty of something. Odd, but Jack is as gentle as is consistent with his acerbic television persona.
The next day Benedict Howards himself is in Jack Barron’s office, offering Jack a free cryogenic berth if he’ll help put the Freezer Bill through. Jack still doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s pretty sure he’s wading into crocodile-infested swamp water, and it’s getting deeper by the moment. He’s going to have to use all his smarts, and see if he still has a last shred of integrity deep down, and that really bugs Jack Barron!
This 1969 novel was considered the story that put Norman Spinrad on the map. It’s one of the classics of the New Wave movement in science fiction, when newer SF authors decided to use more experimental literary techniques and use edgier subject matter. In this case, Mr. Spinrad uses a free association stream of consciousness style of narration to fill us in on the thoughts of the characters randomly sparked by their main concerns. It takes quite a bit of getting used to. There was, supposedly a lot of drug use by New Wave authors–this one reads less like it was made on marijuana than amphetamines.
There’s also a lot of foul language, including racial and ethnic slurs (“shade” is now the slang word for pale-skinned people.) The sex scenes are pornographic in the “experimental literature” sense, but they’re important for exploring Jack’s state of mind, so you can’t just skip over them. Racism is an important theme of the book, while the sexism seems to be more of the author’s blind spots.
Most of the action is a match of wills and wits between Jack Barron and Benedict Howards (who is clearly meant to evoke both treacherous Benedict Arnold and nutty millionaire Howard Hughes.) The one violent on-stage confrontation is one that Jack’s completely unprepared for and survives only by luck. Jack is an anti-hero, handsome, clever and witty, but having sold out to the Man long ago, and willing to use media manipulation to get his way. Howards is worse, having such a fear of death that it’s become a full-blown thanatophobia, and he’s willing to do anything to avoid dying. Ever.
Jack’s ex-wife Sara mostly exists to tell us how awesome Jack is, and urge him to return to the superior levels of awesome he had before he copped out.
Because of the rough language, sex scenes and a suicide, I wouldn’t recommend this to readers below senior high school, and it would probably be best saved for college age.
It’s interesting from a historical viewpoint as well, predicting a 1980s that is very different from the one we knew. Apparently, at the same time the Coalition for Social Justice became an actual political party, Nixon imploded so badly in his first term that Republicans became poison at the national level. So the CSJ has become the left-wing party, the Republicans have shifted heavily to the right and are composed of corporatists and the former Dixiecrats (no Religious Right here), and the Democrats have grabbed the large middle ground. Ronald Reagan is mentioned several times as an example of a politician who is more image than substance, but never became president in this timeline. One of the major Democrats is referred to as “Teddy the Pretender” and is presumably Edward Kennedy.
Mississippi has suffered massive “white flight” and its new black governor is barely holding on with a crippled economy. AT&T (not broken up in this world) has produced black & white vidphones, and a “miniphone” (basically a cellphone that works anywhere in the AT&T network) is the latest gizmo. Marijuana is legal in 38 states, Bob Dylan is dead, and low-level single payer healthcare is the law of the land. Oh, and there’s a mission on its way to Mars, but it’s not relevant to anything.
There’s an afterword by Michael Moorcock, who ran this novel in the magazine New Worlds, which is why this edition uses British spelling. He talks about the reaction at the time, including the story being denounced in Parliament.
Overall, a book with a lot of interesting ideas, some pertinence to the current day state of the media, some dated attitudes and a lot of uncomfortable content. Recommended for those who want to experience New Wave science fiction.
Now he’s the star of Bug Jack Barron, on every Wednesday night. You call in on your vidphone and tell Jack what’s bugging you, and if he finds your problem interesting, Jack will go on to call important people and bug them about the issue. And you’d better believe that VIPs are sitting by their own vidphones, because if you’re “not home” to Jack Barron, he will skewer you in front of one hundred million viewers.
Of course it’s all a cop-out. Sure, Jack Barron is for the little guy…as long as it doesn’t involve any of Jack’s own skin. And he’ll stick it to the Very Important People, but only to a point, just enough pain to make them sweat, but not enough to make them retaliate. After all, Jack likes making $400,000 a year, and having a penthouse apartment with the latest electronic gadgets, and free smokes from his sponsor, Acapulco Gold. And let’s not forget that TV stardom makes you a chick magnet! No, Jack knows better than to kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
Tonight’s show seems standard at first. Seems there’s a company called the Foundation for Human Immortality, owned by a fellow named Benedict Howards, a powerful billionaire. The Foundation will cryogenically freeze people to be revived whenever a cure is found for what killed them. But the process is expensive, you have to have $500,000 in liquid assets for the Foundation to use. Tonight’s caller tried to get a Freezer spot but was turned down, and he thinks it might be because he’s black.
