Review: Spread Me

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

John Carpenter's film The Thing is a classic movie of paranoia, alien invasion, and body horror that has only grown in stature since its 1982 release. Naturally, it has inspired scores of imitators. I don't know if this book is so much an imitator as a gender-flipped retelling (seeing as the original was definitely a sausage-fest) layered with a very healthy dollop of sex.

The basic story is the same: an isolated research station and the discovery of a lethal organism that picks off the inhabitants one by one. In this case, the station is in the middle of the New Mexico desert, with nobody within a hundred miles, and a seemingly never-ending series of sandstorms take out the phones and internet so no one can call for help. (But once you learn just where the invading organism comes from, the uncomfortable thought occurs that it's the desert itself, or rather the infected "cryptobiotic crust" within, that's causing the storms.) The "thing" here is strictly speaking not an alien, although since it's an unholy combination of a lichen and a giant virus that eats people alive and reconstitutes them in its own image, it could be termed as such. It's also intelligent and seeking to learn about humans--and it's fixated sexually on our protagonist, the station chief, Kinsey.

Naturally, Kinsey is fixated right back. She has a peculiar, particular sexual kink involving viruses and bacteriophages, which is made clear by a lengthy scene of her masturbating to a photo of a bacteriophage. But there is more than once kind of kink on display here, as seemingly all of the station's inhabitants (except Kinsey) take turns fucking each other. This also feeds the growing paranoia as the lichen monster settles in, as the surefire way of telling that Kinsey's coworkers have been replaced is that they start coming on to her. The body horror grows until, at the climax (heh), we see this:

The light illuminates the fullness of what they've become. It's a perfect, massive facsimile of the lichen's microscopic structure. Arms and legs frill around a wide net of body parts, lips and labia and nipples and ears all strung together across a sticky web of flesh. Lacelike fingers and toes tassel out to stick the creature to the wall. Grains of sand and pearly beads of moisture collect at the places where the long strands of skin intersect. Kinsey can't tell if the liquid is sweat or tears or plasma or pure slick pleasure. The creature's musk fills the airlock, more invasive and inescapable with every second, and Kinsey understands what it tried to tell her when it was pretending to be Domino. She can taste it on the air, just as it swore it could taste her. She can taste its desire. Her tongue curls inside her mouth, seeking more even as she desperately searches for a means of escape.

Of course, if this thing gets loose it will mean the end of the human race and likely all life on the planet, which is why Kinsey locks the lichen inside the research station at the end. (Although that really doesn't solve the problem, since sooner or later somebody will come looking for them.) She then drives out into the desert and joins with the lichen in its native habitat, burrowing into the cryptobiotic crust and letting it take her (in more ways than one).

If you like raw sex/erotica with your alien invasion/body horror, you will enjoy this. It isn't for those who want to see the invader eradicated, as the story ends with that definitely not the case. I respect the author in that they make clear what they want to do from the start, and the story carries its premise through. The ideas here are well told. For me, the ending was abrupt and ambiguous, as we know the lichen is still out there, waiting for someone to find it and fuck it again. It leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling as they close the back cover, which is no doubt the author's intent. I don't know if this book is better than John Carpenter's movie, but it is an effective counterpoint, I think.

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