Review: Brink
The Earth is dead.
Humanity killed it years ago and now lives in a network of orbital habitats scattered throughout the solar system. The habitats are huge constructs accommodating hundreds of thousands of people with new ones being built to handle the overcrowded populace.
Humanity killed it years ago and now lives in a network of orbital habitats scattered throughout the solar system. The habitats are huge constructs accommodating hundreds of thousands of people with new ones being built to handle the overcrowded populace.
Welcome to the post-post-apocalypse...
Ironically, space is at a premium, with most people living in tiny, cramped quarters. Only the rich - members of the corporations ('corps') that build the habitats - have the luxury of spaciousness. The psychological stress of this existence is ameliorated by the widespread use of medication, mostly the antidepressant "nudge" which is added to all processed food. Despite this, superstitious delusions are common, with people reporting strange phenomena: voices, ghosts, strange feelings of dread... Quasi-religious sects have cropped up everywhere.
Life is hard and crime is common, hence the need for a police force; the Habitat Security Division (HSD). It's not easy living on the brink of extinction.
Bridget Kurtis is a HSD officer on Odette Habitat. A homicide reveals disturbing links between work unions and sects with a belief in monstrous cosmic gods living in the Sun... Are the drugs causing group psychosis? Strange graffiti and arcane phrases put Bridget on edge. One expression makes her physically sick for no apparent reason. Is her own sanity slipping?
Originally published in the legendary 2000AD - the quintessential British sci-fi comic - Brink by writer Dan Abnett and artist INJ Culbard is a neat combination of detective fiction, sci-fi thriller and surreal horror. Bridge's investigation leads her into dark territory, secret societies, the eerie emptiness of a habitat still under construction (haunted?) and the cut-throat world of higher echelon corp management. The deeper she digs, the more the walls separating reality from madness seem to get thinner...
It's a heady mix of police procedural with conspiracy paranoia and an unsettling sense of the familiar, comforting world being built upon sand that is starting to shift. Think Twin Peaks in space with more than a hint of HP Lovecraft.
The setting of the space habitats, huge sterile cities floating in the void of space, evokes a claustrophobic vibe. The use of pacifying drugs (like 'soma' in Huxley's Brave New World and the Federation's secretly modified food and water in Blake's Seven) depicts a future in which state control of the individual goes beyond even the brainwashing of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Oppression within and the unforgiving, lethal void of space outside. Some evils are deemed necessary, but is there any truth in the whispered mythologies of the sects? Or are the demons simply the projections of the inevitable insecurities of a race trapped within huge coffin-like cities buried in the cold darkness and staring its fragile mortality starkly in the face?
Culbard's images are eerily atmospheric with subtle changes of colour scheme to denote different moods within the story. The vistas of the vast habitats are vertigo-inducing, emphasising the vulnerability of the humans clinging to them for dear life now that they have killed their planet. No punches, are pulled in depictions of violence and horror, and when things start to get really weird the visual distortions evoke genuine queasiness.
It's a compelling read and a chilling journey into nightmare territory. Bridget is determined to hunt down the mystery... but will it find her first?
Zak Webber
Ironically, space is at a premium, with most people living in tiny, cramped quarters. Only the rich - members of the corporations ('corps') that build the habitats - have the luxury of spaciousness. The psychological stress of this existence is ameliorated by the widespread use of medication, mostly the antidepressant "nudge" which is added to all processed food. Despite this, superstitious delusions are common, with people reporting strange phenomena: voices, ghosts, strange feelings of dread... Quasi-religious sects have cropped up everywhere.
Life is hard and crime is common, hence the need for a police force; the Habitat Security Division (HSD). It's not easy living on the brink of extinction.
Bridget Kurtis is a HSD officer on Odette Habitat. A homicide reveals disturbing links between work unions and sects with a belief in monstrous cosmic gods living in the Sun... Are the drugs causing group psychosis? Strange graffiti and arcane phrases put Bridget on edge. One expression makes her physically sick for no apparent reason. Is her own sanity slipping?
Originally published in the legendary 2000AD - the quintessential British sci-fi comic - Brink by writer Dan Abnett and artist INJ Culbard is a neat combination of detective fiction, sci-fi thriller and surreal horror. Bridge's investigation leads her into dark territory, secret societies, the eerie emptiness of a habitat still under construction (haunted?) and the cut-throat world of higher echelon corp management. The deeper she digs, the more the walls separating reality from madness seem to get thinner...
It's a heady mix of police procedural with conspiracy paranoia and an unsettling sense of the familiar, comforting world being built upon sand that is starting to shift. Think Twin Peaks in space with more than a hint of HP Lovecraft.
The setting of the space habitats, huge sterile cities floating in the void of space, evokes a claustrophobic vibe. The use of pacifying drugs (like 'soma' in Huxley's Brave New World and the Federation's secretly modified food and water in Blake's Seven) depicts a future in which state control of the individual goes beyond even the brainwashing of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Oppression within and the unforgiving, lethal void of space outside. Some evils are deemed necessary, but is there any truth in the whispered mythologies of the sects? Or are the demons simply the projections of the inevitable insecurities of a race trapped within huge coffin-like cities buried in the cold darkness and staring its fragile mortality starkly in the face?
Culbard's images are eerily atmospheric with subtle changes of colour scheme to denote different moods within the story. The vistas of the vast habitats are vertigo-inducing, emphasising the vulnerability of the humans clinging to them for dear life now that they have killed their planet. No punches, are pulled in depictions of violence and horror, and when things start to get really weird the visual distortions evoke genuine queasiness.
It's a compelling read and a chilling journey into nightmare territory. Bridget is determined to hunt down the mystery... but will it find her first?
Zak Webber
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