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The Gas
An accident at a secret germ-warfare laboratory allows an aphrodisiac vapor to infect all of Southern England, and within 24 hours the British countryside has exploded into an uncontrollable nightmare of lust, perversion, violence and insanity, as men, women, and children act out their deepest and weirdest obsessions and compulsions in Charles Platt's unique and explicit underground novel of sex and degeneration. Not for the faint-hearted. Adults only.
166 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
Charles Platt
148 books47 followersFrom wikipedia:
Charles Platt (born in London, England, 1945) is the author of 41 fiction and nonfiction books, including science-fiction novels such as The Silicon Man and Protektor (published in paperback by Avon Books). He has also written non-fiction, particularly on the subjects of computer technology and cryonics, as well as teaching and working in these fields. Platt relocated from England to the United States in 1970 and is a naturalized U. S. citizen.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
See:
Charles Platt, born 1869
Charles Platt (born in London, England, 1945) is the author of 41 fiction and nonfiction books, including science-fiction novels such as The Silicon Man and Protektor (published in paperback by Avon Books). He has also written non-fiction, particularly on the subjects of computer technology and cryonics, as well as teaching and working in these fields. Platt relocated from England to the United States in 1970 and is a naturalized U. S. citizen.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
See:
Charles Platt, born 1869
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
December 10, 2014
This novel is notoriously obscene. In 1970 copied were burned! With fire! Even in 1980 when it was reissued police raided the publishers and seized 3000 copies. Obscenity is sometimes said to be in the mind of the beholder, but I would suggest that if you don't think a lot of the sex & violence in this novel is obscene you might need to get help NOW. Therefore, those of a nervous disposition may wish to LOOK AWAY NOW as there may be some vulgar language ahead.
The blurb summarises the plot:
An accident at a secret germ-warfare laboratory allows an aphrodisiac vapor to infect all of Southern England, and within 24 hours the British countryside has exploded into an uncontrollable nightmare of lust, perversion, violence and insanity.
As Woody in Toy Story might say, "ah ha, ha ha ha, ha haaa. Nice one, Potato Head." So, let me give you a flavour of the cascading geyser of vari-coloured bodily fluids we find in here.
p70 : He was wasting time buggering an old insane priest
p84 : "FUCK!" chanted the nuns. "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!"
p109: The budgerigar had been silent during the last hour's fucking and sucking
p153 : Most girls in the pews were masturbating themselves and each other, caught up in a euphoria of blood lust and sex worship as they bounced up and down on the cassocks and hurled Bibles onto the stage.
p160: 'Cut the explanations,' said Vincent. 'There're a thousand sex-crazed girls in that church!'
Now maybe because they couldn't find any regular typesetters for this 166 page spurt of filth, so they had to get some stoned hippy typesetters, I dunno, but there are many delightful typos strewn throughout. Three which particularly appealed were:
p72 : he froamed in exasperation
p109 : "Oh! Oh! Ooooh! It's so food!"
p157: blood still spurted from his would
After all this insane stuffing of orifices I was left slightly reeling. But it was all done with such a kind of studentish obviousness, doggedness and gusto that it was hard to take offence, particulatly as the falt chracters and the craper-thin polt demonstrades that this was nought but a strenousu and imaginitinitive excercise in onamisn.
*****
Addendum :
I found a comment on a website, can't find it now, but anyway, Charles Platt explained that he wrote The Gas when he was about to emigrate to America & he wished to cast off his British reserve because he knew that Americans were extroverts! I mean, there's being an extrovert and there's having sex with animals, and the two should really never ever be confused.
The blurb summarises the plot:
An accident at a secret germ-warfare laboratory allows an aphrodisiac vapor to infect all of Southern England, and within 24 hours the British countryside has exploded into an uncontrollable nightmare of lust, perversion, violence and insanity.
As Woody in Toy Story might say, "ah ha, ha ha ha, ha haaa. Nice one, Potato Head." So, let me give you a flavour of the cascading geyser of vari-coloured bodily fluids we find in here.
p70 : He was wasting time buggering an old insane priest
p84 : "FUCK!" chanted the nuns. "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!"
p109: The budgerigar had been silent during the last hour's fucking and sucking
p153 : Most girls in the pews were masturbating themselves and each other, caught up in a euphoria of blood lust and sex worship as they bounced up and down on the cassocks and hurled Bibles onto the stage.
p160: 'Cut the explanations,' said Vincent. 'There're a thousand sex-crazed girls in that church!'
Now maybe because they couldn't find any regular typesetters for this 166 page spurt of filth, so they had to get some stoned hippy typesetters, I dunno, but there are many delightful typos strewn throughout. Three which particularly appealed were:
p72 : he froamed in exasperation
p109 : "Oh! Oh! Ooooh! It's so food!"
p157: blood still spurted from his would
After all this insane stuffing of orifices I was left slightly reeling. But it was all done with such a kind of studentish obviousness, doggedness and gusto that it was hard to take offence, particulatly as the falt chracters and the craper-thin polt demonstrades that this was nought but a strenousu and imaginitinitive excercise in onamisn.
*****
Addendum :
I found a comment on a website, can't find it now, but anyway, Charles Platt explained that he wrote The Gas when he was about to emigrate to America & he wished to cast off his British reserve because he knew that Americans were extroverts! I mean, there's being an extrovert and there's having sex with animals, and the two should really never ever be confused.
Read
July 25, 2012I really appreciate the comments from people here who read my book and enjoyed it (or otherwise) in the spirit in which it was written. My goal, back in 1970, was to write a book that would be utterly indefensible, as an expression of my hostility (back then) toward the world in general.
April 28, 2021
Full Review
The Gas is a revolting read, but one that certainly has merit. While not as well-crafted as Bataille’s Story of the Eye or Jean de Berg’s The Image, it’s an erotica book that goes beyond being masturbation material. It takes a sometimes funny and often harsh look at repression in society and the horror that lurks underneath institutions of religion, academia, the state, and gender roles. I hope the re-release of Sweet Evil means we’ll be seeing a wider re-release of The Gas sometime soon.
The Gas is a revolting read, but one that certainly has merit. While not as well-crafted as Bataille’s Story of the Eye or Jean de Berg’s The Image, it’s an erotica book that goes beyond being masturbation material. It takes a sometimes funny and often harsh look at repression in society and the horror that lurks underneath institutions of religion, academia, the state, and gender roles. I hope the re-release of Sweet Evil means we’ll be seeing a wider re-release of The Gas sometime soon.
June 4, 2020
This is the most perverted book you'll ever read. Period. It's like somebody heard the Aristocrats joke and thought, "Hey, that would make a great novel."
An accident at a military research facility results in a giant cloud of gas settling over London, a gas that increases hormonal output and decreases impulse control, essentially turning anyone that breathes it into a violent sex-crazed lunatic. The book follows Vincent, a survivor of the initial accident, as he races to pick up his wife and children and escape with them to Scotland before all hell breaks loose. The gas is quicker, however, and Vincent finds himself confronting new people and situations, each one more dangerous and perverse than the last, even as he struggles to resist the overwhelming urges brought on by the gas.
