Overview
Books and films have skewered Hollywood's excesses, but none has ever portrayed one man's crazy vision of the future of big action/adventure films as The Extra does. As over-the-top as Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles, as savagely dark as Robert Altman's The Player, and more violent than Rollerball, this is the story of the ultimate, so-insane-it-could-only-happen-in-Hollywood formula for success, a brave new way to bring the ultimate in excitement to the silver screen. Producer Val Margolian has found the motherlode of box-office gold with his new "live-death" films whose villains are extremely sophisticated, electronically controlled mechanical monsters. To give these live-action disaster films greater realism, he employs huge casts of extras, in addition to the stars. The large number of extras is important, because very few of them will survive the shoot.
It's all perfectly legal, with training for the extras and long, detailed contracts indemnifying the film company against liability for the extras' injury or death. But why would anyone be crazy enough to risk his or her life to be an extra in such a potentially deadly situation?
The extras do it because if they survive they'll be paid handsomely, and they can make even more if they destroy any of the animatronic monsters trying to stomp, chew, fry, or otherwise kill them. If they earn enough, they can move out of the Zoo—the vast slum that most of L.A. has become. They're fighting for a chance at a reasonable life. But first, they have to survive . . .
Synopsis
The Extra is set in a future California where members of a desperate populace sign contracts to participate in reality death films, knowing that less than 20% of them will survive.It's a view of the future–and Hollywood–as delightfully cynical as Kurt Vonnegut with sympathetic characters, Hollywood executive sleazeballs and much more.
Publishers Weekly
World Fantasy Award–winner Shea takes his 1987 short story of the same name and turns it into a trilogy of which this is the first cataclysmic volume. Imagine the Roman Coliseum expanded to encompass the whole of Rome with the Christians replaced by thousands of “extras,” who volunteer in search of enough wealth to escape their poverty, and with gladiators replaced by animatronic “aliens.” All the action in this artificial set designed by the head of Panoply Studios, Val Margolian, is filmed continuously and turned into mega-grossing “vid” entertainment for the masses. Attempting to survive the chaos and reap bonuses dropped by payboat pilots for alien “kills” are L.A. book lovers Japh, Curtis, and Jool. They're aided by a group of pilots, who are secretly sabotaging Margolian's spiderlike machines. SF fans and thriller readers alike will go for the furious action on the ground and in the air, with carnage galore, hairbreadth escapes, and heroic sacrifices. (Feb.)