BOOK REVIEW: 'The Tetradome Run' by Spencer Baum
What if President Nixon, in the 1970s, had signed a bill [he didn’t] — call it The Redemption Act — to fight the growing crime rate in America? It establishes the death penalty for first degree murder, and provides an escape clause. Those convicted can choose to reject “death by legal injection” if they agree to take part in a modern version of the Roman gladiators’ battles for survival. Not human against human, but human running to escape pursuing beasts. Many Americans applaud the new law.
By the 21st century, this has evolved into an annual mega-event in “The Tetradome”, a half-million-seat amphitheater, also witnessed on TV by tens of millions more. It’s a complicated obstacle course, where 144 convicts start in the qualifying run; survivors then do an intermediate run, and a final run, in each pursued by many genetically engineered monsters, which capture and kill the slower runners in front of the vast audience, until one makes it across the final finish line. The audience loves it.
But opposition to the Tetradome grows, especially among college students. Jenna Duvall becomes a member of the Blue Brigade, a student protest group opposing the “domers”. She doesn’t realize how committed some of the Brigaders are to their beliefs, nor is she aware how long some of the group have been working together.
Senator Barbara Lomax, a prominent get-tough-on-crime advocate, is speaking at the University’s McCallister Hall. A girl wearing a ski mask appears on stage and fires a pistol, killing the Senator in front of a live audience, then escapes to the basement, where Jenna has just arrived. The killer runs through the room and out the door, locking it, leaving Jenna inside, with the ski mask and a gun on the floor.
Later, at her trial, there is no reason for the jury to believe Jenna’s claim of innocence. She spends three years in prison while her lawyer makes appeals. Finally the day for her execution arrives. The prison warden allows her 21-year-old brother Kyle an hour alone with her to say their last goodbyes.
Kyle is devastated, deeply apologetic, believing himself responsible for her death. He reveals that he had had an affair with Jenna’s closest girl friend before the murder, and had once shown her their father’s gun, which later turned out to be the murder weapon. By this time, three years later, the girl friend has long since disappeared.
Jenna is stunned by this revelation. She has already given Kyle the half-completed memoir she has written in prison, asking him to complete it after her death. Now enraged at the treachery of her girl friend, who she has long suspected of perhaps being the real killer, she tells the warden that she wants to exercise her right under the Redemption Act to enlist in the Tetradome Run. She resolves to win it.
The CEO of Tetradome Corporation is delighted to accept Jenna’s application. Famous prisoners like “The Senator’s Assassin” are great publicity. Jenna is transferred to the training prison at New Rome, where prisoners are free to move about, but must wear a Training and Control system (TAC) consisting of a padlocked wrist bracelet and a spinal implant, “to allow us to keep track of your whereabouts at all times, and give you a little correctional jolt if you misbehave.”
The orientation video explains that 144 death row inmates during a six week season will train for three successive races: Qualifier, Semifinals, and the Finale. One survivor finishes “with a prize of luxurious house arrest.”
Jenna is young and in good physical shape for running, and concentrates on speed and endurance. She sees that her life, during these races, will depend on never looking back or even sideways, but only on running faster than the beasts behind her. She is further motivated when she later learns that her brother is dead; she doesn’t know whether by suicide or otherwise. She has only contempt for the corrupt race officials, who now tell her they are going do her life story on TV for pre-race publicity, beginning by filming her brother’s funeral.
She has already learned not to object, from the electric shocks the jailers and trainers can administer with the “clicker” each one carries. Kyle’s funeral is a travesty of distant relatives she has rarely if ever met. One local newspaper reporter is thrown out of the ceremony, but is still in the parking lot when her limo returns to pick up a couple of technicians. She drops a note on a scrap of paper on the pavement and sees him pick it up. It gives him ownership of her memoir, hidden somewhere in her brother’s house, if he will publish it in full. He takes it to his lawyer. Meanwhile, she must run her races, against huge odds.
After three years of not hearing from her treacherous friend, the real murderer, Jenna finds a note in her prison cell, giving her a chance to escape. Does she dare trust her former friend one more time? The races are about to begin; the crowd waits eagerly, to see how the criminals die.
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Reviewer’s note: Fantasy fiction does not usually attract me. However, I know Spencer Baum from previous writing and correspondence, and this is a well-written major work, posing the question: Can a political fight become an end in itself, without regard to the original two positions?
And I learned a word new to me: dystopia. It is the opposite of utopia: an ideal country. The book’s back cover dares the reader to ask, “What if we already live in dystopia?”