What it all boils down to is a colorful no-holds-barred romp through a world gone sex-crazed and blood-simple. Platt outdoes himself with the range and scope of this crazy mess of sex and violence, all the while giving you believable characters (maybe too believable) and a run-for-your-life adventure that will keep you involved and invested in the outcome. It's also extremely gruesome and repulsive. Every time you think you can't be shocked or caught off guard, another chapter comes up and slaps you in the face. And the ending... don't get me started on the ending. Even in the modern age of "dark web" message boards and erotic fan fiction, this book is guaranteed to surprise you at least once. If that sounds like fun to you, then have at it. But be warned: it gets sticky.
An accident at a military research facility results in a giant cloud of gas settling over London, a gas that increases hormonal output and decreases impulse control, essentially turning anyone that breathes it into a violent sex-crazed lunatic. The book follows Vincent, a survivor of the initial accident, as he races to pick up his wife and children and escape with them to Scotland before all hell breaks loose. The gas is quicker, however, and Vincent finds himself confronting new people and situations, each one more dangerous and perverse than the last, even as he struggles to resist the overwhelming urges brought on by the gas.
What it all boils down to is a colorful no-holds-barred romp through a world gone sex-crazed and blood-simple. Platt outdoes himself with the range and scope of this crazy mess of sex and violence, all the while giving you believable characters (maybe too believable) and a run-for-your-life adventure that will keep you involved and invested in the outcome. It's also extremely gruesome and repulsive. Every time you think you can't be shocked or caught off guard, another chapter comes up and slaps you in the face. And the ending... don't get me started on the ending. Even in the modern age of "dark web" message boards and erotic fan fiction, this book is guaranteed to surprise you at least once. If that sounds like fun to you, then have at it. But be warned: it gets sticky.
January 2, 2008
This is the hottest dirty book I have read. It is porn and literature and social commentary- in an england gone haywire. It pushes boundaries while still remaining sexy. I would put the book down thinking, "Did I really find THAT hot." Yup. It is well written- not boring drivel with the sex as the reason why you continue to read. The science-fiction story is compelling as well as the sex satisfying. You know how some book sex is a tease - this one puts out.
September 22, 2015
Pornographically sublime, a sexual war feast against the senses; it has the potential to be satirical yet, it has the ability to ejaculate such vitriolic language and imagery that can stain any reader's mind. Its amoral context is intriguing, almost Sadean in some places, it's relentlessly gratifying in a repulsive way and Platt enjoys dissecting his canvas (that is the UK) with a paroxysm of scathing proportion. Do read if you like literature that compels and confronts without limit!
March 7, 2016
This book would have made more sense (????) if the gas was just testosterone and not all sex hormones. It's probably for the best that this book is hard to find and I definitely recommend it to no one.
July 13, 2008
Psychotically sexual and depraved. A fun read, if you can find it!
July 18, 2021
Hilariously vile and depraved.
January 9, 2023
Erm…………. This is a filthy book! This is a very sexually explicit book more dirty porn than horror! I can understand why this book is so hard to get! It is certainly not for everyone even if you love horror and you love erotica, this book is on another level!
April 9, 2009
I made the mistake of 'reviewing' this book before I had finished it (in a response to a post about a recommendable biography):
"I´m currently reading a book that´s neither a biography nor recommendable.
In fact I think it´s the most nauseating novel I´ve ever read. The
Gas (1970) by Charles Platt describes what happens to England when an
aphrodisiac gas cloud escapes from the research center where it was
developed as a chemical war tool. It´s not pretty. All sexual inhibitions
fall down like banks and so is pent-up agression.
I´m not sure what Platt was aiming for in this cross between De Sade and
Day of the Triffids. If it was to show the hypocrisy of the stiff upper
lip I don´t think it succeeds, because his catalogue of sexual atrocities
is one big advert for repression. OTOH, you might say that things may not
have been so bad if these people weren´t so repressed in the first place.
But this point is only vaguely made by making the scenes in Cambridge
(filled with frustrated young male students) worse than the others.
It´s darkly funny in parts, though. The sky diving sex scene involving a
priest was amusing.
Best part of the book is Harry Douthwaite´s brightly coloured cover."
Having finished the book, I believe that the cover is the second-best part of the book. BTW, the picture you see with this review shows the 'cover' of the American edition from Loompanics. The one I mean can be seen here:
http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/gas....
That's how a cult book should look like, Loompanics!
The best thing about the book is the ending. Suddenly the sex and violence made sense. And suddenly Platt's motivation didn't seem to be just to write the most disgusting book ever, but to say something about social change. Something very meaningful in my view. (Although it may be old hat in sociological circles.)
"I´m currently reading a book that´s neither a biography nor recommendable.
In fact I think it´s the most nauseating novel I´ve ever read. The
Gas (1970) by Charles Platt describes what happens to England when an
aphrodisiac gas cloud escapes from the research center where it was
developed as a chemical war tool. It´s not pretty. All sexual inhibitions
fall down like banks and so is pent-up agression.
I´m not sure what Platt was aiming for in this cross between De Sade and
Day of the Triffids. If it was to show the hypocrisy of the stiff upper
lip I don´t think it succeeds, because his catalogue of sexual atrocities
is one big advert for repression. OTOH, you might say that things may not
have been so bad if these people weren´t so repressed in the first place.
But this point is only vaguely made by making the scenes in Cambridge
(filled with frustrated young male students) worse than the others.
It´s darkly funny in parts, though. The sky diving sex scene involving a
priest was amusing.
Best part of the book is Harry Douthwaite´s brightly coloured cover."
Having finished the book, I believe that the cover is the second-best part of the book. BTW, the picture you see with this review shows the 'cover' of the American edition from Loompanics. The one I mean can be seen here:
http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/gas....
That's how a cult book should look like, Loompanics!
The best thing about the book is the ending. Suddenly the sex and violence made sense. And suddenly Platt's motivation didn't seem to be just to write the most disgusting book ever, but to say something about social change. Something very meaningful in my view. (Although it may be old hat in sociological circles.)
April 25, 2008
It's porn.
September 15, 2009
This book is brilliant, but disturbing. It's erotica, but it contains virtually every kink known to the species. I really didn't enjoy it, but for some inexplicable reason I'm glad somebody wrote it.
July 24, 2014
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE LIKE THIS?
January 4, 2024
I think the author isn’t getting anywhere near as much credit as he deserves.
The premise is funny, original, and horrifying all at once. I have never seen anything like this done before or since, and it serves as the perfect vehicle for Platt to show us just what kind of animals human beings truly are.
1. CATHY
The novel opens with Vincent driving full speed on an English country road, nervously looking in the rearview mirror. In the distance behind him, a yellow cloud of gas is slowly spreading across the horizon.
Vincent worked at a top secret government chemical weapons lab, where things have gone terribly wrong. A lethal weaponized gas has escaped and is about to cover southern England in its entirety. Vincent is rushing towards London in a last ditch effort to rescue his wife and two kids before the gas hits.
