I only had fleeting memories of 'Throwback' from when I first read it, probably in the late eighties when I was buying a lot of Guy's books new at W. H. Smith's, back when horror was a commodity of value in a high street newsagent. What I remember was something akin to 'Thirst', in which some widespread disaster hits the country, devolving the population into primitive beings, and the few human survivors struggling to stay alive as they wandered a post-apocalyptic Britain in search of whatever. Well, the disaster does indeed happen roughly like that, but every other memory I had of this book is bogus. Clearly, my memory sucks.

Guy wrote a handful of disaster novels that sprang out of the omnipresent fears of the seventies: nuclear armageddon, ecological disaster and the dangerous dabbling of scientists. However, they were mostly past at this point, titles like 'Bats Out of Hell', 'Locusts' and 'Thirst' all published by 1980, the end of that decade. Maybe 'Warhead' could be lumped in with those too, but it doesn't fit with them the way that this one does. That said, 'Throwback' doesn't have the same tone of defeat, hope being a pivotal emotion and, of all things, the abiding power of love.

The source of the disaster here is only ever guessed at, but it seems to be some sort of biological weapon that's been unleashed across North America and Europe. The Russians are blamed, but I don't believe anyone ever finds proof. Certainly, they don't breeze into the countries that they've devolved into savagery and so can offer scant resistance. It's always possible that it hit them too. This is something of a copout, but it's not a new copout, being precisely the same one that comes up when talking about the origin of the giant mutated crabs in five novels thus far. Even in a book called 'The Origin of the Crabs', we only get the same guess that it was unsanctioned underwater nuclear tests that the Russians were doing that prompted the mutations, never confirmation.

Wherever it came from, this biological weapon arrived and it took quick effect. We see it first in a town center, namely Shrewsbury, where Jackie Quinn is shopping. She reverts to a primitive state, physically and mentally, as if she'd been thrown back to the Stone Age. Neatly, it isn't a consistent process. She fights it, eventually losing, of course, but keeping enough of herself for long enough to set out for her home in the hills. Everyone around her devolves too and suddenly Shrewsbury is a haven for rape, murder and other primitive urges.

Her estranged husband Jon survives, because he was home and the nuclear shelter on their rural smallholding had good enough filters, but there's a deep irony in the fact that he's there with his mistress, Sylvia Atkinson, who's fine as a piece on the side, but not a particularly useful roommate when the apocalypse drops on them. Jackie, on the other hand, is even more capable than he is at doing all the things that are suddenly fundamental skills. In its way, this horror disaster novel with gouts of gore is, at heart, a romance. It doesn't end quite as simply as this estranged couple being happily reunited through an apocalypse, but it's not far away from that. 'Throwback' has a highly unusual happy ending.

There aren't a lot of primary characters, because Smith focuses in on a few relationships here, the plan being to isolate them in their own pocket of survival but gradually bringing them together as needed. Jon Quinn and Sylvia Atkinson have his smallholding. Eric Atkinson, Sylvia's husband, has his bit on the side, Marlene, but they devolve and he quickly leaves in search of his wife. They're a strange couple who feel like a throwback not to earlier Guy N. Smith novels but to the porn digests he wrote very early on in his career. There's also Jackie Quinn, of course, who's always heading for home, via a throwback leader going by Kuz, a survivor called Phil Winder whom she helps escape and eventually journalist Rod Savage, whose part has serious potential but ends up pointless.

There are other characters, but they don't really matter and feel a little out of place. For instance, there are occasional scenes set in the government bunker in Hertfordshire, with the most obvious character there a sadistic scientist called Prof. Reitzke, who's reminiscent of the amoral scientists in a very different underground bunker in 'Warhead'. There are reasons for these scenes to be in the book, but they don't become apparent until late on and even then feel disconnected. One note to make here is that there are a couple of brief cameos in this bunker from Prof. Brian Newman, a character we've met before because he was the lead in 'Bats Out of Hell'. He isn't here.

Guy's earlier disaster novels were depressing warnings about how pearshaped everything can get, but the underlying theme here seems to be a message that we should be thankful for what we've got because we may not have it much longer. There's not much of a distinction there, but there's a hope that we can find it again. It's there in the big picture, of course, the vast majority of people losing everything they had, but it's especially there in the small pictures, because these primary characters are all in tortuous broken relationships and really shouldn't be.

Jon can't figure out how his marriage to Jackie fell apart because there wasn't a particular cause, but it did and they didn't do enough to save it. However, when the apocalypse comes, he finds that he wants his wife back and his yearning is all the more obvious because he can't help but compare her to the mistress he's stuck with. Meanwhile, Sylvia yearns more and more for her own husband, Eric, who she somehow knows is still out there and eventually, of course, arrives in devolved state. They have what we might call an open relationship today, but back in 1985, they were merely kinky, what with Sylvia screwing a friend upstairs while Eric waits downstairs for his turn, wife swapping and abundant cheating that both know is going on and are secretly excited by. He doesn't care for Marlene any more than Sylvia cares for Jon, so they ache for each other just as Jon and Jackie do.

Focusing on all this helps Guy avoid actually explaining things, which in turn means that what feel like plot inconsistencies don't matter that much. For instance, everyone devolves horribly into the sort of Stone Age stereotype that isn't quite as inhuman as the creatures on the covers of the two editions published. However, the women don't seem to devolve quite so far and it's weird to hear Phil Winder actually call Jac, in her devolved state, beautiful. Also, the survivors make it through the disaster for reasons akin to the survivors in 'The Day of the Triffids', like most of them being underground when it happens. That makes sense, but it's not quite consistent. But hey, maybe it's just quirks of the wind. If we don't have a solid explanation, we can't poke holes in it.

Given that I didn't remember this one particularly fondly, I liked it more than I expected to. It's not an essential Guy N. Smith title, especially with a handful of books following in its wake that I have far more fond memories of, like 'The Wood', 'Abomination' and 'Cannibals'. It's still enjoyable and interesting, though, being in its own way a throwback to surprising points in Guy's bibliography. It could be said that the Sylvia and Eric's relationship hearkens back to things like 'Sexy Secrets of Swinging Wives, Part 1: The Partner Swappers', otherwise firmly buried in the past, and the Quinn smallholding features details only covered that deeply in non fiction titles like 'Practical Country Living'.

Next month, one of the titles I've been looking forward to rekindling my acquaintanceship with for a while, Guy's other title for 1985, 'The Wood'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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