Norman Spinrad‘s 1969 SF novel Bug Jack Barron has its roots in the Sixties, when it was written, but deals with issues that are still relevant today: the power of the media, the power of drugs, what it means to “sell out” (and how it’s impossible not to), race relations, the quest for power, and the quest for immortality. The protagonist, Jack Barron, is a former “Berkeley baby Bolshevik” who has cynically dumped his political ideals in order to become America’s most popular TV personality. But he finds his cynicism and his past idealism both put to the test, when he is sucked into a maelstrom of political intrigue centering on a rich man who controls the secret of human immortality. Certain aspects of the book seem dated: particularly its lame, all-too-typical-of-its-era portrayal of the main female character. But for the most part, Bug Jack Barron is still powerful and relevant, with its Burroughsian insights on the vampiric price of personal immortality (something today’s Transhumanists would do well to keep in mind), and its understanding of media spectacle: “He suddenly realized that to the hundred million people on the other side of the screen, what they saw there was reality, reality that was realer than real because a whole country was sharing the direct sensory experience, it was history taking place right before their eyes, albeit non-event history that existed only on the screen.”
Bug Jack Barron
Norman Spinrad‘s 1969 SF novel Bug Jack Barron has its roots in the Sixties, when it was written, but deals with issues that are still relevant today: the power of the media, the power of drugs, what it means to “sell out” (and how it’s impossible not to), race relations, the quest for power, and the quest for immortality. The protagonist, Jack Barron, is a former “Berkeley baby Bolshevik” who has cynically dumped his political ideals in order to become America’s most popular TV personality. But he finds his cynicism and his past idealism both put to the test, when he is sucked into a maelstrom of political intrigue centering on a rich man who controls the secret of human immortality. Certain aspects of the book seem dated: particularly its lame, all-too-typical-of-its-era portrayal of the main female character. But for the most part, Bug Jack Barron is still powerful and relevant, with its Burroughsian insights on the vampiric price of personal immortality (something today’s Transhumanists would do well to keep in mind), and its understanding of media spectacle: “He suddenly realized that to the hundred million people on the other side of the screen, what they saw there was reality, reality that was realer than real because a whole country was sharing the direct sensory experience, it was history taking place right before their eyes, albeit non-event history that existed only on the screen.”