| Title | : | The Bridge |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0553290274 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780553290271 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 401 |
| Publication | : | First published September 1, 1991 |
Paradise is a small industrial city in Pennsylvania that’s about to become Ground Zero for the end of the world. For far too long, we’ve been poisoning the planet with toxic waste. Not any more. This morning something finally woke up in Paradise. It’s intelligent, virulent and ambitious. It’s everywhere, in the water we drink, the air we breathe. And it won’t be satisfied until we’re gone.
The Bridge Reviews
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This recently re-issued horror classic is a most easily described as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring if it was polluted by George Romero's the Crazies. Right up there with the eco-horror-science fiction classic the Sheep Look Up (John Brunner) or the more recent Demons by John Shirley for combining the reality of pollution and environmental destruction with a down right scary horror novel. If you don't know John Skipp and Craig Spector maybe I should back up. These two men were the ultimate splatterpunk writing team who wrote the most extreme horror novels to grace the New York times bestseller list in the 1980's. They also wrote a novelization for Fright night, wrote set reports for Fangoria and even wrote a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel (the fifth film).
The team long ago split both doing excellent solo work, and Skipp now working with one of my favorite writers Cody Goodfellow. Spector released the amazing novel Underground. The Bridge is set in Paradise Pennsylvania, a small town near a nuclear reactor. For years a a small salvage company has used the the same bridge to dump unwanted waste into the river that flows by the city. One night a barrel cracks open in the river and sets off a chain of events. At times the novel follows the news crew trying to follow the story, the family responsible for the waste, the CEO of the company who created it, the crew running 911, and the nuclear reactor. Terror creeps across the town and every single page is entertaining.
The Bridge is an amazing example of horror, it leaves little doubt what novel is Skipp and Spector's masterpiece. Less dated than The Scream or Light at the End (Both work as excellent novels of their era) The Bridge elevates the splatterpunk to the lofty some what fake arena of literary horror. (I know almost all of it is literary – I say that for the doubters). It's not that this writing duo had not written other fine works of horror, this one is just head and shoulders above the rest. It is one of the best horror novels of the 90's if you ask this humble reader.
What makes The Bridge such an essential horror novel? First Skipp and Spector shred the rules, these are tired and true rules the teachers and wise sages in our genre have set up to help us young writers. The thing is Skipp and Spector have the skills to violate some of these rules and get away with it. They create lots of characters and shift the readers point of view all over the place. Often using this technique with a razor sharp punchlines that end chapters or transition the action from one location to another. They speak directly to the reader often in this novel and some times just slightly break down the fourth wall. Some readers might find this preachy but considering the topic of the novel that doesn't bother me, it excited me that the authors were boldly telling it like it is.
Another aspect that sets The Bridge apart is the obvious heavy lifting the duo did in research. This novel came out in 1991, Al Gore had not created the internet. This book has detailed information on toxic waste, pollution, the operation of 911, Hazmat clean-up, on and on. It breathes a realism into this novel.
The characters are rich, their motivations believable and the horror climbs a ladder of suspense. As British petroleum creates the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history (40 days in at the time of this writing) The Bridge could not be more relevant for re-issue. This is more than just another horror novel it is a entertaining thrill ride that happens also to be a warning with incredible foresight.
It's a mass market paperback, and I am afraid that libraries avoid these books. A trade paperback or pretty looking hardcover might do a better job of conveying the importance of this novel, but it should be in every collection. It's that good. -
This book was so amusing, in the darkest, messiest, and most horrifying way. The writing was clever, the characters fun, the plot was preposterously over the top. I really enjoyed the author's descriptions with lines like - "He was overweight and underworked, the kind of guy who pissed off easily and held grudges with the half-life of plutonium." so much fun. I felt like I had been transported back to my teenage years and loving every word on the page. And the 'monsters' - so terrifying and unique - there was no mercy given to anyone. I found myself rooting for some of the characters, with hopeful futility, only to be crushed as I read their excruciating departures. I was hopelessly entertained throughout.
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A stunning, visceral read by the duo Skipp and Spector that helped create splatterpunk. The Bridge is also a parable of humanity's disregard for nature and the environment in general. The story is set in Paradise, PA, a town of almost 200,000 people, and covers roughly a two day period. Paradise is home to several industries that create toxic waste, and one business stores and disposes of the waste, often illegally. We start off with two rednecks hired by the toxic waste company, hauling several barrels of toxic junk to dump off a bridge over a creek (hence the title). In the process of doing so, the bridge an old friend to the dumpers, something new emerges and thrives in the toxic soup. Surging with new found life, it seeks to spread as wide and as far as possible, transforming everything in it path.
Skipp and Spector create several great characters and the POV moves among them constantly. While many are introduced simply to perish gruesomely (chronicling the spread of the toxic 'overmind'), others, more developed, serve to provide an overview of the events. It is difficult to describe this book without spoilers, so I will simply say this book grabs you from the first page and does not let go until the end, and forget happy endings-- this is 'progressive' horror at its best. Keene blurbs on the cover that The Bridge is "The seminal splatterpunk novel that redefined the genre... and has lost none of its intensity or power" and I agree. You will never look or consider waste in the same way after reading this. My only criticism concerns the writing style, which seems abrupt at times, and at others a little hard to follow. 4.5 stars!! -
This is one of the most disturbing novels out there. It scared the living crap out of me. Being a fan (and now author) of zombie fiction, that's saying a lot. BRAVO!!!
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The Bridge might not be the best written of the Skipp and Spector collaborations, but it may well be the most important of their novels. It's a cautionary tale of ecological and environmental awareness, told with a splatterpunk viewpoint, with all of the visceral goriness they could muster (and anyone who's read them knows they could muster quite a lot!), rather than as the usual if-this-goes-on science-fiction cautionary tale. It starts with the dumping of toxic waste off of a bridge in a small Pennsylvania town (hi George Romero!), and quickly escalates from there. There's a lengthy appendix at the end of the book with tips and further reading on recycling and conservation and pollution; some of the individual listings are no longer timely, but the message remains the same today. I recommend the book highly for extreme horror fans. As a side note, Skipp and Spector recorded a rock album based on the novel, "The Bridge: Soundtrack for the Movie in Your Mind," which I purchased after reading the novel. I rather enjoyed it, though some of my family members told me it was the most awful thing they'd ever heard.
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Take one part Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, stir in about 20 of those creepy "radioactive creatures take over the world" B-movies from the 50s, add a George Romeo Living Dead screenplay, then pour it over a typical American small town sprinkled with local cops, struggling TV news reporters, corrupt businessmen and a few mutant rednecks and you have Skipp and Spector's The Bridge. There have been environmental horror novels before this 1991 pot-boiler but I sure there were none more disgusting and pessimistic. Lots of imagination in this book. I would expect no less from the kings of splatter-punk. Three and a half stars because I was both entertained and grossed-out at the same time.
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I recognize the skill of these two writers and would like to read them again but this particular novel didn't do it for me. I hate agenda driven horror, especially when it's so ridiculously blatant as in "we're a bunch of litterbugs and we're gonna pay when our garbage fights back!!!
There was also an abuse of italics throughout the novel that was a little distracting. I've never seen italics used so much in one book. -
Toxic themed horror at it's finest. Mutants, ahem, and murder oh my! A glimpse at an apocalyptic tale before the extension level event. Scary in it's plausibility. Explores evolution in its most extreme (manmade) form. Highly recommend.
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This recently re-issued horror classic is most easily described as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring polluted by George Romero's The Crazies. The Bridge is right up there with the eco-horror-science fiction classic The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner and the more recent Demons by John Shirley in the manner in which it combines the reality of pollution and environmental destruction with downright scary horror. At the time The Bridge was written, John Skipp and Craig Spector were the ultimate splatterpunk writing team, and wrote the most extreme horror novels to grace the New York times bestseller list in the 1980's. In addition, they wrote set reports for Fangoria, a novelization for the movie "Fright Night", and a sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street (the fifth film).The team long ago split, and both authors are doing excellent work independently of each other.
The Bridge is set in Paradise, Pennsylvania, a small town near a nuclear reactor. For years a a small salvage company has used the the same bridge to dump unwanted waste into the river that flows by the city. One nigh,t a barrel cracks open in the river, setting off a chain of events. At times the novel follows the news crew trying to follow the story, the family responsible for the waste, the CEO of the company who created it, the crew running 911, and the nuclear reactor. Terror creeps across the town and every single page is entertaining.
The Bridge is an amazing example of horror. There is little doubt that this novel is Skipp and Spector's masterpiece. Less dated than The Scream or Light at the End, both excellent novels of their era, The Bridge elevates splatterpunk to the lofty arena of literary horror. Although this writing duo is responsible for other fine works of horror, this one is head and shoulders above the rest. It is one of the best horror novels of the 1990's.
What makes The Bridge such an essential horror novel? First, Skipp and Spector shred the rules of the genre set up to guide young writers. They have the skills to get away with violating the rules. They create lots of characters and shift point of view all over the place, often using this technique with razor sharp punchlines that end chapters or transition the action from one location to another. They speak directly to the reader often in this novel and some times just slightly break down the fourth wall. Some readers might find this preachy but considering the topic of the novel that doesn't bother me. It excited me that the authors were boldly telling it like it is.
Another aspect that sets The Bridge apart is the obvious heavy lifting Skipp and Spector did in research. This novel came out in 1991, Al Gore had not created the internet. This book has detailed information on toxic waste, pollution, the operation of 911, Hazmat clean-up, on and on. It breathes realism into this novel.
The characters are rich, their motivations believable and the horror climbs a ladder of suspense. As British petroleum creates the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history (40 days in at the time of this writing) The Bridge could not be more relevant for reissue. This is more than just another horror novel: it is an entertaining thrill ride that happens also to be a warning with incredible foresight.
The Bridge is a mass market paperback, and I am afraid that libraries avoid these books. A trade paperback or pretty looking hardcover might do a better job of conveying the importance of this novel, but it should be in every collection. It's that good.
Contains violence, sexuality, drug use and adult themes.
Review by David Agranoff -
This is one of the most disturbing -- and therefore horribly delightful (delightfully horrifying?) -- novels I've ever read. A novelized polemic on the perils of pollution, it's the story of a bridge next to a town with a less-than-honorable sanitation crew who routinely dump hazardous waste of all kinds below the bridge, where it is hidden from view by cliffs rising up from the water. In the grand old tradition of Them!, eventually all that poison begins transmuting the local wildlife and then the townies and those living nearby into the sort of monsters that would give George Pal and Dreamworks lethal heart-attacks. One of the villains, a wealthy man horrified by what's happening to the town and will soon happen to him as a result of his own dirty deals, tries to abort the end of the world before it is barely begun, but ends up accidentally triggering a biohazard version of Armageddon, instead, nukes and all. In the end, as some of the citizens of the area who have been changed into creatures resembling outtakes from the Lovecraftian Mythos set off for Washington, DC for some payback to the politicians whose stupid polices have set the world up for biodisaster, a young hazardous waste management supervisor races home to find his pregnant wife has given birth to a baby girl, then died as a result of the toxins in her system. He picks his newborn daughter up, and finds that her skin is permeated with hot blisters, which, splitting open, release killer wasps that have been incubating in the baby's tissues since early in the pregnancy. His heart broken, bloody tears spilling endlessly down his cheeks, the new father wipes away the wasps, wipes them away, wipes them away in a Sysiphean task that won't end until the girl dies. At the back of the book is a non-fiction list of things that readers can do to help head off ecological meltdown of our world. Apparently the birth of a daughter of one of the authors triggered the creation of this cautionary tale. Not your ordinary horror tale. John Skipp and Craig Spector, who, unfortunately, dissolved their literary partnership some years ago, are well-known as premier authors of horror fiction. They should also be remembered as real-world crusaders for a better, healthier world, for the sake of all our children.
