Bug Jack Barron

Author: Norman Spinrad

One of the great taboos that the new wave broke was political engagement. This was an era when everyone engaged in politics, from Vietnam protests to feminist campaigns to Stonewall, and the fiction should be equally engaged. With Bug Jack Barron, we got a story so cynical about politics, and about human relationships in general, that when it was serialised in New Worlds a Tory politician asked in Parliament whether the Arts Council should be funding such a magazine, while feminist typesetters refused to set one issue of the magazine because the story was too sexist. To say that Norman Spinrad was the most controversial new wave writer of the 1960s is almost an understatement. Jack Barron is a talk show host who uncovers a perverse plot behind a new immortality treatment. The more he investigates, the more he is drawn into a cynical, exploitative, political world, until the only way to get to the truth is to become just as cynical and political as his opponents. Why it's on the list: New wave stories were all about engaging with the world, though they might query what the world might be and what engagement might entail. Bug Jack Barron is the epitome of the politically alert new wave novel, challenging us to engage with the sort of world we want to see.