Along the way, Vincent picks up a hitchhiker, Cathy. She’s young, pretty, sexy, innocent, and wholesome. She is also horny as hell, and keeps rubbing up against Vincent as he drives. In spite of the birth control pills Vincent keeps munching on (which counteract the effects of the gas, somewhat), he can’t control himself and he and Cathy have sex repeatedly.
In spite of Cathy being a completely willing sex partner, Vincent feels the need to hurt and humiliate her in a pretty disgusting way.
2. THE TOWN
They then arrive at a town and we begin to gradually see the effects of the gas. People are masturbating on park benches, here and there you see couples having sex in the street and so on. Vincent knocks on the door of the local policeman, who gets turned on by his dog, and begins to masturbate himself while masturbating the dog. He then calls Vincent a pervert for watching him do it, and beats him up, leaving him unconscious on the front lawn.
3. THE PRIEST
The following morning Vincent wakes up and and comes across the townspeople engaging in an orgy in the middle of the road. Vincent and Cathy carjack a horrified, elderly priest and drive over the crowd to escape them. The priest is not quite as affected by the Gas yet, as he is in his mid-60s. Cathy’s ties up and sexually assaults the horrified old man, who keeps crying and praying, and begging her to stop… then babbles about seeing God as he climaxes.
4. THE AIRPORT
Vincent decides to try to get to the airport to hijack a small plane. Apparently he was in the military or something and has a pilot’s license. He reasons that the presence of a priest with them will help them get past security.
Vincent and his ragtag crew manage to fight their way through the crowd, hijack a small airplane and take off towards London (or away from London, to where his wife is… I lose track).
5. ON THE PLANE
On the plane Vincent sets a course for home. He’s pretty rough with Cathy, who keeps trying to have sex with him while he pilots the plane. She tries to take over the controls and Vincent violently shoves her towards the back… Where she immediately proceeds to fuck the priest once again.
After putting the plane on track on automatic pilot, Vincent goes towards the back and tries to put on parachutes on Vincent and Cathy, but the priest simply will not stop fucking. Vincent is so annoyed he grabs a grease gun, shoves it up the priest’s ass and pumps him full of grease. Then, tossing the grease gun aside, Vincent grabs the priest and attempts to “bugger him to death”.
He then tosses the two off the air plane and jumps after them. The trio parachute gently down to the quiet London suburb and walk towards Vincent’s home.
6. FAMILY REUNION
Vincent is finally reunited with his wife Judith and his two kids, Annette (13) and Malcolm (14). Judith is initially skeptical of Cathy and the priest, but is happy to see Vincent home again. Judith has packed the station wagon with supplies as well as some syringes with doses of male and female hormones to counteract (a little) the effects of the gas. Thus prepared, the group sets off, heading north, towards safety.
Cathy’s brother Edmond is a science student in Cambridge, which happens to be along the way, so that will be their first destination.
7. THE NUNS
Our heroes then come across a 13-year-old boy known for being a reclusive science-fiction town. The boy is taking a dump on the side of the road, wiping his ass with his comic book collection, then eating his own feces. Our heroes, then reach a convent where the nurses have gone wild. They are out on the street in front of the convent participating in a very rigid and ritualized orgy, involving their gardener, a priest, and about 50 nuns. The family drives on.
8. BARRICADE
On the way out of town, the gang come across a barricade the police have set up. Although initially somewhat rational, the cops turn out to be sex crazed psychopaths and Vincent has to crash the car through the barricade, injuring, or maybe killing a couple of cops in the process.
9. EDMOND
The family reaches Cambridge. Cathy’s brother Edmond is renting a room in the home of a middle aged lady called Mrs. Dunnell. She is unmarried and lives alone with her poodle and Edmond. Edmond is a rather aloof and unpleasant science student. After a bit of awkward chitchat over tea and biscuits (where Mrs. Dunnell reveals the Gas has turned her into a bit of a sex starved weirdo), Edmond takes Cathy upstairs to “show her his room”. A few minutes later, the screams begin.
Vincent runs upstairs and kicks down the door to discover Edmond has Cathy tied up to some mechanical contraption. He is using the controllers on the device to move Cathy around while he sexually assaults her. Mrs. Dunnell is horrified and calls her a “hussy”, accusing her of seducing poor Edmond. Vincent releases Cathy, who runs outside and drives off with the family station wagon and all their supplies.
10. THE BIG BANG!
The family then sits in Mrs. Dunnell’s living room, contemplating their next move. The priest hangs out nearby, having a snack, while Edmond and his landlady discuss the strange events they’ve been witnessing around Cambridge. As you might imagine, the scene gradually turns into an orgy, with Vincent, his wife, his children, the priest, Edmund and his landlady all taking turns going at each other.
Mrs. Dunnell is as relentlessly annoying as she is boring. She keeps trying to monopolize Edmund’s sexual attention. Edumund does just about every disgusting thing you can possibly imagine to this woman. He gets her to commit gruesome acts of bestiality with her poodle and her pet bird (the latter suffocates inside one of Mrs. Dunnell’s orifices), he defecates on her, then… well you get the idea. By the time he’s done, she’s completely covered in vomit, urine, feces, and just about every other bodily fluid you can imagine. The entire time she is resisting, only to give in passionately, then resisting again, then giving in again. Then, finally, he decides to give her “the big bang” he has been promising her for days. She’s excited, she’s begging for it (clearly she has no idea what’s coming). Edmond then goes to his room and comes back with a pipe bomb, which he shoves inside Mrs. Dunnell’s rectum, blowing her to pieces.
Everyone is shocked, but not shocked enough to stop the incestuous orgy.
Then Edmond, in a scene that could’ve been lifted right out of the Benny Hill show, grabs Judith, hops on his bicycle, and rides off towards the University.
11. CAMBRIDGE
Horrified, Vincent, Annette, and Malcolm watch Edmund ride off into Cambridge with Judith thrown over his shoulder. Their station wagon is gone, and the mad priest has locked himself in the house with the blown up remains of Mrs. Dunnell (except for one leg, which the poodle has run off with).
Vincent sets off towards the campus with his kids in tow. Almost immediately they come across a playground, where a bunch of half naked children are running around like feral creatures doing all kinds of things to each other. Annette and Malcolm ask their dad if they can go play.
“Of course!“ he replies, “I think I’ll join you.“
But the moment he steps into the playground, the playground kids attack Vincent and toss him over the side. No grownups allowed. The kids leave Vincent unconscious by the river.
12. THE ROWING TEAM
Vincent wakes up to the sound of a rowing team training on the river. When he looks up he sees the Cambridge rowing team on their long canoe (or whatever they called those boats). Half the team is bent over, with their butts in the air, the other half is busy sodomizing their teammates. The coxswain shouts commands at them through a megaphone (the coxswain is a double amputee, and is missing both his legs). One! Two! One! Two!