Jack spots the logic hole right away (the man has $500K in his business, yes, but that’s not a liquid asset.) but decides to roll with it. He calls Benedict Howards–but Mr. Howards is “not home” to Mr. Barron (for good reason, we learn later) so Mr. Barron decides to turn up the heat on the Foundation a bit. After humiliating the Foundation’s PR person, Jack calls up his old SJC friend, Lukas Greene, now governor of Mississippi. Governor Greene explains that the problem here isn’t direct racism, but systemic racism; for historical reasons, there just aren’t that many African-Americans with half a million in cash and negotiable bonds. That’s why the SJC platform is to nationalize the Freezers so that all Americans have a chance to be revive in the future.
To round out the show and cool things down a bit, Jack calls Senator Hennering, who is sponsoring a Freezer Bill that will give the Foundation a permanent monopoly on their cryogenic process. The Senator’s a professional politician and an experienced bloviator, so he should be able to provide some calming words. Except that for some reason, the senator is off-script, and reacting to the call like he’s actually guilty of something. Odd, but Jack is as gentle as is consistent with his acerbic television persona.
The next day Benedict Howards himself is in Jack Barron’s office, offering Jack a free cryogenic berth if he’ll help put the Freezer Bill through. Jack still doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s pretty sure he’s wading into crocodile-infested swamp water, and it’s getting deeper by the moment. He’s going to have to use all his smarts, and see if he still has a last shred of integrity deep down, and that really bugs Jack Barron!
This 1969 novel was considered the story that put Norman Spinrad on the map. It’s one of the classics of the New Wave movement in science fiction, when newer SF authors decided to use more experimental literary techniques and use edgier subject matter. In this case, Mr. Spinrad uses a free association stream of consciousness style of narration to fill us in on the thoughts of the characters randomly sparked by their main concerns. It takes quite a bit of getting used to. There was, supposedly a lot of drug use by New Wave authors–this one reads less like it was made on marijuana than amphetamines.
There’s also a lot of foul language, including racial and ethnic slurs (“shade” is now the slang word for pale-skinned people.) The sex scenes are pornographic in the “experimental literature” sense, but they’re important for exploring Jack’s state of mind, so you can’t just skip over them. Racism is an important theme of the book, while the sexism seems to be more of the author’s blind spots.
Most of the action is a match of wills and wits between Jack Barron and Benedict Howards (who is clearly meant to evoke both treacherous Benedict Arnold and nutty millionaire Howard Hughes.) The one violent on-stage confrontation is one that Jack’s completely unprepared for and survives only by luck. Jack is an anti-hero, handsome, clever and witty, but having sold out to the Man long ago, and willing to use media manipulation to get his way. Howards is worse, having such a fear of death that it’s become a full-blown thanatophobia, and he’s willing to do anything to avoid dying. Ever.
Jack’s ex-wife Sara mostly exists to tell us how awesome Jack is, and urge him to return to the superior levels of awesome he had before he copped out.
Because of the rough language, sex scenes and a suicide, I wouldn’t recommend this to readers below senior high school, and it would probably be best saved for college age.
It’s interesting from a historical viewpoint as well, predicting a 1980s that is very different from the one we knew. Apparently, at the same time the Coalition for Social Justice became an actual political party, Nixon imploded so badly in his first term that Republicans became poison at the national level. So the CSJ has become the left-wing party, the Republicans have shifted heavily to the right and are composed of corporatists and the former Dixiecrats (no Religious Right here), and the Democrats have grabbed the large middle ground. Ronald Reagan is mentioned several times as an example of a politician who is more image than substance, but never became president in this timeline. One of the major Democrats is referred to as “Teddy the Pretender” and is presumably Edward Kennedy.
Mississippi has suffered massive “white flight” and its new black governor is barely holding on with a crippled economy. AT&T (not broken up in this world) has produced black & white vidphones, and a “miniphone” (basically a cellphone that works anywhere in the AT&T network) is the latest gizmo. Marijuana is legal in 38 states, Bob Dylan is dead, and low-level single payer healthcare is the law of the land. Oh, and there’s a mission on its way to Mars, but it’s not relevant to anything.
There’s an afterword by Michael Moorcock, who ran this novel in the magazine New Worlds, which is why this edition uses British spelling. He talks about the reaction at the time, including the story being denounced in Parliament.
Overall, a book with a lot of interesting ideas, some pertinence to the current day state of the media, some dated attitudes and a lot of uncomfortable content. Recommended for those who want to experience New Wave science fiction.
December 10, 2021
Jack Barron hosts a talkback TV show called Bug Jack Barron, where callers can gripe about whatever they please. When Jack starts getting calls about the private Freezer Bill - a bill to make a monopoly out of a certain rich cryogenics outfit - Jack smells ratings. When the super-rich Benedict Howards attempts to bribe Jack with a freezer place he smells a rat. Digging deeper he discovers that the cryogenic business is a cover for a truly immense real immortality treatment that has caused a few murders, including a destitute black man who sold his 7yo daughter to a whitey. What this means is a sickening and all-too-believable bit of Frankensteining. Norman Spinrad has given us a 60s novel replete with archaic slang and outmoded, outdated and outrageous 60s attitudes transplanted into a fictional 1980s. The story flows, albeit through copious stream-of-consciousness scattershot prose, and is a tight and engaging thriller but he has fallen for the old white saviour routine and both women and blacks are relegated to subservient roles. While certainly reflective of the times it jars a bit now and the self-serving sex seems profligate in a real world where AIDS existed. Entertaining enough as a time capsule.
February 5, 2023
2.5. Loud, belligerent, and stupid from page 1 on. Writing style occasionally exciting though mostly stunted and juvenile.
April 26, 2024
Brilliant.
July 21, 2025
Picked this up because I was getting annoyed at the Library of America’s The Future Is Female volumes; found myself more annoyed with this, the unadulterated sexism and tardy pace of it; put this down to read a David Brin novel; which did the trick, when I came back to Spinrad he seemed fast-moving and egalitarian—
Anyway this is not a good book. To some extent I wonder whether this is entirely Spinrad’s fault. It’s serialized in six parts over a little under a year in New Worlds, nominally a monthly magazine, but one famously running into difficulties here after a large chain refused to stock them, citing (in part or in whole? I’m not sure) the sexually explicit nature of Bug Jack Barron. In December ’67 the editors note the next issue contains a “substantial installment of Norman Spinrad’s brilliant novel BUG JACK BARRON, which will continue to get better and better as it progresses.” This is the only instalment which—on perhaps a slightly cursory glance—had any real difference from the 1992 paperback I was reading, which still had a copyright date of 1969. (I was baffled by a couple of references to the election of Reagan as a pure image candidate, thinking they had been inserted and botched the timeline, and then realised they were references to him as governor.)
By February ’68, when the next issue makes it out, they call it “our serial”, hyping the then-26 Spinrad, who is quoted as (oh dear) attempting to write “a coherent Nova Express”—so, yes, partly on him, sure; four monthly issues later, in October, they note “for space reasons we have had to condense the conclusion of this novel to be published in 1969 by Avon books,” though it doesn’t condense so much as omit, about a quarter of the word count—and the only section in which things happen, one character attempting to have another killed, and a third killing herself, and the revelation of what’s actually going on with the whole mystery of the book’s plot. I go into all this for a couple reasons: I suspect part of the reason this book restates itself so much is that it was conceived as a serial, though I haven’t seen anything definite about that; also, by the time it was actually completed, history had awkardly left it behind.
—
In the 80s of Bug Jack Barron (I don’t think Spinrad has a date in the text, though I could be wrong; I wound up reading this marginally less slower than it was serialised, and have no intention to reread the earlier parts) the Democrats, after their victories of the 1960s, are seen as twenty years into an immovable thousand-year reich, the Republicans basically irrelevant, the Democrats in fact seriously pressured from the left by a new political party, one representing the ideas of the campus radical and the hippy, one which I’ve forgotten the name of, one formed by the titular Jack Barron before he went apostate and showbiz. Of course, by the time the book came out in hardcover Nixon was in the White House. Now, the point of SF isn’t the literally predictive, and so on and so forth, but this does suggest a woefully blinkered reading of the present; in 1966 it was pretty clear that the New Deal and the Voting Rights Act were not particularly worthy guarantors of Democrat presence in the halls of power. It’s odd—given how cynical, perhaps excessively cynical, perhaps adolescently cynical, this book is—that Spinrad didn’t notice that. But, yes, this is a book where the High 60s Social Moment is extended impossibly into the future; it’s very funny to have low-rent hippy apartments in 1980s manhattan, all dope no crack; Jack is described as a hippie Kennedy or a squarer Dylan (who, delightfully, has also been assassinated); for no particular reason, I was picturing him as Mastroianni in La Decima Vittima.
