By NORMAN SPINRAD (Leisure; 1967)
An early novel by science fiction legend Norman Spinrad. THE MEN IN THE JUNGLE came after THE SOLARIANS (1966), a mainstream space opera, and AGENT OF CHAOS (1967), a more thoughtful (but still pretty tame) political allegory, and preceded the notoriously profane BUG JACK BARON (1969), his most controversial novel. That means THE MEN IN THE JUNGLE isn’t as outrageous as Spinrad’s later books, but was pointed in that direction.
It relates, in slangy, street smart prose (albeit without all the profanity that would become a Spinrad constant), the grim tale of Bart Fraden, a mercenary space jockey who plants himself on a jungle planet called Sangre in order to start a revolution and become the ultimate ruler. Sangre is currently governed by the Brotherhood of Pain, an elite band of scumbags who worship pain and violence. Given that there’s no edible livestock on Sangre, the locals eat specially grown human children (shades of TENDER IS THE FLESH, which wasn’t nearly as unprecedented as it’s been made out to be).
Bart believes that fermenting revolution among Sangre’s populace will be easy, but, needless to say, it isn’t. He and his men end up disseminating mass propaganda, and hatching all manner of plots and counter plots, in order to win over Sangre’s populace. Furthermore, that populace grows to enjoy the Bart-engendered mayhem a bit too much, and Bart’s men find themselves losing their humanity as they callously conjure elaborate schemes that invariably involve mass killing.
Clearly this story was intended as a Vietnam allegory, although Spinrad has claimed the nastiness derived from the atmosphere of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where he was living at the time. Whatever it may be, this novel is an exciting and engaging read—for its first two thirds, at least.
The last hundred or so pages grow a bit repetitive with their constant succession of skirmishes and double crosses, although the final mass slaughter in a giant outdoor stadium closes things out in appropriately excessive fashion. So the gorehound in me was sated, but the thoughtful aesthete was left wanting a bit more.