David M. Peak’s The Rocket’s Red Glare: A Review by Thomas DeMary

Nearly 350 million quarters are minted each month. In the second after a coin is pressed, an entire civilization of germs can rise and file, leaving behind only their tale of survival.

The Rocket’s Red Glare is one of these stories.

So goes the synopsis printed on the back cover of author David M. Peak‘s debut novel. The Rocket’s Red Glare conjured childhood ruminations on the ideas “universe” and “existence”. That is, I once wondered if aliens lived on other planets (as well as visited our own); likewise, did microscopic societies come and go without the attention—and deliberate meddling—of humanity?

With respect to germs, how would these invisible civilizations come about? What would be the science behind it? Peak offers no such explanation, thrusting the reader headfirst into cities and country landscapes built upon a US quarter, in the way Kafka wrote of a man-turned-fly, or how Octavia Butler transported a modern black woman through time, her destination at the end of an plantation overseer’s whip. It is what it is: the literature of fantasy, a writer’s imagination without scientific justification.

A novel like The Rocket’s Red Glare is difficult to execute: in addition to the prerequisite demands of entertainment and artistry, the fantastic world still calls for a sense of place, a lay of the land and a need to know the characters—or, in Peak’s case, the various species—involved.

There were the Cloppies, four-legged and long-faced germs that largely made up the working-class; the Stinks, a repulsive group of slimy, fetid puddles that slithered along the ground feeding on garbage; and several others, including the Buzzers, Dweebs, Clamps, Wailers, Flap-Abouts, Ghoulies, Duds, Cranks, Bone-Faces, Scrapers, Suckers, Cry-Babies and Stick-heads.

There is a Seussian aspect to the species’ names and descriptions, each with its own unique ticks and motivations. To absorb all of this information, all in the name of establishing “place”, is jarring and, sometimes, confusing; the difference between a Cloppy and a Clamp can be considered irrelevant to the story at hand, and not worth the trouble of keep each species straight in one’s head. Still, early in the novel, the Seussian aspect—child-like and seemingly benign in nature—disappears as President Spengler (an “Octo,” by the way) delivers an address to his constituency:

The time has come to take pre-emptive action, Spengler said. We can no longer sit and wait for the other side to strike first. Under the guidance of our own very Lazlow Sartarian, we have decided to push forward with the development of rockets. Yes. Rockets. Those wondrous machines of legend. We have decided to take hold of our collective destiny, to aim toward the sky, to calibrate our will, and ensure our very survival upon this Quarter of ours.

Seuss is replaced with a certain President in America’s recent history, one who pounded the war drum as loudly (though perhaps not as eloquently) as Spengler. The explosion that immediately proceeded Spengler’s speech, one that appeared to be an assassination attempt aimed at Spengler (allegedly precipitated by rockets fired via The Other Side) transforms the fantasy into a political thriller of sorts, with the protagonist Bill Whooping, a teenager dedicated to restore his brother Timmy’s failing health, in the middle of the impending war between the two sides of the coin—pun intended, for sure.

Peak’s narrative is straightforward; given the juggling act the author had to conduct—the juxtaposition of well-developed plot with the germ actors playing out the story—there was little room or time for literary theatrics and linguistic somersaults. Rather, Peak focuses his attention on ensuring the reader never loses his sense of place and always understands who—or what—is speaking and/or scheming.

In other words, Peak builds a brand new world, places it atop a quarter and never wavers away from his primary responsibility: to show the story, to stick with the choice to offer no explanation as to how or why life exists on a coin, to say nothing of the drama which unfolds, to repeat over and again to the reader: it is what it is.

Which is a welcome reprieve from literature that seeks to explain everything, to drain the fantastic out of prose in the name of installing “reality” between the lines. A story, whether in flash fiction or in novel form, states its purpose and, if executed properly, conducts its business as though the tale told is real, leaving the reader wanting more.

The Rocket’s Red Glare introduces an author who unabashedly romps in the realm of his imagination, letting the scenes discovered in his mind showcase themselves on the page. David M. Peak concocts a world with its own paradigms and hierarchies and, with that framework in place, creates a novel as believable as a man-turned-fly, as a time-traveling woman, as a city named Whoville under the narrow, spying eyes of a green curmudgeon atop a mountain.

The Rocket’s Red Glare is available as an ebook or paperback from Leucrota Press.

—

Thomas DeMary currently hacks away at his prose somewhere in New Jersey. Follow him on twitter  @thomasdemary