Barron, as the novel starts, presents a hit TV show, the titular Bug Jack Barron. This is the biggest show on TV, we are told; Barron is an opinion-maker; in many ways his social function seems to be more like the right-wing talk-radio giants of the actual 80s, though we do hear several times of the virtuousity with which (bless!) the production staff do advanced graphical things like put a caller’s image into one-quarter of the screen while Barron himself occupies three-quarters of it. The big social issue is one Benedict Howards’s ‘Foundation for Human Immortality’, which is doing cryo-freezing with an effective government majority; Howards tries to enlist Barron to sell the public on him at the same time as Barron’s old political cronies try to convince him to run for president on a joint ticket with the Republicans. Howards has some people killed, because, we learn, i. the Foundation actually has learned how to render people immortal ii. the process revolves around massively irradiating children and removing certain glands to implant them in the beneficiaries; the children i. are mostly black ii. will die certain, miserable deaths of cancer. Howards convinces Barron’s ex-wife Sara to go back to him to sell him on being Howards’s man.
—
The book is more readable as a serial: it restates the stakes and what every party knows about what’s going on every time they become focal. It feels a bit like neither Moorcock (or whoever) at New Worlds nor his editors at Avon quite took Barron in hand enough to make the book work at book length. It’s also deeply over-written in a way that doesn’t quite land but is bearable, even charming, in small doses: the random page I opened to includes both describes an apartment as “a straw-mat-floored studio room, low primary-colored geometric-precision Japanese furniture hard-edged in the neutral, off-white pseudolantern overhead light, thousand-years distant in cool squares and rectangles from ricky-ticky neon-baroque Village streets” and features the sentence “And he looked into her pool-dark eyes that knew holes with no bottoms inside, his locked on hers locked on his like x-Ray cameras facing each other in feedback circuity between them gut to gut belly to belly big dark eyes eating him up saying: I know you know I know we know we know we know—endless feedback of pitiless scalpels of knowledge.”
I do wonder if there’s meant to be more tension in all the Tarzan/Jane/balling/making-love content, if that’s meant to be a part of the appeal, either pruriently (there are sentences written just as extra as that one I just quoted describing e.g. a blowjob) or thematically: if we’re meant to take this seriously as a novel with things to say about male-female relations. I had a note on my phone that said something to the extent of “just summarising that episode I just read would be a good demonstration of the novel’s misoygny”: reader, I don’t know which episode I meant. It was either Jack’s feelings about his secretary’s feelings for him or Sara’s feelings about Jack’s feelings for him; one of those included the phrase “the soft womanflesh of her mind”; a later passage on Jack’s feelings about Sara’s feelings for him described them as “c—tfelt”.
I recourse to the “—" there because I don’t know what Goodreads community standards are but there are probably certain words I want to avoid, one of which is coming up: the book is also pretty (grimaces, yanks collar, exhales from corner of mouth) when it comes to race. In Howards’s descent towards madness later in the book he keeps having the intrusive image of the black children he’s killed, which he internally verbalises “maggots eviscerated n—rs”; this phrase, variations of it, on maybe a dozen pages, which, yes, we understand is the thoughts of a bad man, but also very clearly a 26-year-old being edgy.
But, then, on the first page, we had Jack’s old political acquaintance, the black Mississippi governor Lucas Greene, leaving a meeting with one Malcolm Shabazz: “Prophet of the United Black Muslim Movement, Chairman of the National Council of Black Nationalist Leaders, Recipient of the Mao Peace Prize, and Kingfish of the Mystic Knights of the Sea … neither more nor less than a n—r. He was everything the shades saw when they heard the word n—r: Peking-loving ignorant dick-dragging black-oozing ape-like savage. And that cunning son of a bitch Malcolm knew it and played on it, making himself a focus of mad white hate …”—never quite specific how this Malcolm Shabazz relates to the one we know better as X, who was two years dead when the novel’s first instalment came out. Anyway, that probably tells you as much as you ought to get—the black character we get to be in the head of immediately identifies black radicalism as insincere—which is perhaps complicated by Greene himself turning out to be a phony, one who built himself as expensive governor’s residence in a for-show state capital while a bankrupt Mississippi descended into poverty—though probably not complicated in a particularly not racist way.
