The Extra is set in a future California where members of a desperate populace sign contracts to participate in reality death films, knowing that less than twenty percent of them will survive. It's a view of the future—and Hollywood—as delightfully cynical as Kurt Vonnegut, with sympathetic characters, Hollywood executive sleazeballs, and much more.
December 7, 2009
World Fantasy Award–winner Shea takes his 1987 short story of the same name and turns it into a trilogy of which this is the first cataclysmic volume. Imagine the Roman Coliseum expanded to encompass the whole of Rome with the Christians replaced by thousands of “extras,” who volunteer in search of enough wealth to escape their poverty, and with gladiators replaced by animatronic “aliens.” All the action in this artificial set designed by the head of Panoply Studios, Val Margolian, is filmed continuously and turned into mega-grossing “vid” entertainment for the masses. Attempting to survive the chaos and reap bonuses dropped by payboat pilots for alien “kills” are L.A. book lovers Japh, Curtis, and Jool. They're aided by a group of pilots, who are secretly sabotaging Margolian's spiderlike machines. SF fans and thriller readers alike will go for the furious action on the ground and in the air, with carnage galore, hairbreadth escapes, and heroic sacrifices.