Champion Jack Barron

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Champion Jack Barron (OT: Bug Jack Barron ) is a science fiction novel by the American author Norman Spinrad . It was published as a book in 1969, and the German translation by Joachim Körber was published by Moewig-Verlag in 1982 . The novel was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1970.

action

Champion Jack Barron plays in a near future after a Ronald Reagan presidency . (At the time the novel was written, Reagan had just been elected Governor of California.) Benedict Howards owns cryonic freezing complexes where people are frozen to be resuscitated in the distant future, when medical advances allow. He wants to bring a bill through the Senate, that of his Foundation for Human Immortalitysecures a monopoly in this area. Jack Barron is the presenter of a TV show in which, as the common man's lawyer, he confronts decision-makers from politics and business with their problems. His Wednesday night show has an audience of 100 million in the US.

In one of these shows, an African American accused the Foundation for Human Immortality of racism because it refused to give him a freezing contract. Jack Barron tries to get Benedict Howards to the vidphone and thus to the screen, but he can be denied and sends one of his employees in front. Barron dismisses him and lets Lukas Greene, the governor of Mississippi, a friend from Berkeley student days, on the screen, who speaks out against the monopoly of the foundation. In order to be neutral in front of the FCC , which is partly controlled by Howards, he finally lets the presidential candidate Hennering, a Howard's puppet, have his say. But this behaves strangely clumsy, so that a negative image of the foundation remains with the audience.

The next day, Howards seeks Barron, threatens him first, and then offers him a freeze deal if he endorses the bill on his show. Barron refuses. Then he calls Sara Westerfield, Jack's ex-wife, into his office and offers her a freeze contract if she can get Barron to sign his. Sara hates Howards, but she still loves Jack, agrees and returns to him, who also still loves her. The presidential candidate Hennering dies in an airplane explosion.

The next show shows a terminally ill man who has no chance of a place in the freezer complex. Let Barron get him one. He goes for the foundation and Howards violently, but agrees with him during the commercial break to discuss it later and in the end doesn't make him look too bad with the viewers.

In the conversation, Howards not only offers him a freeze contract, but real immortality for him and Sara. Its scientists have developed a method to stop the aging of the human body. It has already been used on Howards himself. He will only talk about the procedure if they have also received the immortality treatment. Howards urges them to do it as soon as possible, but Barron waits.

Madge Hennering, the presidential candidate's widow, calls Barron. She believes that her husband had to die because he found out something about the foundation and asks Barron for help. Barron doesn't believe her, shortly afterwards she is run over by a car. On the third show, a Mississippi-born Henry Franklin calls who sold his baby daughter to a white man for $ 50,000. Let Barron help him get her back. During the commercial break, the furious Howards answers and demands that Barron take Franklin off the show. Barron wants to get to the bottom of it, flies to Mississippi, meets Franklin, but they are shot at and Franklin dies. With Greene's support, he finds out on site that several more children have been sold this way.

To discover the secret of immortality treatment, they fly to Colorado and have an operation. Howards Barron then shows that for every - and his - treatment, a child had to die in agony. If Barron ever brings this to the public, Howards will have enough purchased witnesses to testify that he and Sara knew this before treatment. Sara cannot live with this truth, wants to give Jack the freedom to mercilessly destroy Howards and commits suicide over Vidphon before his eyes.

The fourth show is one on its own. Through targeted provocations, Barron succeeds in enraging Howards to such an extent that he confesses that a clause in the bill would legalize the murders of the children and that he is responsible for the accidents of Hennering and his wife. Howards is finished.

style

Large parts of the novel are written in the stream of consciousness technique from the perspective of the three main characters Jack Barron, Benedict Howards and Sara Westerfield. Spinrad uses a staccato diction that is based on the rock songs of the time and especially on Bob Dylan's - lines from Dylan's texts are also used directly in the novel - associative surrealistic lines of text and spiced with a few four-letter words . Spinrad himself names William S. Burroughs and his novel Nova Express , which influenced the style of champion Jack Barron .

Pre-printed in New Worlds

The novel was rejected by Spinrad's publisher in the USA. Michael Moorcock , whom Spinrad met in Milford (England), offered him extracts from the novel in his magazine. He then appeared in sequels from December 1967 in the English science fiction magazine New Worlds . Because of its obscene language and political cynicism, this led to a request in the British House of Commons - New Worlds was supported by the Arts Council of Great Britain - about the sense of state funding. New Worlds received funding thanks to Secretary of the Arts Jennie Lee's defense . However, selling the magazine was made more difficult when the bookstore chain WHSmith banned New Worlds from its stores. In 1969, Bug Jack Barron was published as a book in the USA.

criticism

"Overall, the novel reflects the zeitgeist of the late sixties and is considered by many critics to be the most important SF book on politics and the media."

- Reclam science fiction guide

German editions

proof

  1. ^ Winner and nominee 1970
  2. a b Reclam's Science-Fiction-Führer, edited by HJ Alpers, W. Fuchs and R. Hahn, p. 388, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart, 1982, ISBN 3-15-010312-6
  3. Norman Spinrad: Science Fiction and the Beats ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sff.net
  4. Introduction to Bug Jack Barron by Michael Moorcock  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk