Something that came to mind while reading S.A. Barnes' Cold Eternity novel but which I forgot to include in my review was the fact that, for all of the shenanigans at the end involving Spoiler-Type stuff I won't mention here, the real villain of the novel is Zale Winfeld, the filthy rich entrepreneur who seeks to escape death. His presence in the novel is entirely, for the most part, posthumous in the sense that he's apparently been dead for a long time, and ironically never got his chance to be cryofrozen (allegedly) due to his own mishap.
During the book, I kept thinking of this guy, and how there really does seem to be truth to the notion that sometimes having too much money does bring out the villain in you. Indeed, within Cold Eternity, the relationship hints between Zale and his son Aleyk are not dissimilar to the stories ciruclating around Bryan Johnson and his own son who gives blood so his father can pursue his own insane anti-aging schemes.
The novel I read after Cold Eternity (I'll blog about that one soon), The Haar by David Sodergren, shined a light on the fact that more and more contemporary horror is borrowing, rather easily, like low-hanging fruit, from the contemporary villains of our age, which in turns reminded me that the same scenario seemed true in Cold Eternity, where the real culprit behind everyone's suffering was yet another filthy rich madman who subjects everyone to his own villainous ministrations; and his buddy Karl, of course, who is effectively a modern day camp follower.
On the one hand, it would be fun to see more unique villainy in such novels.....but it is both appropriate, I suppose, and disturbing just how easily recent novels can simply extract ready made villains cut from the cloth of real life to fill out their pages. Ah, what a horrifying timeline we live in!
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