—
Mystifying to imagine reading this in the serial: being told all the plot had happened between part five and part six, and that it was resuming right after a lead character’s suicide. Barron has told Sara about the cancer-children aspect of the immortality Howards has, by now, granted them with; their last night together they can’t bear to touch each other; the next evening Sara takes acid and jumps from Barron’s balcony, killing herself to convince him to demolish Howards on his TV show, which he does. In a section that might as well be labeled ‘ironic coda’ Howards languishes in a mental institution, reflecting on how he has an immortal lifespan in which to be proved i. sane and ii. not guilty, Lukas Green reflects on the political ramifications of events for his future career ("stop crying, you n—r you, you knew that was the way it had to be"), and Barron goes back to the secretary he was schtupping before he returned to his ex-wife.
November 1, 2013
A quién se le ocurre: leer una novela publicada a finales de los años 60 y sentarse aquí cómodamente después, en 2013, a escribir sobre ella, como si hubiera esperado casi medio siglo para ver qué tal ha soportado el paso del tiempo. Desde aquí, desde mi silla en el futuro, me da la sensación de que lo ha soportado regular. ‘Incordie a Jack Barron’ tiene muy buenas ideas: habla sobre el racismo, la legalización de las drogas, la corrupción política y los intereses de los lobbies, habla de la importancia de los medios de masas en la creación de la opinión pública, en concreto de una televisión dominada por sus patrocinadores y de unos talk-shows entregados a descuartizar a sus invitados con la coartada de servicio público. Y habla en general sobre la mercantilización de la vida y la impotencia (y la necesidad) de enfrentarse al poder establecido, hasta ahí todo bien.
Tiene también personajes secundarios planos que son meras comparsas de Jack Barron, el titánico y único protagonista de este casi monólogo, un exhippie cabreado con todo el mundo y reconvertido en estrella de la televisión gracias a un programa de denuncia social. En él radica toda la fuerza y también toda la debilidad de la novela. Y tiene un estilo que por momentos me fascina (especialmente cuando recrea el ritmo y las técnicas de un plató televisivo, algunas encantadoramente vintage), pero que en otros me da una pereza terrible, construido, en parte, con párrafos alucinados como este:
“El salón era una deliberada prolongación tour de forcé de Jack Barron a todo color, pero el dormitorio era Jack, era Jack-y-Sara de Berkeley era la casita de Los Angeles en el Canyon cálida noche de verano era la casa junto a la playa de Acapulco Sara oliendo a sudor-de-esquí-acuático era doble imagen expatriada (Nueva York-California-Nueva York) al aire-libre-bajo techo al aire-libre-feliz California mental ciencia-ficción”.
Una vez terminada, no sé por dónde tirar. Por un lado me parece una novela necesaria porque sus temas siguen sobre la mesa, por otro que lo que menos necesitamos ahora es un héroe, un Jack Barron idealista y enfurecido, que se meta en el sistema para volarlo desde dentro mientras todos aplaudimos al televisor. A veces me parece una historia escrita en un estallido de inspiración, fruto de una borrachera ‘beat’ de su autor, y a la que le hubiera venido bien un meneo posterior, que avanza lenta y despreocupadamente en algunos tramos y con un final, como se dijo en su día, más propio de Disney. Otras veces pienso que quizá el resultado no es tan sorprendente no por culpa del autor sino por la nuestra, porque hoy ese sistema está mejor alimentado que hace 50 años y todos somos más cínicos, sabemos cómo funcionan algunas cosas porque formamos parte de ellas, y por desgracia también sabemos cómo no funcionan otras. En su día ‘Incordie a Jack Barron’ fue considerada políticamente incorrecta, hoy tiene algo de fábula moral que le contarías a tus hijos para enseñarles algunas cosas que no se enseñan en la escuela.
En cualquier caso, es una lectura interesante desde el momento en que plantea reflexiones interesantes, encuadrada en una ciencia-ficción muy particular de una época muy particular, y un libro que, quizá, haya encontrado en sus contradicciones la mejor manera de permanecer vigente, de representarnos como miembros frustrados de una sociedad, ya sea la de los años sesenta, la de los ochenta o la de hoy, polarizada, divida en VIPs y en corrientes mortales, y en la que el papel de estos últimos parece limitarse a dejarse ordeñar por los primeros hasta quedar secos e inservibles. Y no hay heroicidad posible en eso, como tampoco hay heroicidad posible en las audiencias. Sólo mártires.