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This science fiction/horror tale is totally agenda driven. It’s about the day that toxic waste, thrown into the creeks, rivers, and earth, become sentient and rise up against humans. It’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer with its message that we are destroying the earth.
Written in 1991, the novel is sited in the town of Paradise, Pennsylvania, a small to medium sized city. It’s large enough to have some industry, and that industry creates waste. So there is a company that deals with relieving businesses of their waste. Problem is, they are not very particular about disposing of said waste. Their subcontractors- redneck yahoos who consider ‘out of sight, out of mind’ a good working plan- aren’t any more particular. One day as they dump 55 gallon drums into the creek, the creek itself- joined with the waste already there- rises up. Then there is the nuclear power plant in the county that is starting to sing to itself as all hell breaks loose…
It’s a very grim novel, with lots of vivid gore; the descriptions of what happens to the humans is revolting. I didn’t realize until after I read the book that they authors are considered splatter punk kings. There are a lot of characters in the book; sometimes it’s hard to keep track of them. Sadly, none are fleshed out at all. They are just puppets doing their jobs for the story. The plot is also lacking. The book is powerful, but still a letdown because of that. -
Wow. And not in a good way. I guess the authors want you to know what happens when you pollute. Reminiscent of Return of the Living Dead (with the sludge, but without the zombies...or not) and a couple of other titles (possible B titles), made this read a jumble of nothing-ness. There was no dread, no fear, and really not even a gross-out moment. I'm seriously disappointed~
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John Skipp once signed this book to me. Between the printed text and his message, it said, "Barry-- The Bridge is by John Skipp & Craig Spector and I hope it F*CKS YOU UP!! Sincerely, Skipp."
He got his wish.
Absurd, nasty, silly, grisly, groan-worthy...and pretty damn well written, too. Now let's never speak of it again. *SHUDDER* -
Knowing nothing about the writing duo of Skipp and Spector before I went into this novel meant I wasn't at all ready for what I got. I had no idea they were considered the kings of splatterpunk in the '80s; I just thought I was reading an ahead-of-its-time novel about an environmental disaster. Sure, I envisioned it to be a horrific environmental disaster, but one involving a living, thinking entity that somehow came out of the illegal dumping of hazardous waste into a river? That threw me.
If you can wrap your head around that one, perhaps you'll enjoy The Bridge. As implied, the idea of humans getting their comeuppance as a result of their near-sighted view of their affect on the world isn't a new one in 2013, but it most certainly was back in 1991 when this work was published. So definite props for that.
Where the book lost me, however, was in its scatter-gunned approach to characterisations. Aside from there simply being too many characters spread through a relatively small amount of pages, most of the major players felt like caricatures, essentially because they so extreme in their behaviours. The evil conglomerate CEO was almost Monty Burns evil, the rebellious teens were taking things so far beyond smoking drugs and having under-age sex that they were immediately unrelatable, and the aspiring journalist who had to make it big was defined by that one point and nothing else. So when these characters start dropping like flies, I struggled to really care.
Thankfully, however, the way they go is often memorable in a gore-soaked kind of way.
For me, the last third of The Bridge redeemed it into being something just north of okay. Having a front row seat to the chaos as it unfolds, through the eyes of the few (and far more manageable number of) remaining protagonists, was actually pretty enjoyable. It's a pity then that by half way through its extremely obvious how things are going to end.
2.5 Bobbing Barrels of Waste for The Bridge. -
Very good horror from this team of writers. I was sorry when they stopped writing together.
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Wow. This book is a bullet to the face if there ever was one. I totally understand the waves this made when originally released as it has lost none of its visceral power. A bona fide genre classic, as relevant today as it was yesterday.
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An eerily unsettling monstrous mutation story that gut punches you with hopelessness. Refreshingly above the curve on the basic end-of-the-world tale, as a detailed fall of man rather than its aftermath.
