Coming Attraction

In a ravaged future New York, British visitor British Barter is dragged into a city where masks are fashion, armor, and social code all at once. After rescuing a masked young woman from a grotesque attack by a coupe fitted with fishhooks and driven by masked youths, he is drawn into her world of radiation scars, warped customs, and dangerous desire. She invites him to her apartment that night, hinting she needs his help, while the police respond with a chillingly casual attitude to violence and corruption. As Barter moves through this grim landscape of beggars, deformity, and suspicion, he learns how Americans have adapted to concealment, reading identity from scraps of detail and turning disguise into a national obsession. From women's fashions to men dressing as women, masking has become inseparable from war, radiation gear, wrestling, advertising, and sexual politics. Against a backdrop of atomic rivalry, political tension, and space-age ambition, the novel becomes a sharp, unsettling satire of postwar civilization, where identity is unstable and every appearance hides a threat, a longing, or a lie. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.