Tiene también personajes secundarios planos que son meras comparsas de Jack Barron, el titánico y único protagonista de este casi monólogo, un exhippie cabreado con todo el mundo y reconvertido en estrella de la televisión gracias a un programa de denuncia social. En él radica toda la fuerza y también toda la debilidad de la novela. Y tiene un estilo que por momentos me fascina (especialmente cuando recrea el ritmo y las técnicas de un plató televisivo, algunas encantadoramente vintage), pero que en otros me da una pereza terrible, construido, en parte, con párrafos alucinados como este:
“El salón era una deliberada prolongación tour de forcé de Jack Barron a todo color, pero el dormitorio era Jack, era Jack-y-Sara de Berkeley era la casita de Los Angeles en el Canyon cálida noche de verano era la casa junto a la playa de Acapulco Sara oliendo a sudor-de-esquí-acuático era doble imagen expatriada (Nueva York-California-Nueva York) al aire-libre-bajo techo al aire-libre-feliz California mental ciencia-ficción”.
Una vez terminada, no sé por dónde tirar. Por un lado me parece una novela necesaria porque sus temas siguen sobre la mesa, por otro que lo que menos necesitamos ahora es un héroe, un Jack Barron idealista y enfurecido, que se meta en el sistema para volarlo desde dentro mientras todos aplaudimos al televisor. A veces me parece una historia escrita en un estallido de inspiración, fruto de una borrachera ‘beat’ de su autor, y a la que le hubiera venido bien un meneo posterior, que avanza lenta y despreocupadamente en algunos tramos y con un final, como se dijo en su día, más propio de Disney. Otras veces pienso que quizá el resultado no es tan sorprendente no por culpa del autor sino por la nuestra, porque hoy ese sistema está mejor alimentado que hace 50 años y todos somos más cínicos, sabemos cómo funcionan algunas cosas porque formamos parte de ellas, y por desgracia también sabemos cómo no funcionan otras. En su día ‘Incordie a Jack Barron’ fue considerada políticamente incorrecta, hoy tiene algo de fábula moral que le contarías a tus hijos para enseñarles algunas cosas que no se enseñan en la escuela.
En cualquier caso, es una lectura interesante desde el momento en que plantea reflexiones interesantes, encuadrada en una ciencia-ficción muy particular de una época muy particular, y un libro que, quizá, haya encontrado en sus contradicciones la mejor manera de permanecer vigente, de representarnos como miembros frustrados de una sociedad, ya sea la de los años sesenta, la de los ochenta o la de hoy, polarizada, divida en VIPs y en corrientes mortales, y en la que el papel de estos últimos parece limitarse a dejarse ordeñar por los primeros hasta quedar secos e inservibles. Y no hay heroicidad posible en eso, como tampoco hay heroicidad posible en las audiencias. Sólo mártires.
May 9, 2015
I finally got to re-read Bug Jack Barron, Norman Spinrad's late-1960s masterpiece about the power and the corruption enabled by television. Wonderful to read again!
What I liked:
1. The complex setting: medical sci-fi with immortality as the goal, racial tensions in the US, drugs and pulp life, and the super-company and the power of its president.
2. Jack Barron is a dramatic character.
3. The power wielded by the Bug Jack Barron TV show (watched by 100 million Americans), and the analysis of the power of opinion-makers in general, anticipate well the 2000s generation Facebook et al.
4. So many great ideas, way before their time, among which the first black president of the US of A (nearly 4 decades earlier than it actually happened):
after the Inauguration! When good old Jack Barron resigns the Presidency in favour of Vice-President Lukas Greene. Black Vice-President Lukas Greene!
--
Spinrad, Norman (2011-05-13). Bug Jack Barron (Kindle Locations 5006-5007). ReAnimus.com. Kindle Edition.
5. Writing that seems experimental even today: active flowing complicated tautological flamboyant sentences such as:
Christ, I’m tired, Benedict Howards thought. Tired of having to do it all myself tired of dumb-ass politicians with qualms of conscience like Hennering tired of fighting from cold empty plains to oilfields stocks Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Washington circles of power, fighting doctors’ heads nodding nurses’ needles plastic tube up nose down throat life leaking away in plastic bottles, fighting fading black circle with money-fear power of life against death, fighting, fighting all the way alone idiots all the way incompetent phony sycophants useless fumbling fools lunatics stupidity lies all on the side of death, side of the fading black circle of nothingness closing in, smaller, smaller...