Vincent calls them over and asks if they have seen the science student who kidnapped his wife. The team of athletic rowers agree to help Vincent get his wife back, so long as they can get a piece of the action. The coxswain, of course, is totally not on board with the idea and yells at them that they need to keep training. So they just take all the rows and kick the boat down the river, leaving the poor legless guy stranded as he floats downstream.
13. THE SCIENCE STUDENTS
Rather than indulging in sexual depravity and debauchery like everybody else has been doing, the science nerds are conducting grotesque and violent science experiments on the bodies of captured women. The women are shaken to death in convoluted machines, cut into pieces, have their skin ripped off, limbs amputated, and on and on. All the while the science students take notes and make calculations.
Vincent and his new friends make their way through the gruesome torture carnival, slapping science students around, looking for Judith. When they finally make it to the psychology department, the door is rigged. Vincent and the rowing team are knocked out by sleeping gas.
14. PSYCH WARD
When Vincent wakes up, he is in a strange white room. The door opens, and Judith comes in. I forget exactly what happens next, somehow she ends up laughing at him. She ridicules and belittles him or something like that. In any event, he ends up beating her to death, and all the while she continues laughing at him. He keeps assaulting the corpse until he turns her into hamburger.
Then, bizarrely, Mrs. Dunnell appears, alive as ever. The two start having sex, then, for whatever reason (I forget the details), he ends up stabbing her to death, chopping her into pieces, then chopping the pieces into little pieces. This is when he realizes that none of this could be really happening, somehow he must be hallucinating the entire thing. So if he turns the knife on himself. The moment the knife goes less than half an inch into his chest, he wakes up.
It turns out that Edmond had been conducting psych experiments on him. The women Vincent had killed were not who they had appeared to be. Vincent was simply the victim of drug induced post hypnotic hallucinations.
Edmond allows Vincent to be reunited with Judith, who is completely unharmed. Apparently, Edmond’s only interest in her was that her physique displayed the perfect proportions for the average British woman or something. Having already gathered all the data he needed, Edmond lets Vincent and Judith go… but only after allowing the rowing team to have their way with Vincent’s wife. Judith appears to have enjoyed the experience immensely.
15. CHURCH OF THE PSYCHO GIRLS
As luck would have it, Edmond had also recovered the family station wagon with all the supplies. Apparently Cathy had abandoned it. Judith and Vincent pick up the kids at the playground and head for the station wagon. All is right with the world.
Unfortunately for Vincent, he lingers around the playground a little bit too long while his family heads for the car. Out of nowhere, Cathy and another demented girl leap out of the bushes and grab Vincent. They drag him kicking and screaming to a nearby church, were 1000 deranged and screeching teenage girls are having an insane and violent ritual to the sound of blasting rock music.
The pile of mangled male corpses at the foot of the altar reveals that the girls have been kidnapping and torturing men to death all afternoon. Cathy is thrilled to have gotten her hands on Vincent, finally. She means to make his death slow and painful. Just as she is about to carve him up like a Christmas turkey with a long, curved sword, the priest bursts through the church doors. He denounces the girls, telling them they are all the victims of demonic possession. He grabs hold of the heavy, 6 foot tall crucifix and brings it crashing down on Cathy’s skull, pounding it to mush.
The girls all go wild and attack the priest and in the chaos Vincent grabs one of the bell tower ropes, swings across the room and out the window, where Judith and the kids are waiting in the car. The girls come crawling out the windows of the church by the hundreds like something out of a zombie movie, and, for some unexplained reason, the entire church comes crashing down.
16. CONCLUSION
In the next chapter, we find the family driving north on the Scottish countryside. Vincent and Judith are delighted to discover the effects of the gas finally wearing off. It’s been a rough couple of days, Vincent is still covered in dried blood from head to toe. The family pulls over to the side of the road to take a rest. Vincent claims in the back seat with Annabel, while Malcolm goes in the front with his mom. The parents instantly begin having sex with their children.
Vincent is relieved when he realizes the gas has had no long-term permanent effects after all.
The end.
________________________________
REVIEW
All of this vomit, shit, piss, sex, blood and violence is pretty overwhelming, and it tends to obscure the actual story going on beneath the surface. What this monstrosity of a novel is, very clearly, is a late 1960s, counterculture protest novel. A decade earlier a similar countercultural movement inspired William Burrough’s Naked Lunch. Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, Logan‘s Run all came out of this counterculture as well.
There’s a theme running through all of these novels and movies. Many young people who grew up being told that their society was the pinnacle of culture, morality, and civilization, and yet they were witnessing with their own eyes the brutality, hypocrisy and violence these same societies were perpetrating.
CHARLES PLATT ON FREUD’S COUCH
Look at it this way, say we were the writer’s, psychoanalyst, and instead of a novel this was actually a dream the author had, and you were asked to help interpret it, how would we go about it?
The first thing I would say is that this guy has a hell of a lot of anger. The entire thing reads like a prolonged Primal Scream. At first impression you would think he hates absolutely everyone and everything, but when you take a closer look you notice different characters and institutions are treated very differently in this “dream”.
CATHY
The first character the narrator (pretty much a stand in for the author) comes across is Cathy. She is the young, pretty, sweet, and innocent “girl next door”. Right off the bat, the narrator starts abusing and degrading her, even before the aggression effects of the gas kick in… which means, to me, the author already had it in for this “archetype” from the beginning. What the hell does this poor girl do to deserve all this abuse? Nothing, as far as I can, tell, other than make herself a perpetual annoyance with her sexual advances. She is constantly throwing herself at the narrator, groping at him and making a nuisance of herself when he’s trying to drive or pilot the plane. She also seems incapable of rational thought. Occasionally Vincent tries to explain to her what’s going on, but she’s either not interested, or goes off in some wild, delusional tangent.
What’s interesting is that during the dream sequence, and in the final confrontation, she is no longer silly, she has a dangerous, psychopathic, all powerful force of destruction.
JUDITH
But not all women get the same treatment. Judith doesn’t get humiliated at all. Yeah, sure, she gets gangbanged by the rowing team, but overall they are presented as good blogs, and anyway, she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed it. More than that, after it’s all over, and she’s basking in the afterglow, she tells Vincent “you were wonderful!“ so in a way even getting gangbanged by eight buff dudes isn’t enough to tarnish her. After all, in her mind, she was only doing it with Vincent.
Whatever is going on here, it’s more complicated than straight up hatred of women. I mean, of course it’s misogynistic, but there’s also a classic “Madonna/whore“ dichotomy going on here. Cathy is degraded, humiliated, and eventually gets her head bashed in with a giant crucifix, but Judith gets treated with kids gloves. Seems to me the one institution in society that gets treated with reverence in the novel is the nuclear family.
MRS. DUNNELL
Poor Mrs. Dunnell is not so lucky. She is by far treat it worse than any other character. Even her corpse is not spared. In fact, even after she’s dead, Platt drags her back out of the grave so Vincent can tear her to pieces again.