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More like three and a half
I read The Light at the End by Skipp and Spector back in
October of 2016. I wrote of that novel, "The Light at the End is violent, nasty, and ultimately a meat grinder for its cast" and the same can be applied to The Bridge. Where the former novel fascinated me for its depiction of a dystopic New York City, the latter, with its didactic environmentalism and abundance of characters, frustrated me. When The Bridge is describing its horrors, its wonderfully over-the-top abominations, the novel works for me. When it's introducing yet another character, an inevitable victim for the meat grinder, I was a bit impatient. I wish The Bridge had been a bit longer or a bit shorter. With more room, characterization, something Skipp and Spector are quite good at, could have improved. I guess I keep wondering how and why these two authors could produce something as sweet and caring as Animals but be more well known for obviously inferior stuff like The Bridge. If the Bridge and The Light at the End and The Clean-Up (which I found for 2 bucks at a local bookstore just recently) are what Skipp and Spector are famous for, what influenced and impacted a generation of horror writers, then imagine how much more ahead of the curve they were with Animals, a stupendous exercise in empathy (a key ingredient in effective horror). I still liked The Bridge but I wanted something more or something leaner. At its current length, it's not quite enough or it's too much to be the shock it wants to be. -
These guys put the splatter in splatter-punk. It sounds like a cheap throwaway to write about the gross out, the guts, and the splatter. But to make the reader squirm, feel the gush, and swallow a dry lump is something of an artform.
The premise is simple really. Barrels and barrels of 'stuff' have been getting tossed off a bridge for some time now.
And things begin taking on a life of their own.
The sludge oozes like Frank Zappa warned us about.
The plant life becomes animated by the ooze.
Even the roadway swallows a Hazmat team.
The pacing intensifies to breakneck as the world changing effects take hold.
But the story telling is still there. And there was a lot of facts that were tossed in to make it all too real. This isn't just splatter-punk. It is also an environmental thriller. The reader doesn't need to suspend reality too much with this one. Those looking for redemption will find it squashed horribly. Birth and rebirth come in toxic affronts to humanity.
This is sit-up-and-take-notice horror: the kind that may very well outlive its creators. -
Apocalyptic Horror of Man's Own Making
Didn't give you a character to fully connect, empathize so when The End was happening, it didn't emotionally affect me. All was descriptive horror, disjointed and hopeless.
Also bugged me that the authors,when writing about the Sunday morning religious rituals, included Seventh Day Adventists as a Sunday meeting congregation. My father was a Jaycee and active members are all under 40 yrs of age; whereas, the authors described 50+ year old good ole boys participating in the club.
Overall, the story paints a horrific end to mankind. Could have made it more wrenching if the reader was allowed to really connect to one of the characters. -
Love, love, love this book! A dark cautionary tale about how we are treating the environment wrapped up in a deliciously thick layer of chaos and bats**t insanity. It makes you laugh and then punches you in the gut while you are caught off guard. I really wish I'd gotten the musical soundtrack for the book I'd ordered through mail. Unfortunately, it never arrived (likely due to my being in the military and having a change of bases before the soundtrack arrived in the mail. At least I have a flexi-disc of one song from the soundtrack.
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Visceral, disgusting, horrific, at times even poetic ecological disaster spurned on by the ignorance of mankind. From the splatterpunk masters, this novel does for the toxic avenger what The Light at the End did for the vampire, only with a far higher body count. Well recommended to body horror enthusiasts or even fans of hopeless Lovecraftian apocalypse fiction.
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The best of the best of the best. This was my third time reading Skipp & Spector's The Bridge and it remains one of the best horror novels of all time. This classic 80's splatterpunk novel belongs on the shelf of every true horror fan.
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Probably the scariest book in existence, THE BRIDGE is not only a classic modern horror novel, but a clarion call to environmental action...steps we're only taking now, unfortunately, but at least we're taking them.
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for my money, the scariest thing that sirs Skipp and Spector collaborated on. absolutely terrifying at times, and there's no happy ending here folks. the best eco-horror novel ever, possibly?
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A deliriously savage and cautionary tale about the poisoning of the planet. It has taken me too long to discover this seminal "splatterpunk" novel.