-- Spinrad, Norman (2011-05-13). Bug Jack Barron (Kindle Locations 907-911). ReAnimus.com. Kindle Edition.
... and the presentation, almost comics-like at times:
JACK and stars spinning across her retinas JACK and
the skin of her face pulled drum-tight JACK free
fall nausea JACK mass rushing up JACK screams
below JACK fear JACK acid freak-out, JACK
for you JACK I’m afraid JACK help me
JACK no no JACK don’t want JACK
death JACK forever JACK no
JACK no JACK no JACK no
JACK no JACK no no
JACK flash of blind-
ing pain JAC—
• •
Sara
No! it ca-
n’t have happen-
ed. Sara you’re not
Sara dead no! not dead
not down there on the sidewalk
in a puddle of— Sara! Sara! no no no,
You can’t be dead! Can’t be dead! No! No! Sara!
Sara you crazy bitch, how could you do a thing like this to me!
--
Spinrad, Norman (2011-05-13). Bug Jack Barron (Kindle Locations 4445-4457). ReAnimus.com. Kindle Edition.
What was less impressive:
1. The story seems a bit dated, and by today's standards includes many cliches.
2. Not a book for the feminists.
3. Not a book for big corp presidents.
TL;DR: interesting book, complex setting, interesting main character, experimental writing, and an ending to match. Read it!
What I liked:
1. The complex setting: medical sci-fi with immortality as the goal, racial tensions in the US, drugs and pulp life, and the super-company and the power of its president.
2. Jack Barron is a dramatic character.
3. The power wielded by the Bug Jack Barron TV show (watched by 100 million Americans), and the analysis of the power of opinion-makers in general, anticipate well the 2000s generation Facebook et al.
4. So many great ideas, way before their time, among which the first black president of the US of A (nearly 4 decades earlier than it actually happened):
after the Inauguration! When good old Jack Barron resigns the Presidency in favour of Vice-President Lukas Greene. Black Vice-President Lukas Greene!
--
Spinrad, Norman (2011-05-13). Bug Jack Barron (Kindle Locations 5006-5007). ReAnimus.com. Kindle Edition.
5. Writing that seems experimental even today: active flowing complicated tautological flamboyant sentences such as:
Christ, I’m tired, Benedict Howards thought. Tired of having to do it all myself tired of dumb-ass politicians with qualms of conscience like Hennering tired of fighting from cold empty plains to oilfields stocks Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Washington circles of power, fighting doctors’ heads nodding nurses’ needles plastic tube up nose down throat life leaking away in plastic bottles, fighting fading black circle with money-fear power of life against death, fighting, fighting all the way alone idiots all the way incompetent phony sycophants useless fumbling fools lunatics stupidity lies all on the side of death, side of the fading black circle of nothingness closing in, smaller, smaller...
-- Spinrad, Norman (2011-05-13). Bug Jack Barron (Kindle Locations 907-911). ReAnimus.com. Kindle Edition.
... and the presentation, almost comics-like at times:
JACK and stars spinning across her retinas JACK and
the skin of her face pulled drum-tight JACK free
fall nausea JACK mass rushing up JACK screams
below JACK fear JACK acid freak-out, JACK
for you JACK I’m afraid JACK help me
JACK no no JACK don’t want JACK
death JACK forever JACK no
JACK no JACK no JACK no
JACK no JACK no no
JACK flash of blind-
ing pain JAC—
• •
Sara
No! it ca-
n’t have happen-
ed. Sara you’re not
Sara dead no! not dead
not down there on the sidewalk
in a puddle of— Sara! Sara! no no no,
You can’t be dead! Can’t be dead! No! No! Sara!
Sara you crazy bitch, how could you do a thing like this to me!
--
Spinrad, Norman (2011-05-13). Bug Jack Barron (Kindle Locations 4445-4457). ReAnimus.com. Kindle Edition.
What was less impressive:
1. The story seems a bit dated, and by today's standards includes many cliches.
2. Not a book for the feminists.
3. Not a book for big corp presidents.
TL;DR: interesting book, complex setting, interesting main character, experimental writing, and an ending to match. Read it!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews