The book cover
By JOHN BOORMAN, BILL STAIR (Pan Books; 1974)
A novelization as weird as just about any you’ll read, and no wonder: the film it novelizes, the 1974 science fiction film oddity ZARDOZ, is one of the absolute nuttiest releases of its decade. It came about after the dissolution of a planned adaptation of THE LORD OF THE RINGS by writer-director John Boorman, with many of that project’s concepts incorporated into ZARDOZ—which was written, according to Boorman, with the aid of “ghosts that stalked the Celtic twilight pressing this strange vision of the future upon me” (he subsequently dismissed the pic as “undernourished”).
…written, according to Boorman, with the aid of “ghosts that stalked the Celtic twilight pressing this strange vision of the future upon me.”
The film trailer
The visionary grandeur of the film is replicated (somewhat) in this text, taken from Boorman’s original script, which was apparently “closer to a novel than a screenplay.” With the help of Bill Stair (who collaborated with Boorman on the script for 1970’s disastrous LEO THE LAST) he pieced together this book, which he dubs an “interpretation” of the film.
I’m tempted call the text a surreal fever dream, but that would be giving it too much credit. A skilled sci fi wordsmith, such as Brian Aldiss or Langdon Jones, could have done wonders with this material, but prose fiction was never Boorman’s specialty.
“The gun is good…the penis is evil.”
From the film
At 130 pages the book is too short to do justice to its insanely wide-ranging narrative, which requires far more exposition that it provides. Involved is a post-apocalyptic landscape where Zed (played by Sean Connery in the flick), an “Exterminator,” is charged with keeping order among the barbaric “Brutals” by a massive floating head known as Zardoz. This object, manned by a fellow named Arthur Frayn who hails from an advanced race of humans known as “Immortals,” periodically vomits up rifles for the Exterminators to use, with the refrain “The gun is good…the penis is evil.” The penis, Zardoz/Frayn claims, “shoots seeds and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men,” whereas the gun “shoots death and purifies the Earth.”
At 130 pages the book is too short to do justice to its insanely wide-ranging narrative, which requires far more exposition that it provides.
The story begins with Zed climbing into the open mouth of Zardoz, which floats away and deposits him in the Vortex, which is supposed to be the place Brutals go when they die. It turns out to be a claustrophobic enclosure where a female-led coalition of rich folk have mastered telepathy and become immortal. For this reason they’ve ceased procreating, although many of the Eternals desire nothing more than death, and believe Zed has been placed in their midst to fulfill that desire.
From the film
Zed is indeed a Chosen One (shades of THE MATRIX) whose destiny is to end the immoral reign of the Immortals. Before that happens, though, he’s subjected to a number of tests by the inhabitants of the Vortex, including one in which he’s mentally probed to see what turns him on (a passage far more graphic than what was shown in the film). In the process he finds himself torn between the scientifically-minded May and the tough-minded Consuela, Immortal women who tempt him as the Vortex implodes and the proceedings turn increasingly psychedelic.
The hallucinatory final passages are of a type that tends to work better onscreen, although (once again) a good writer could have evened that ratio. As it happens, we’re left with an intriguing but unsatisfying piece of fiction that doesn’t live up to its full potential—or, to put it another way: see the movie.