So what exactly did Mrs. Dunnell do to deserve being treated this way? She is tedious, annoying and boring. When you think about it, she has all of the negative qualities Cathy displays, but without Cathy’s attractiveness and sexuality. Cathy’s advances are arousing and irresistible. Mrs. Dunnell’s are repulsive. Could it be that Mrs. Dunnell’s character is actually an older version of Cathy, after she has lost her youth, attractiveness and sexual allure?
All of this reminds me of Robert Crumb’s comics. In page after page Crumb’s neuroses, anxieties and insecurities towards women and sex come through with all the subtlety of a chainsaw.
THE PRIEST
Another character that comes in for a great deal of humiliating degradation is the priest. Interestingly, though, he has not presented as a hypocrite. Throughout the novel, he is struggling with his inherent animal passions. He is brokenhearted at his inability to control himself. In the orgy scene at Mrs. Dunnell house he is actually quite kind and gentle with Annette and Malcolm, teaching them what to do (OK fine, it’s the kind of thing that will get you targeted by the FBI and the team of To Catch a Predator, but still…).
THE LAST CHAPTER
I notice a pattern that keeps getting played out throughout the novel. On the one hand, you have rationality and authority, trying to impose themselves (the church, the police, Cambridge, the rowing team, coaxman, the science department.) On the other, we have relentless animal, passions of lust and violence.
By the end of the novel, Vincent and his family no longer have access to the hormone injection to try to suppress the effects of the gas. They are in Scotland, having a peaceful moment after their adventures… and of course, are engaging in incest and pedophilia. But this isn’t presented like the last scene in a horror movie, like what you would see at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Instead, it’s a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek happy ending. Vincent and Judith have finally reconciled that painful tension between rationality and animal passions.
CONCLUSION
“The best lack all conviction, the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”
My 20 year old nephew is feeling overwhelmed and dismayed these days. He thinks absolutely everything going on in society is a sham and lie. His sentiments of anxiety and despair are reflected back at him in the lectures of Jordan Peterson, and he’s becoming angry and rebellious. One moment he’s praising Trump, the next he’s denouncing the genocides unleashed by the military industrial complex.
Seems to me that if my nephew were to write a novel, it would read a lot like the one Charles Platt wrote four decades ago. For that alone, The Gas deserves another look.
The premise is funny, original, and horrifying all at once. I have never seen anything like this done before or since, and it serves as the perfect vehicle for Platt to show us just what kind of animals human beings truly are.
1. CATHY
The novel opens with Vincent driving full speed on an English country road, nervously looking in the rearview mirror. In the distance behind him, a yellow cloud of gas is slowly spreading across the horizon.
Vincent worked at a top secret government chemical weapons lab, where things have gone terribly wrong. A lethal weaponized gas has escaped and is about to cover southern England in its entirety. Vincent is rushing towards London in a last ditch effort to rescue his wife and two kids before the gas hits.
Along the way, Vincent picks up a hitchhiker, Cathy. She’s young, pretty, sexy, innocent, and wholesome. She is also horny as hell, and keeps rubbing up against Vincent as he drives. In spite of the birth control pills Vincent keeps munching on (which counteract the effects of the gas, somewhat), he can’t control himself and he and Cathy have sex repeatedly.
In spite of Cathy being a completely willing sex partner, Vincent feels the need to hurt and humiliate her in a pretty disgusting way.
2. THE TOWN
They then arrive at a town and we begin to gradually see the effects of the gas. People are masturbating on park benches, here and there you see couples having sex in the street and so on. Vincent knocks on the door of the local policeman, who gets turned on by his dog, and begins to masturbate himself while masturbating the dog. He then calls Vincent a pervert for watching him do it, and beats him up, leaving him unconscious on the front lawn.
3. THE PRIEST
The following morning Vincent wakes up and and comes across the townspeople engaging in an orgy in the middle of the road. Vincent and Cathy carjack a horrified, elderly priest and drive over the crowd to escape them. The priest is not quite as affected by the Gas yet, as he is in his mid-60s. Cathy’s ties up and sexually assaults the horrified old man, who keeps crying and praying, and begging her to stop… then babbles about seeing God as he climaxes.
4. THE AIRPORT
Vincent decides to try to get to the airport to hijack a small plane. Apparently he was in the military or something and has a pilot’s license. He reasons that the presence of a priest with them will help them get past security.
Vincent and his ragtag crew manage to fight their way through the crowd, hijack a small airplane and take off towards London (or away from London, to where his wife is… I lose track).
5. ON THE PLANE
On the plane Vincent sets a course for home. He’s pretty rough with Cathy, who keeps trying to have sex with him while he pilots the plane. She tries to take over the controls and Vincent violently shoves her towards the back… Where she immediately proceeds to fuck the priest once again.
After putting the plane on track on automatic pilot, Vincent goes towards the back and tries to put on parachutes on Vincent and Cathy, but the priest simply will not stop fucking. Vincent is so annoyed he grabs a grease gun, shoves it up the priest’s ass and pumps him full of grease. Then, tossing the grease gun aside, Vincent grabs the priest and attempts to “bugger him to death”.
He then tosses the two off the air plane and jumps after them. The trio parachute gently down to the quiet London suburb and walk towards Vincent’s home.
6. FAMILY REUNION
Vincent is finally reunited with his wife Judith and his two kids, Annette (13) and Malcolm (14). Judith is initially skeptical of Cathy and the priest, but is happy to see Vincent home again. Judith has packed the station wagon with supplies as well as some syringes with doses of male and female hormones to counteract (a little) the effects of the gas. Thus prepared, the group sets off, heading north, towards safety.
Cathy’s brother Edmond is a science student in Cambridge, which happens to be along the way, so that will be their first destination.
7. THE NUNS
Our heroes then come across a 13-year-old boy known for being a reclusive science-fiction town. The boy is taking a dump on the side of the road, wiping his ass with his comic book collection, then eating his own feces. Our heroes, then reach a convent where the nurses have gone wild. They are out on the street in front of the convent participating in a very rigid and ritualized orgy, involving their gardener, a priest, and about 50 nuns. The family drives on.
8. BARRICADE
On the way out of town, the gang come across a barricade the police have set up. Although initially somewhat rational, the cops turn out to be sex crazed psychopaths and Vincent has to crash the car through the barricade, injuring, or maybe killing a couple of cops in the process.
9. EDMOND
The family reaches Cambridge. Cathy’s brother Edmond is renting a room in the home of a middle aged lady called Mrs. Dunnell. She is unmarried and lives alone with her poodle and Edmond. Edmond is a rather aloof and unpleasant science student. After a bit of awkward chitchat over tea and biscuits (where Mrs. Dunnell reveals the Gas has turned her into a bit of a sex starved weirdo), Edmond takes Cathy upstairs to “show her his room”. A few minutes later, the screams begin.
Vincent runs upstairs and kicks down the door to discover Edmond has Cathy tied up to some mechanical contraption. He is using the controllers on the device to move Cathy around while he sexually assaults her. Mrs. Dunnell is horrified and calls her a “hussy”, accusing her of seducing poor Edmond. Vincent releases Cathy, who runs outside and drives off with the family station wagon and all their supplies.