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John Skipp and Craig Spector’s The Bridge is what we call “eco-horror”–a story in which nature and the environment become mankind’s enemy. In this case, our long history of dumping our refuse wherever we can is coming back to haunt us. Boonie and his father and cousin are illegally dumping all sorts of hazardous waste into a river beneath the Black Bridge. When that hazardous spill comes to life and creates the Overmind, it decides to spread its filth as far as it can, taking over everything from machines to people and making them a part of itself.
Engaging the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief is a tricky thing. If the first half of your book is hard SF and then suddenly you interject what we like to call “science fantasy,” readers will hit a wall, because you’ve changed the rules and feel of the universe. In The Bridge, we’re immediately plunged into the idea of a hazardous waste spill developing sentience. It’s established quickly, so we accept that as a part of disbelief that we’re suspending. But when we’re most of the way through the book and suddenly tainted lawn ornaments come to life? That seems to cross an invisible line from where we’ve been up until now, and it kind of took me out of the story a bit. In contrast, the fact that one character practices witchcraft and has a spirit guide is mentioned in passing early on, so when it turns out that she really can do magic, I can grudgingly let it pass (even though it really doesn’t seem to belong in the same genre).
There are a couple of things the authors do that remind me of Stephen King. One is that characters tend to be larger-than-life, exaggerated just shy of cartoonish (mostly). Another is that they interleave and overlap characters, continuously introducing a stream of new people. Some become fodder, some become antagonists, and a very few live long enough to become heroes of a sort. The authors’ “voice” however, is quite different from King’s.
There are some great characters in here. Gary is maybe putting too much extra time in at the local television station, especially considering his very pregnant wife Gwen will give birth any day now. Austin Deitz leads the local largely-volunteer HazMat crew, so he and his people end up on the front lines, even though he’d really prefer to be spending time with his girlfriend of one month, Jennie. Harold Leonard is in charge of the facility that’s supposed to be safely storing all of these hazardous wastes, and he knows perfectly well that Boonie and company have been dumping. So does Werner Blake, the man who seems to have his fingers in all of the local pies, and to whom Leonard unofficially reports. Virtually no one is wholly good; everyone seems to have at least one way in which they’ve fallen short in their lives.
This tale shows its age with Beta tapes and a lack of cell phones, and it works great. This story is a lot of good, plain horrific fun!
Content note: A lot of people in here are not good people, and in a very few instances, that’s evidence by the use of slurs (one racial, one homophobic). They didn’t come across to me as being a stand-in for the authors’ views, but rather intentional characterization. However, I’m not an authority on such things, so if you think they would bother you, you can skip this book. In addition there’s a little bit of sex, a lot of death (including children), a not-insignificant amount of body horror, and a sort of second-hand description of a piece of art that depicts a really gross scene of a baby being killed.
Original review posted on my blog:
https://www.errantdreams.com/2021/06/... -
I love many different kinds of books. After I read some works that are dense non-fiction (lately “A Promised Land,” and “Dark Money”) I want something exciting, fast paced, and edgy. Whoa, did this fit the bill. I discovered John Skipp’s work because Sandy and he were roommates many years ago and remained friends. His tales are horrifying, super bloody (it’s called splatter punk for good reason) and very violent. He goes over the edge. . . and I find it refreshing, brave and blood curdling.
In this book, people have been illegally dumping toxic waste in the local river for years. And now the poison has combined with nature to form a whole new kind of horror. It’s a terrific read, gloriously disgusting in parts, and I couldn’t look away. There’s a lesson here. It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
Also, the authors use the last 15 pages of the book to list the many ways you can help the environment, causes to support, and organizations to join. “The Bridge” came out in 1999 and things have just gotten worse. Let’s hope this fiction never becomes fact. And so, from the gloriously fucked up minds of John Skipp and Craig Specter, I give you...The Bridge! -
Fantastic writing, and such a way with words. Their descriptions were delightfully gruesome, bringing me some great oog (pretend it's a real word) moments. I enjoy splatterpunk, but this is my first eco-horror, so the message felt blatant. There were a lot of characters involved, which made me lose track at some points (of the villains--the good guys felt clearer to me, so there was no confusion. Then again, there were far fewer good guys.) Good range of characters, most of whom stood apart from the others.
