ISBN 0-586-21456-9 (UK pbk),,, 0-312-13957-8 (US hbk)

"A mating has taken place between humans and mechanical sex-dolls, to create a new subspecies -- the Meta -- parasitic cyborgs who have colonized much of the world...and have carried the new genus into space...

"A blue mood hangs over Paris, Mars. Girl dolls die young here. In the Beauty Parlour, Vanity Cat prepares to meet the man in a black frock coat and blood-stained apron. The executioner. She wishes he were Dagon. But Dagon, transdimensional cowboy with brains like tapioca, is delayed... fighting a border war with the unreal, which has now invaded the past...

"Richard Calder's fast-moving, exotic, erotic and violently modern novel reveals the Future's wild side, full of strange sex, pestilence and cheap thrills from the datamart..." [jacket blurb, UK pbk, 1994]

"Dead Boys begins with Ignatz mourning the loss of Primavera. He aimlessly wanders the streets of Bangkok, carrying Primavera's excised sex organs in a jar, occasionally chewing them for the high they provide. Ignatz's tenuous grip on reality is further loosened when he begins to receive messages from 1,000 years in the future, from a Lilim named Vanity who claims to be his daughter. Vanity is being hunted by Lord Dagon, who may actually be Ignatz himself." --Hank Wagner (in Nova Express , Volume 4, Number 4, Winter/Spring 1998).