10. THE BIG BANG!
The family then sits in Mrs. Dunnell’s living room, contemplating their next move. The priest hangs out nearby, having a snack, while Edmond and his landlady discuss the strange events they’ve been witnessing around Cambridge. As you might imagine, the scene gradually turns into an orgy, with Vincent, his wife, his children, the priest, Edmund and his landlady all taking turns going at each other.
Mrs. Dunnell is as relentlessly annoying as she is boring. She keeps trying to monopolize Edmund’s sexual attention. Edumund does just about every disgusting thing you can possibly imagine to this woman. He gets her to commit gruesome acts of bestiality with her poodle and her pet bird (the latter suffocates inside one of Mrs. Dunnell’s orifices), he defecates on her, then… well you get the idea. By the time he’s done, she’s completely covered in vomit, urine, feces, and just about every other bodily fluid you can imagine. The entire time she is resisting, only to give in passionately, then resisting again, then giving in again. Then, finally, he decides to give her “the big bang” he has been promising her for days. She’s excited, she’s begging for it (clearly she has no idea what’s coming). Edmond then goes to his room and comes back with a pipe bomb, which he shoves inside Mrs. Dunnell’s rectum, blowing her to pieces.
Everyone is shocked, but not shocked enough to stop the incestuous orgy.
Then Edmond, in a scene that could’ve been lifted right out of the Benny Hill show, grabs Judith, hops on his bicycle, and rides off towards the University.
11. CAMBRIDGE
Horrified, Vincent, Annette, and Malcolm watch Edmund ride off into Cambridge with Judith thrown over his shoulder. Their station wagon is gone, and the mad priest has locked himself in the house with the blown up remains of Mrs. Dunnell (except for one leg, which the poodle has run off with).
Vincent sets off towards the campus with his kids in tow. Almost immediately they come across a playground, where a bunch of half naked children are running around like feral creatures doing all kinds of things to each other. Annette and Malcolm ask their dad if they can go play.
“Of course!“ he replies, “I think I’ll join you.“
But the moment he steps into the playground, the playground kids attack Vincent and toss him over the side. No grownups allowed. The kids leave Vincent unconscious by the river.
12. THE ROWING TEAM
Vincent wakes up to the sound of a rowing team training on the river. When he looks up he sees the Cambridge rowing team on their long canoe (or whatever they called those boats). Half the team is bent over, with their butts in the air, the other half is busy sodomizing their teammates. The coxswain shouts commands at them through a megaphone (the coxswain is a double amputee, and is missing both his legs). One! Two! One! Two!
Vincent calls them over and asks if they have seen the science student who kidnapped his wife. The team of athletic rowers agree to help Vincent get his wife back, so long as they can get a piece of the action. The coxswain, of course, is totally not on board with the idea and yells at them that they need to keep training. So they just take all the rows and kick the boat down the river, leaving the poor legless guy stranded as he floats downstream.
13. THE SCIENCE STUDENTS
Rather than indulging in sexual depravity and debauchery like everybody else has been doing, the science nerds are conducting grotesque and violent science experiments on the bodies of captured women. The women are shaken to death in convoluted machines, cut into pieces, have their skin ripped off, limbs amputated, and on and on. All the while the science students take notes and make calculations.
Vincent and his new friends make their way through the gruesome torture carnival, slapping science students around, looking for Judith. When they finally make it to the psychology department, the door is rigged. Vincent and the rowing team are knocked out by sleeping gas.
14. PSYCH WARD
When Vincent wakes up, he is in a strange white room. The door opens, and Judith comes in. I forget exactly what happens next, somehow she ends up laughing at him. She ridicules and belittles him or something like that. In any event, he ends up beating her to death, and all the while she continues laughing at him. He keeps assaulting the corpse until he turns her into hamburger.
Then, bizarrely, Mrs. Dunnell appears, alive as ever. The two start having sex, then, for whatever reason (I forget the details), he ends up stabbing her to death, chopping her into pieces, then chopping the pieces into little pieces. This is when he realizes that none of this could be really happening, somehow he must be hallucinating the entire thing. So if he turns the knife on himself. The moment the knife goes less than half an inch into his chest, he wakes up.
It turns out that Edmond had been conducting psych experiments on him. The women Vincent had killed were not who they had appeared to be. Vincent was simply the victim of drug induced post hypnotic hallucinations.
Edmond allows Vincent to be reunited with Judith, who is completely unharmed. Apparently, Edmond’s only interest in her was that her physique displayed the perfect proportions for the average British woman or something. Having already gathered all the data he needed, Edmond lets Vincent and Judith go… but only after allowing the rowing team to have their way with Vincent’s wife. Judith appears to have enjoyed the experience immensely.
15. CHURCH OF THE PSYCHO GIRLS
As luck would have it, Edmond had also recovered the family station wagon with all the supplies. Apparently Cathy had abandoned it. Judith and Vincent pick up the kids at the playground and head for the station wagon. All is right with the world.
Unfortunately for Vincent, he lingers around the playground a little bit too long while his family heads for the car. Out of nowhere, Cathy and another demented girl leap out of the bushes and grab Vincent. They drag him kicking and screaming to a nearby church, were 1000 deranged and screeching teenage girls are having an insane and violent ritual to the sound of blasting rock music.
The pile of mangled male corpses at the foot of the altar reveals that the girls have been kidnapping and torturing men to death all afternoon. Cathy is thrilled to have gotten her hands on Vincent, finally. She means to make his death slow and painful. Just as she is about to carve him up like a Christmas turkey with a long, curved sword, the priest bursts through the church doors. He denounces the girls, telling them they are all the victims of demonic possession. He grabs hold of the heavy, 6 foot tall crucifix and brings it crashing down on Cathy’s skull, pounding it to mush.
The girls all go wild and attack the priest and in the chaos Vincent grabs one of the bell tower ropes, swings across the room and out the window, where Judith and the kids are waiting in the car. The girls come crawling out the windows of the church by the hundreds like something out of a zombie movie, and, for some unexplained reason, the entire church comes crashing down.
16. CONCLUSION
In the next chapter, we find the family driving north on the Scottish countryside. Vincent and Judith are delighted to discover the effects of the gas finally wearing off. It’s been a rough couple of days, Vincent is still covered in dried blood from head to toe. The family pulls over to the side of the road to take a rest. Vincent claims in the back seat with Annabel, while Malcolm goes in the front with his mom. The parents instantly begin having sex with their children.
Vincent is relieved when he realizes the gas has had no long-term permanent effects after all.
The end.
________________________________
REVIEW
All of this vomit, shit, piss, sex, blood and violence is pretty overwhelming, and it tends to obscure the actual story going on beneath the surface. What this monstrosity of a novel is, very clearly, is a late 1960s, counterculture protest novel. A decade earlier a similar countercultural movement inspired William Burrough’s Naked Lunch. Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, Logan‘s Run all came out of this counterculture as well.
There’s a theme running through all of these novels and movies. Many young people who grew up being told that their society was the pinnacle of culture, morality, and civilization, and yet they were witnessing with their own eyes the brutality, hypocrisy and violence these same societies were perpetrating.
