Title: Bits and Pieces
Author: Iain Darby
Date of First Publication: 2000
Place of Publication: Hideous Progeny
Type: Short Story
Characters: No Character
Themes: ANDROID; BYRONIC HERO; POSTHUMAN; RACE/POLITICS; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER
Critical Summary: “Bits and Pieces” describes the rough trade of human cadavers for those looking to get a second lease on life, or afterlife, as it were. Ever since the perfection of the resurrection procedure by Victor Frankenstein in the eighteenth century, humans have begun paying top dollar for brain transmutations into younger and livelier bodies (despite mismatching due to demand). Heinrich Speer is a born-again “Resurrectionist” who deals specially in war cases—that is, trading weapons for fresh bodies to be used as spare parts for the newly Resurrected. As Heinrich explores the untapped market in Uganda, he struggles to find balance between his unstable business contacts, romance with Samantha, a “one-timer” (those who cannot or will not go through with the resurrection), and his own body turning against him as limb rejection plagues him. As the poison of decay spreads up and around his body, Heinrich, in desperate need of a new body and fresh funds to procure one, murders his fling and sells her beautiful, undamaged corpse to jumpstart his business with the locals and commence his third resurrection.
This twisted alternate reality gives itself credibility with subtle references to Mary Shelley’s original masterpiece, such as in its way of referring to a resurrected person as a “Frank.” This, along with Darby’s nod to the “original resurrected,” establishes its canonical place in the Frankenstein universe and gives the reader a heightened understanding of the power of invention as well as how far humanity will go to defy the laws of nature and death specifically. Samantha, as a side character not directly involved in Heinrich’s business, represents the reader. The reader learns from their first meeting that she is adamantly against the procedure, hence, it is only natural that she is initially ignorant as to how the resurrection process works. Samantha sees asking those questions as highly personal (as well as disturbing overall), so it isn’t until she and Heinrich become physically intimate—a nod toward Byron’s persona—that she pries further into the mystery. Much like Justine Moritz in Shelley’s Frankenstein, she ends up a casualty due to Heinrich’s desire to save himself both physically and financially. This short story also explores a gap between the European Resurrected (like Heinrich) and the natives in Uganda that find the idea of surgical reincarnation exceptionally taboo. The Europeans are content with mismatched limbs so long as they are white, but fashions are changing in response to a growing need. There is resistance on the Ugandan front as well—the chiefs of small villages are unwilling to butcher the dead. However, due to a chief’s wife being stolen as an act of war, tribes begin to comply with the trade of bodies for weapons, in a move which recapitulates the European enslavement of Africans in the Colonial era.
Administrative Notes: Kendall O’Key, CSUF; Christian Bazinet (Editing)