Metal Sushi

by David Conway

David Conway's collection of stories will take you to a dimension of absolute nightmare, from a scientist's obsessions with genetic experiments resulting in a New Race to reality being warped in a crescendo of designer carnage and biological transformation.

Genres: Fiction

204 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

About the author

David Conway is a children's picture book author who has written for Hodder, Random House, Frances Lincoln and Gullane Children's Books. He has been awarded The Peter Pan Silver Star by the Swedish wing of the IBBY and the Parents' Choice Gold Award in the US for Lila and the Secret of Rain. His first picture book The Most Important Gift of All illustrated by Karin Littlewood, was nominated for The Kate Greenaway Medal in 2006.

David's most recent picture book The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster was chosen as one of the children's books of the year 2008 by Nicolette Jones of The Sunday Times and has been shortlisted for the 2009 Sheffield Children's Book Award. Shine Moon Shine was chosen as one of the top ten picture books of 2008 by The Bookbag.

David's picture books are published in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Spain (Catalan and Spanish) Columbia, Korea the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa and Japan. As well as writing David is a stay-at-home father and brings up his two children Bess and Jude and a cat called Bobby. David's wife works in academic publishing.

Reviews

[SARDON · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my reading experience, this is as holistic as humanly conceivable horror can be at present. The transgressive eroticism of the body, the abstract perversions of the mind and the metamorphic madness of the spirit all converge to prove that genre fiction can reach pure vision. The opener, "Eloise," takes this theme of unorthodox transcendence in the direction of more personal manias as a scientist's rogue genetic experiments with psychopathic subjects lead to a means of resurrecting his recently deceased daughter. Though disappointingly devolving to a revenge plot, the titular novelette most stunningly employs this concept in the context of precarious espionage and cosmically minded religious fanaticism. Engineered mutation as the praxis of spiritual ascension continues to be a guiding idea throughout the collection, as much a substantial theme as it is an impetus of plot.

For how radically heterogeneous his concepts and imagery tend to be, I would have been glad to see Conway's inventive and rebellious mentality applied to the narrative structures of these pieces: the deranged nature of the content being mirrored by a derangement of form. And even though the author has admittedly trimmed some of the stylistic excess of the original, many readers will still find the neoLovecraftian prose to be overbearing in certain pieces. Still, this collection of unusually well blended scifi and horror, however, is far more imaginative and intelligent than much contemporary work being done in either of these genres--or the space between them--more than two decades after the first edition's release.

[Laurance · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book its hard not to be deeply ambivalent about. On one hand it has some strikingly surreal and original ideas and images, it takes cyberpunk to some deeply disturbed and truly bizarre areas of the psyche, the most memorable is a mad scientist addicted to virtual reality pornography trying to turn one of the starlets and himself into a brand new species. On the other hand the prose style is unreadable, its overloaded with adjectives and adverbs and incoherence. Sometimes this works as a good cover for the fact its sci-fi and you can't possibly explain future technologies, such as the logic/anti logic computer system that's needed to stimulate AI. Most of the time its just makes things extremely tedious and confusing. Unsurprisingly Grant Morrison writes an intro in which he recommends the prose be inhaled rather then read, but I imagine most of us would just choke. I stopped reading halfway through and sold the book because of the style, but I haven't forgotten it since and am buying it again years later to finish. That's as much of a testament to this book as I can give.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conway’s writing is the perfect combination of Lovecraftian horror and cyberpunk cool. These stories are excellent.

[Félix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Igual no es tan bueno, pero es A-LU-CI-NAN-TE.