'After leaving earth in 2050 A.D., Peter Stagg and a group of astronauts return eight hundred years later to find the planet drastically changed. Landing in what once was Washington, D.C., they are faced with a strange new world, where bizarre cults inhabit a scorched and barren landscape. One of the tribes adopts captain Stagg as their Sunhero, the horned King who is compelled to lead their fertility rites. While Stagg embarks on a tour of hedonistic excess, his crew is determined to escape from this nightmarish future. Featuring a brand-new introduction by Michael A. Baron and afterword by Dennis E. Power.'
Flesh tells the story of Peter Stagg, the commander of a group of astronauts that left earth in the late 21st century to explore distant star systems. Thanks to cryogenic technology he and his crew are able to return to Earth after more than 800 years. Unfortunately they find a world that has fallen into chaos. Large parts of the planet have been left as desolate wastelands, and new warring states have replaced the countries that he once knew.
After landing in what remains of Washington DC Stagg is hailed as the 'Sunhero' by the inhabitants, a ceremonial figure in their strange religion. Stagg is forced through surgery, where antlers are grafted to his skull. These strange additions to his body flood his system with chemicals and hormones that turn him into a sex crazed madman, enabling him to perform his duties as the Sunhero, to sleep with and impregnate thousands of women.
Flesh is very much a product of its time, and it becomes very clear that it's a pulpy sci-fi novel from the early 1970's. The plot, as flimsy as it is, makes a lot of jumps towards both the beginning and the end of the book, where author Philip Jose Farmer was clearly interested on the middle part of the story rather than the set up or conclusion.
Stagg and his crew go from orbiting Earth, seeing how the planet has changed over the eight centuries that they have been gone, to having already landed and Stagg crowned a king. Personally, this is something that I'd have been interested in seeing. I wanted to know how the inhabitants of this new Washington DC would react to a spaceship landing in the middle of the city, and what they'd have made of the people on board.
Farmer, instead, shifts the focus to the celebration of the winter solstice, where Stagg is taken and transformed into the 'Sunhero', having the strange antlers grafted to his skull. What follows is a series of orgies as Stagg is taken across the country from city to city. During this Stagg is aware that things aren't right, and that he has essentially become a slave to the animal impulses that swarm through his body, yet is unable to do anything about it himself. The story goes on like this for a long while, longer than is really entertaining, until Stagg and a number of others are captured by a rival nation state.
This change in the story is a lot more entertaining, as Stagg and one of the fellow prisoners, a young woman named Mary, must not only escape their captors, but find their way across the country to safe harbour. The journey is much more interesting, as the two of them have to sneak their way through dangerous territory, dealing with roving patrols and wild animals. The highlight of Stagg's story comes in this section, where he stands alone against a charging army of Washington soldiers, dying bringing their high priestess to an end doing so.
The story that I found most interesting, however, was that of the other members of Stagg's crew. Left adrift in this new world the members of his crew are given a month to adapt to this new civilisation or be put to death. Several of the crew who are from other countries outside of America want to find a way to get back to their homelands, the second in command finds a way to ingratiate himself with a wealthy family and eventually marries their daughter, whilst one member of the crew who is incredibly religious want to fight against the 'sins' of this new world.
Seeing the other members of the crew learn to navigate this new world is interesting, and it gives us both a wider look at this new world and their culture that Staggs story doesn't, and more engaging protagonists. The most interesting narrative is the journey of Nephi Sarvant, the man who wants to bring his religion to this new world. Sarvant gets a chapter of his own to showcase this quest, and it proves to be a complex and interesting journey.
Sarvant finds work at one of the local temples, where women who are unable to bear children come to in order to sleep with virile men in the hopes that they may bear children. Here Sarvant is forced to face the reality that this new world has a much more open view of sex and procreation, something that troubles him greatly. He also finds himself falling in love with one of the women that comes to the temple, yet is disgusted by all of the men that are having sex with her. He wants to save her from what he sees as a life of corruption, but also wants her himself. Finally giving in to his desires he tries to force himself upon her, whereupon he is badly beaten by a crowd of angry men and finally hung for being a rapist. It's a shocking turn of events, but one that highlights how what might be seen as disgusting and depraved by one culture is normal in the eyes of another, and that neither one is right or wrong.
Sadly, this secondary plot ends almost as quickly as Stagg's, where the rest of the crew go from being the captive of pirates to suddenly leading a raid against the inhabitants of Washington to regain control of their ship. From there they kidnap dozens of women and children, putting them in suspended animation, so that they can leave earth and colonise another planet. Much like the beginning of the book, this end seems to come out of nowhere, with events just having happened. There's so much detail that is missing here, events that deserve some focus and attention yet get none.
Whilst there's a lot of stuff in Flesh that is interesting the lack of focus on plot and characters lets the story down in a lot of ways. The end comes on quickly, and wraps up so neatly that it almost feels like the author became bored with his story and cut the ending down from a hundred pages to ten, telling what should have been a big plot point in a single chapter. Definitely a product of its time, Flesh isn't the greatest sci-fi story I've ever read, and probably won't be one that sticks in my memory for long.
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