CHARLES PLATT ON FREUD’S COUCH
Look at it this way, say we were the writer’s, psychoanalyst, and instead of a novel this was actually a dream the author had, and you were asked to help interpret it, how would we go about it?
The first thing I would say is that this guy has a hell of a lot of anger. The entire thing reads like a prolonged Primal Scream. At first impression you would think he hates absolutely everyone and everything, but when you take a closer look you notice different characters and institutions are treated very differently in this “dream”.
CATHY
The first character the narrator (pretty much a stand in for the author) comes across is Cathy. She is the young, pretty, sweet, and innocent “girl next door”. Right off the bat, the narrator starts abusing and degrading her, even before the aggression effects of the gas kick in… which means, to me, the author already had it in for this “archetype” from the beginning. What the hell does this poor girl do to deserve all this abuse? Nothing, as far as I can, tell, other than make herself a perpetual annoyance with her sexual advances. She is constantly throwing herself at the narrator, groping at him and making a nuisance of herself when he’s trying to drive or pilot the plane. She also seems incapable of rational thought. Occasionally Vincent tries to explain to her what’s going on, but she’s either not interested, or goes off in some wild, delusional tangent.
What’s interesting is that during the dream sequence, and in the final confrontation, she is no longer silly, she has a dangerous, psychopathic, all powerful force of destruction.
JUDITH
But not all women get the same treatment. Judith doesn’t get humiliated at all. Yeah, sure, she gets gangbanged by the rowing team, but overall they are presented as good blogs, and anyway, she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed it. More than that, after it’s all over, and she’s basking in the afterglow, she tells Vincent “you were wonderful!“ so in a way even getting gangbanged by eight buff dudes isn’t enough to tarnish her. After all, in her mind, she was only doing it with Vincent.
Whatever is going on here, it’s more complicated than straight up hatred of women. I mean, of course it’s misogynistic, but there’s also a classic “Madonna/whore“ dichotomy going on here. Cathy is degraded, humiliated, and eventually gets her head bashed in with a giant crucifix, but Judith gets treated with kids gloves. Seems to me the one institution in society that gets treated with reverence in the novel is the nuclear family.
MRS. DUNNELL
Poor Mrs. Dunnell is not so lucky. She is by far treat it worse than any other character. Even her corpse is not spared. In fact, even after she’s dead, Platt drags her back out of the grave so Vincent can tear her to pieces again.
So what exactly did Mrs. Dunnell do to deserve being treated this way? She is tedious, annoying and boring. When you think about it, she has all of the negative qualities Cathy displays, but without Cathy’s attractiveness and sexuality. Cathy’s advances are arousing and irresistible. Mrs. Dunnell’s are repulsive. Could it be that Mrs. Dunnell’s character is actually an older version of Cathy, after she has lost her youth, attractiveness and sexual allure?
All of this reminds me of Robert Crumb’s comics. In page after page Crumb’s neuroses, anxieties and insecurities towards women and sex come through with all the subtlety of a chainsaw.
THE PRIEST
Another character that comes in for a great deal of humiliating degradation is the priest. Interestingly, though, he has not presented as a hypocrite. Throughout the novel, he is struggling with his inherent animal passions. He is brokenhearted at his inability to control himself. In the orgy scene at Mrs. Dunnell house he is actually quite kind and gentle with Annette and Malcolm, teaching them what to do (OK fine, it’s the kind of thing that will get you targeted by the FBI and the team of To Catch a Predator, but still…).
THE LAST CHAPTER
I notice a pattern that keeps getting played out throughout the novel. On the one hand, you have rationality and authority, trying to impose themselves (the church, the police, Cambridge, the rowing team, coaxman, the science department.) On the other, we have relentless animal, passions of lust and violence.
By the end of the novel, Vincent and his family no longer have access to the hormone injection to try to suppress the effects of the gas. They are in Scotland, having a peaceful moment after their adventures… and of course, are engaging in incest and pedophilia. But this isn’t presented like the last scene in a horror movie, like what you would see at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Instead, it’s a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek happy ending. Vincent and Judith have finally reconciled that painful tension between rationality and animal passions.
CONCLUSION
“The best lack all conviction, the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”
My 20 year old nephew is feeling overwhelmed and dismayed these days. He thinks absolutely everything going on in society is a sham and lie. His sentiments of anxiety and despair are reflected back at him in the lectures of Jordan Peterson, and he’s becoming angry and rebellious. One moment he’s praising Trump, the next he’s denouncing the genocides unleashed by the military industrial complex.
Seems to me that if my nephew were to write a novel, it would read a lot like the one Charles Platt wrote four decades ago. For that alone, The Gas deserves another look.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2021
Profoundly wicked, depraved, perverse, horrific, blasphemous. Breaks so very many taboos. I loved it.
What if a sex-urge-intensifying gas was released willy nilly into the English atmosphere, where it affected every human being and also lots of mammals? What if they lost all their inhibitions regarding sex and also violence?
The answer is The Gas. I'm so very happy to finally get a copy for myself. I'd heard a lot about it but only recently found it available online.
It's like someone turned a fiery nuclear bomb into a gaseous sex bomb. Instead of apocalyptic fantasies about everyone burning to death in an explosion, we get an apocalyptic fantasy of everyone fucking everything else to exhaustion (and sometimes death).
I'm very grateful to Charles Platt for writing it.
What if a sex-urge-intensifying gas was released willy nilly into the English atmosphere, where it affected every human being and also lots of mammals? What if they lost all their inhibitions regarding sex and also violence?
The answer is The Gas. I'm so very happy to finally get a copy for myself. I'd heard a lot about it but only recently found it available online.
It's like someone turned a fiery nuclear bomb into a gaseous sex bomb. Instead of apocalyptic fantasies about everyone burning to death in an explosion, we get an apocalyptic fantasy of everyone fucking everything else to exhaustion (and sometimes death).
I'm very grateful to Charles Platt for writing it.
April 25, 2008
Absolutely filthy. There is something to repulse everyone here. This is well-written but extreme and often objectionable pornography by SF writer Charles Platt. A weaponized gas makes everyone who inhales it irrationally horny and then psychotically violent. This book is notorious. On second thought, maybe you shouldn't read it. Don't blame me if you do, though.
Want to read
December 17, 2008Where can I get a copy of this?
December 15, 2009
The most shocking book I`ve ever read but still a fine book. I wont ever read it again but I`m glad I did.
May 25, 2021
A way over the top novel. Definitely not for everyone.
August 28, 2021
I knew it was going to be outrageous, but I didn't realise quite how extreme it would be.
May 1, 2020
A satire on Bataille and De Sade, this book is one that I found to be crude. Yet the images within it and the slight edge of absurdity presented are ones that will stay with you for a long time.
A lot of edge in this book such as incestuous themes and themes sexually mocking religion are heavy here and i think those are why it caused the book to become rare over time. This book is the only reason why I can brag about reading an erotica that was worth almost 800.00 to other though (though it was lent out to me). I am not at all surprised at the quality to go along with such a price either.
