Jason X

by Pat Cadigan

Cryogenically frozen in the act of killing his final victim, the hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees is reawakened by science students in the distant future and once again goes on the rampage, this time enhanced by nanotechnology that has made him nearly indestructible. Original.

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Media Tie In, Fiction

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 25, 2005

About the author

Pat Cadigan is an American-born science fiction author, who broke through as a major writer as part of the cyberpunk movement. Her early novels and stories all shared a common theme, exploring the relationship between the human mind and technology.

Her first novel, Mindplayers, introduced what became a common theme to all her works. Her stories blurred the line between reality and perception by making the human mind a real and explorable place. Her second novel, Synners, expanded upon the same theme, and featured a future where direct access to the mind via technology was in fact possible.

She has won a number of awards, including the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award twice,in 1992, and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools.

She currently lives in London, England with her family.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a fan of sci-fi, so my thoughts on Jason X are pretty straight forward and can be best explained by how Jason's psyche is presented along with the design of the Grendel.

The Psyche of Jason

Jason has a unique psyche, one not shaped by the usual processes. Instead being shaped by what Freud calls 'the death drive', a concept analogous to 'anti-life' as used in the text. It is a drive of living beings towards an inactive state.

Jason's psyche exists in 5 forms:

1. Child-Jason who drowned.
2. Adult-Jason who existed until his mother's death.
3. Human-Jason who existed until he was killed by Tommy Jarvis.
4. Undead-Jason who existed from his reanimation until he was killed by Kay-Em.
5. Jason X who was revived by nano-bots.

Undead-Jason is the fullest manifestation of a psyche defined by the death drive so will be the target of analysis.

I'll begin by examining Jason conscious processes in isolation, including his Ego and (lack of) conscious reality, before moving onto the unconscious processes of the Id and death drive. The two paths will join to explore the operation of Jason's reality and pleasure principles.

The Ego and Jason's Conscious Reality

The psyche is split into two regions. First is the topographical psyche which is constituted by the unconscious, conscious, and preconscious. Within this region exists the second; the structural psyche. It is the one most associated with Freud, containing the Id, Ego, and Super-Ego. To dive into Jason's psyche the easiest way is through the topographical psyche and two of its governing processes: the subject/object and active/passive distinctions. These are most associated with the consciousness and lead directly into the conscious Ego. It is important to note that while consciousness is attached to the Ego the Ego is not synonymous with consciousness. While many operations of the ego are conscious they are not necessarily so, with large portions of the ego remaining unconscious. The surface of the ego is the home of consciousness. The Ego is directed to the outside world yet can be equally stimulated internally. However, for the initial entry into Jason's psyche, I will address the conscious processes alone and leave the Ego's relation to the Id and the unconscious until later.

The subject/object and active/passive distinctions are related, the subject/object distinction is how the conscious Ego, as mental structure, distinguishes itself from the external world and the active/passive distinction shapes how the Ego responds to external stimuli. These are typically quite complex processes, but for Jason the distinctions are simple "because there were only five elements in its reality. Two major: self and prey; and three minor: weapons, obstacles, and killing ground". This leads to the conscious Ego functioning on a very basic binary of self/prey. The three remaining elements having no influence on his conscious Ego.

The relation of self/prey to subject/object is obvious, its association to active/passive is less so. The 'passive' term refers to the Ego existing passively in relation to external stimuli, while 'active' refers to the active reaction the Ego has to this stimulation. For Jason, 'prey' is an active force on his passive Ego, but one that does not produce a consciously active response. "His mechanism for sensing live humans operated in a way that was vaguely analogous to how a hay fever sufferer detected the presence of ragweed". Meaning Jason has what can be described as an allergic immune response to living people. The presence of prey does not trigger a reaction from the conscious Ego, but from something deeper.

Why the minor elements do not contribute to his conscious Ego is demonstrated through the active/passive distinction. The minor elements do not provoke any stimulation, allowing the primary distinction of self/prey to operate unimpeded. This can be seen with Jason's indifference to being a 'man out of time' when he is hunting the soldiers. As "for Jason Everything was different, but only technically. As far as he was concerned, nothing had changed. He flexed his fingers and took a better grip on the big blade." This can be seen again with Jason's disregard for his old machete. When confronting Lowe, Jason transferred "the autopsy knife to his other hand as he made a close and careful study of the machete" until "abruptly, Jason tossed the old machete over his shoulder and transferred the autopsy blade back to his right hand". For Jason there is a killing ground, there are not killing grounds. A killing ground is a killing ground, a weapon is a weapon, and an obstacle is an obstacle.

The minor elements act as a background against which the primary binary of self/prey can function. This was not always the case "when he had first prowled his killing ground, his ability to sense prey had been nowhere near as well developed. In the beginning, it had felt sometimes as if he were smelling them and other times as if he were hearing them. Later on, it was more like he could smell the sounds they made. Eventually, he simply knew what he knew." But for this Jason the binary of self/prey is all that remains.

The conscious Ego, as defined by a self/prey, only has 'prey' as its active content, there is no true 'self' present in the Ego except as a marked term against 'prey'. Meaning Jason does not have any conscious drive towards the prey, so technically when analysing the consciousness in isolation to refer to the active force acting on Jason's Ego as 'prey' is misleading. 'Prey' is well defined term, directly evoking the opposite notions of predator, hunter, killer, etc and comparable notions of quarry, target, victim, etc. This gives more complexity to Jason's consciousness than has been demonstrated. 'Other' is a better term, capturing 'living humans' without necessarily placing them as predator or prey.

For the self/prey distinction to be fully realised Jason needs more content in his Ego. The one place this may come from that is linked to the conscious is the preconscious, the site of the thoughts that have left consciousness temporarily to make room for others, allowing conscious thought processes.

However, Jason does not have thought processes and, by extension, does not have a preconscious. The simplicity of Jason's reality precludes the "the need for thought processes, so appropriately enough, there were none." This is not to say that Jason does have the capacity for a conscious thought, only that he does not have thought processes. Jason does have a "built-in awareness of living humans". Meaning what Jason is missing is the preconscious, the ability to 'store' thoughts or associate them with abstract concepts e.g. language. The outcome of this is that Jason is unable to perceive more than what is able to be held in his consciousness at one time, hence the simplicity of his reality.

Jason does have other conscious perceptions, however the only time Jason's focus is away from 'prey' is when a 'trauma' occurs that allows an unconscious awareness to become conscious, emotion being the only way to bridge the gap between unconscious and conscious directly. This does not function through an emotional appeal as the lack of a preconscious prevents language from having any sense to Jason, rather it is through something more traumatic; violent surprise or confusion. Eg when Rowan is fighting Jason in the Crystal Lake Facility. Rowan fires a canister at Jason "it zoomed forward and slammed into Jason's lower body. He stared down at it for a second in what Rowan would have sworn was genuine surprise." Later Jason is distracted by the holodeck, his confusion directing him away from the remaining survivors and towards the hologirls who "registered as live humans but oddly." Both of these are examples of the 'prey' distinction being upset. First by a surprise inversion of the distinction, seeing Jason in the place of the prey, the second by a confusion as to whether he is seeing is actually prey or not.

While notable departures from the distinction guiding Jason's conscious reality the lack of a preconscious prevents Jason from assimilating these changes into his conscious reality. Instead they evaporate as soon as the self/prey distinction returns.

So far it has been shown that Jason's conscious Ego and reality are solely defined by the binary of self/other. The other is an external force that is stimulating Jason's Ego, alerting him to it's existence, but it has nothing it can consciously draw on to react to the stimulation. This is due to the simplicity of Jason's psyche not providing him with any method of consciously conceiving of a 'self'. The reality of a consciousness defined in this way is illustrated when Jason is on the lab table, laying there "for the last several hours, Jason Voorhees had been—well, what was the right word? Conscious? Awake? Neither term seems applicable"

What is missing so far is the connection between the self and prey, what makes the other something to be hunted and killed, defining Jason in the process. This is the death drive which will be explored in the next section to show that Jason "was not alive in the way human beings were alive"..."Its behavior and actions stemmed from an elemental level."

The Id and Jason's Unconscious Reality

The Id is a stronger, obscure mental region existing behind the Ego as the source of all drives which exist mostly unconsciously, being consciously known only by their aim. There are two types of drives, Eros, the life-affirming sexual drives which originate from internal bodily stimuli, whose aim is 'organ-pleasure'. And the death drive, or Thanatos.

The constancy principle states that the nervous system has the purpose of getting rid of stimuli that reach it. The aim being to reach a purely unstimulated state, Thanatos is the drive of all beings towards this state of pure inactivity. It occurs as drives are inherently conservative, being urges to restore a previous state. The drives of the elementary living organisms, from the very beginning, would give no drive to change. The notion that they do is a side effect of the changing conditions in which organic entities live giving an impression of adaptation, when in fact they are reactive forces trying to get back to an inert state. The goal of life then is not to express life, rather it is the primal, inactive state, which for living beings is death.

Eros has no effect on Jason because Jason is dead. Death is a purely unstimulated state which closes off the ability for drives to organically originate in his Id. Thanatos is not based in organic bodily functions, it is 'anti-life', or more accurately 'anti-Eros', Eros being drives which act against Thanatos.

What Jason lacks in Eros, his prey makes up for. As teens their sexual drives have fully matured and are looking for their most energetic expression. In the text this is exemplified by Kinsa and Stoney, who are so sexually charged that their single minded focus on sex is at a level comparable to Jason's single minded focus on killing. Kinsa's one observation of Jason being "I bet he's hung like a mammoth". The sexuality of the crew is too overt to fully describe, but a few passages capture the general idea. First that "Socrates may have been right in noting that the unexamined life was not worth living, but he could also have mentioned that a good many life situations should be given over completely to the act of living first and examined later." and that "sex produced complications that caused people to take a more active approach to living". The crew is at their peak in terms of the intensity of their Eros, putting them in stark contrast to Jason who has no Eros to speak of.

Jason's conscious Ego receives external stimuli from his 'prey', from the other, without reacting to it. This stimuli takes the form of Eros. A unique feature of Jason's consciousness is that it is not isolated "to a single, specialized area. Consciousness, along with memory, emotions, and intent, ran through his entire body like an electric current." This allows the external stimuli to act in Jason's body as if it were internal. And Thanatos, as anti-Eros, rises in response.

Once Thanatos has arisen it enters the Ego along with the artificial-Eros. The Ego, as the mediator between the Id and the external world, has to make sense of the Thanatos/Eros pairing that has entered it. It consciously recognises that Eros matches the 'other' in its conscious awareness, paring them. This leaves Thanatos to be associated with the only remaining element in the Ego, the self. In making the associations of Thanatos/self and Eros/other Jason now has the tools to turn the 'other' into 'prey'. Eros being "the incentive to live via contributions from nature, that irrefutable expert and final authority on survival." which for Thanatos "was exactly what spurred anti-life on to greater destruction".

The Pleasure Principle and Jason's Reality

The Id is regulated by the pleasure principle which works by associating drives with a decreasing level of stimulation with pleasure and an increasing level with unpleasure. Eg pain is the stimulation of the nerves, while orgasms are pleasing as a release of tension (Morioka, 2005). The principle works this way because, like the Thanatos, it operates in service of the constancy principle.

The pleasure principle exists in tandem with the reality principle which is established by the Ego in order to assist in the effective operation of the pleasure principle, creating a conscious the world to guide the the blind striving of the unconscious Id.

Jason's reality principle sees a dual distinction of Thanatos/Eros and self/prey operating together. Thanatos and self, and Eros and prey being interchangeable terms. These distinctions work on the pleasure principle to help it control the Id. The associations coming easily; Thanatos as the drive to nil-stimulation is associated with pleasure, while Eros, as increasing stimulation is associated with unpleasure.

Because of the Eros acting on Jason is external when it feeds back into the Id his Ego cannot use the usual method of repression to manage it, rather it has to address it externally. To avoid unpleasurable stimuli the easiest path is flight, this is difficult for Jason as his sensitivity to external expressions of Eros make escaping difficult. It is a sensitivity which "could feel the presence of each living human", even after the being frozen for hundreds of years "it had actually taken a long time for the last spark of anti-life hate and rage to dampen down into inactivity, and it wasn’t going to be terribly difficult to make it flare up again." The result is that Jason is left with no option but to destroy Eros, the slightest hint of Eros triggering "a response in anti-life of equal force, unhampered by questions, doubts, or misgivings and unimpeded by concerns for its own survival. It did not think and it did not die. It did nothing except hunt down those who could, in order to destroy them. This already strong drive became particularly urgent wherever people were actively sexual to any degree."

The Super-Ego

The Super-Ego seems very important to understanding Jason because of the its relation to early childhood and the Oedipus complex, especially given Jason's relationship with his mother. But the text makes no reference to Jason's mother or a Super-Ego.

The only textual evidence of critical self awareness is the holodeck women provoking a thought that maybe "they were defective. Like him, when he had been a living creature." However, this occurs after Jason is revived as Jason X who has a confused sense of self, so it cannot be taken as evidence of a Super-Ego.

I suspect the Super-Ego as a 'representative of an internal world' has disappeared from undead-Jason as he barely has an internal world. What Super-Ego existed before being killed by Tommy was likely not revived with him or had atrophied to an extent that it no longer held any sway over him.

Jason X

Jason X is the "new and improved Jason Voorhees" who has been repaired by nanobots. This event changed Jason's relation to himself, blurring the line between Jason and the programmed representation of Jason that was created when he was scanned in the lab.

The split can be seen with Jason X not being aware of the nanobots in his body, becoming "an unbroken, uninterrupted, perfectly contiguous unit, a single, self-contained cell of anti-life".

But "he could also sense something else, something he had never encountered before...something becoming alive or learning to be alive? Something wilfully imbuing itself with life?" The simple explanation of this is that the 'new' Jason had some semblance of his psyche restored along with all the rest of him. The deep repression of his childhood being unearthed and some sparks of humanity arising.

However, as the nature of artificial drives is indistinguishable from hardwired instinct, there is also a chance that the 'something new' that is being experienced is a nanobot simulation, an attempt to recreate what they understand Jason's drives. This possibility of a split between the artificial drives of Jason X and the natural instinct of Jason creates confusion between what is real/simulated, spiralling any analysis of Jason X into hyperreal theory.

The Grendel

The catamaran design of the Grendel is impractical. The dual configuration introduces significant issues to the structural integrity of the ship, the exposed pathways between the hulls presenting vulnerable points for meteoroid/debris strikes. Unlike an actual catamaran "buoyancy and wind resistance had not been considerations" in the design of The Grendel, so why do it? It simply results in a ship that loses both cargo capacity and structural integrity for no reason.

Rating

I love sci-fi, but it has to have some realism to be enjoyable. Freudian psychoanalysis has no scientific grounding so does not seem like the most realistic basis for Jason's psychology. And the design of the ship is hardly something that would occur in real life.

3/5.

[Paxton Holley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novelization of the movie. I liked it. It's a little long, but it does add some cool new information about the nature of Jason Voorhees.

2023 reread: Holds up. It’s still a really good adaptation of the movie that adds some good character development and a lot of context to the nature of Jason Voorhees. Some say it’s a little long, and I won’t argue that, but it’s still fun.

I also read the sequel to this right after, The Experiment, also by Pat Cadigan. For some reason Good Reads puts it as an edition of this book so I can’t list it separately.
It takes place right after Jason X and is also 400 pages. Rowan or anyone else from the movie does not show up. It’s Uber Jason with new people on Earth 2 in the future. It’s okay. It reads REALLY long. Not as good as Jason X.

[Jayden de Raat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A competent enough novelisation, but it was far too long; many characters now have backstories including the guard that Jason switches places with at the start of the movie, and some scenes are told multiple times from different characters perspectives, with little differences between them.

[Zachary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Low Point: Most of the book of it. Besides a couple of character backstories being added (Mostly for padding) The book is a 1:1 retread of the movie. Which, if your a fan of the movie. Cool. Over all the entire book is a stiff retread of the movie, kind of reads like you are being walked through the story board of movie, which, I suppose you should expect from the novelization of a fucking Jason movie.

High Point: The setting up of how the earth ended and how space travel worked where fun and included a couple of good paragraphs/jokes. The description of how Jason operates was unique, and when the writer indulge into it, it was actually a lot of fun. Would have been fun to have more segments where you see his stunted perception of reality. Kind of mechanical, except usually when I read writing from a mechanical perspective from a machine perspective and there for is supposed to be "logical". Where this was based on cold meat based rage and a drive to murder all things alive and sexy. So, I would say I found the perspective of a meat based rage/murder computer to be at least unique and at most amusing. Hopefully this will be used more IN THE NEXT 5 BOOKS WHY ARE THERE 6 OF THESE!

Incidentally, the perspective of the Android, KM, was unique as well, as was her back story and motivation. Telling that the most well fleshed out characters in this book are the two that ARNT FUCKING ALIVE.

In short, don't read, unless your like me and are morbidly curious how they turned this story line into a 6 part book series.

[Russell Holbrook · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a fan of the movie, Jason X, and I thougt this was an excellent novelization. I'm actually pretty new to novelizations and I loved this one. My favorite aspects of the book version are the different perspectives we get from each individual character. Of course it goes deeper than the film and there is even some dark, and a bit of silly, humor. Actually, the movie itself is full of comedy, unintentional or otherwise, so it makes sense that the humorous element would be present in the book, too. At any rate, it's totally fun. Perfect nipple placement!

[Liz Derrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was everything I’d hoped it would be. Dragged occasionally due to the need to keep pace with the film, but the pop culture references and sassy tone made it all worthwhile.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get that it's a Friday The 13th novelization, but goddamn what was with almost the entire first half of the book ending each chapter with each character thinking about who all on the spaceship was getting laid?

Otherwise a nice breezy read, except for all the sci-fi mumbo jumbo to help explain and add context to the stuff built around Uber Jason.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

simula pa lang ang gore na. anu ba meron si jason at hindi sya namamatay? nightmare in space to hahahaha

[Craig "NEEDS MORE DAMN TIME TO READ !!!!" · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. I like how it tries to explain how Jason can track and sense his victims.