Shocking erotica will always have a special place in my heart. This one is shockingly funny in some parts. Other parts the humor comes from the thick and heavy writing to really drive the point home.
A lot of edge in this book such as incestuous themes and themes sexually mocking religion are heavy here and i think those are why it caused the book to become rare over time. This book is the only reason why I can brag about reading an erotica that was worth almost 800.00 to other though (though it was lent out to me). I am not at all surprised at the quality to go along with such a price either.
Shocking erotica will always have a special place in my heart. This one is shockingly funny in some parts. Other parts the humor comes from the thick and heavy writing to really drive the point home.
June 18, 2021
Hmmm….
That was a ‘one-sitting’ book, started later one evening and finished at 2am the next morning. I think if I had put the book down I probably wouldn’t have picked it back up on another evening, but it was difficult to put down once I had started.
I wouldn’t want to leave this book around for one of the kids to pick up and skim thru; it’s very explicit and there’s extreme and often degrading sex on most pages.
It skirted round the edges of what could have been a genuinely thoughtful exploration of the often close relationship between how men and women explore power and sex, submission and domination. Instead, it was sheer splatter-punk sex with a thin veneer of storyline. I did enjoy the explanation of what ‘The Gas’ was and how it had come to be. I also thought the ending was rather clever. I can’t say nothing about that tho’ without it being a spoiler and as there aren’t many genuine ‘ideas’ in the book, it would be wrong to give it away.
To be filed away on the top shelf after reading…
That was a ‘one-sitting’ book, started later one evening and finished at 2am the next morning. I think if I had put the book down I probably wouldn’t have picked it back up on another evening, but it was difficult to put down once I had started.
I wouldn’t want to leave this book around for one of the kids to pick up and skim thru; it’s very explicit and there’s extreme and often degrading sex on most pages.
It skirted round the edges of what could have been a genuinely thoughtful exploration of the often close relationship between how men and women explore power and sex, submission and domination. Instead, it was sheer splatter-punk sex with a thin veneer of storyline. I did enjoy the explanation of what ‘The Gas’ was and how it had come to be. I also thought the ending was rather clever. I can’t say nothing about that tho’ without it being a spoiler and as there aren’t many genuine ‘ideas’ in the book, it would be wrong to give it away.
To be filed away on the top shelf after reading…
May 17, 2024
If you ever watched the South Park episode where they wrote The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs - here's your chance to read the closest thing to it in real life. The obvious attempt to push the envelope was interesting and even a little fun, and I enjoyed what struck me as a fresh twist on the old zombie trope. But then when the kids got involved, it started losing me. Apparently the author wrote it as an exercise in deliberately writing something indefensible, but throwing in pedophilia just seems like the lazy and offensive-but-not-in-a-funny-way to do so. Still, worth a read just to see exactly what it takes to get a book seized by British authorities.
July 6, 2024
Platt's The Gas has been long out of print and very hard --and expensive- to find used. If, however, you do come across a copy, be forewarned that this is a most obscene and disgusting book. Platt makes Sade or Bataille read like Laura Ingalls Wilder in comparison.
The plot involves a gas that escapes from a British laboratory where it contaminates much of the south of England. Those effected by the gas lose their inhibitions, becoming perversely hypersexualized. Society starts to collapse under literal orgies of perversion and violence, the gamut extending to acts best not described on this forum.
I would advise only those with thick skins and strong stomachs to read this book.
The plot involves a gas that escapes from a British laboratory where it contaminates much of the south of England. Those effected by the gas lose their inhibitions, becoming perversely hypersexualized. Society starts to collapse under literal orgies of perversion and violence, the gamut extending to acts best not described on this forum.
I would advise only those with thick skins and strong stomachs to read this book.
October 3, 2021
This book is trash regardless of any points it was making towards society in the 1970s.
It reads like a B-rated apocalyptical / sci fi pulp with obscene, depraved scenes in every chapter (chapters do have witty names). It definitely has a more comical, over the top feel than any resemblance to being realistic.
The protagonist is not only a government scientist but also an expert driver, pilot, sky diver, MacGyver-type man that can tackle any situation.
It was easy, quick reading (like you would expect in a pulp-type book).
It reads like a B-rated apocalyptical / sci fi pulp with obscene, depraved scenes in every chapter (chapters do have witty names). It definitely has a more comical, over the top feel than any resemblance to being realistic.
The protagonist is not only a government scientist but also an expert driver, pilot, sky diver, MacGyver-type man that can tackle any situation.
It was easy, quick reading (like you would expect in a pulp-type book).
May 3, 2024
Well! That was certainly something. *mops brow* The best way to approach this book is to consider it, as a wise reviewer here suggests, an adaptation of the movie "The Aristocrats." The book preceded the documentary (which consists of comedians telling the World's Filthiest Joke™) by decades, but the joke itself has apparently existed since the dawn of time, so there could be something to it.
The title lust-provoking gas, meant for military use -- working at the UK version of DARPA sounds like fun -- escapes and blankets southern England, causing our varied cast to go bonkers (geddit?) and engage in acts that begin with fairly vanilla, though adulterous, sex and proceed in the very next chapter to a fling with an ancient Catholic priest. That leaves about 15 chapters to go, and you can imagine Platt at his desk, clutching his brow in thought and chortling whenever he came up with increasingly baroque and/or horrifying acts for his characters to try out. One difference from "The Aristocrats" is that the book's not meant to be funny. I think. You and I, as sophisticated, pomo readers, can enjoy it any way we like.
Definitely one of the standouts in the catalogue of the sadly defunct Loompanics company, and you'll find used copies for sale at Old Masters prices. I didn't have to go that route, mercifully. But if I had a hard copy, it would sit in a place of honor next to Chet Fleming's nonfiction "If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive ... Discorporation and U.S. Patent 4,666,425," which I got from Loompanics way back when. It's that good.*
*For certain definitions of "good"
The title lust-provoking gas, meant for military use -- working at the UK version of DARPA sounds like fun -- escapes and blankets southern England, causing our varied cast to go bonkers (geddit?) and engage in acts that begin with fairly vanilla, though adulterous, sex and proceed in the very next chapter to a fling with an ancient Catholic priest. That leaves about 15 chapters to go, and you can imagine Platt at his desk, clutching his brow in thought and chortling whenever he came up with increasingly baroque and/or horrifying acts for his characters to try out. One difference from "The Aristocrats" is that the book's not meant to be funny. I think. You and I, as sophisticated, pomo readers, can enjoy it any way we like.
Definitely one of the standouts in the catalogue of the sadly defunct Loompanics company, and you'll find used copies for sale at Old Masters prices. I didn't have to go that route, mercifully. But if I had a hard copy, it would sit in a place of honor next to Chet Fleming's nonfiction "If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive ... Discorporation and U.S. Patent 4,666,425," which I got from Loompanics way back when. It's that good.*
*For certain definitions of "good"
September 11, 2010
very disturbing
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