Book Four (The Inhuman Condition), Chapter Five
“The Age of Desire”
28 Days Later but not contagious and with rape-murder instead of plain murder–that’s probably the easiest way to describe this story. You horror connoisseurs out there will also deduce that it’s similar to David Cronenberg’s Shivers, which can pretty much be described as 28 Days Later, just as contagious, with plain rape instead of plain murder. “The Age of Desire” preceded 28 Days (and even presaged its use of monkeys) and followed Shivers by what, almost a decade, and it fits in nicely between them. It’s one of Barker’s strongest short stories, no question.
Clearly the fact that the sex-crazed condition of the story’s “monster”-slash-protagonist isn’t contagious sets “Desire” apart from both its filmic counterparts. Curiously, Barker toys with the potentially millennialist implications of his scientists’ aphrodisiac-on-steroids throughout the story–hence the title, just by way of a for instance–only to deflate them almost (almost–you have to pay careful attention to the story’s climax to see why just “almost”) completely by the story’s end. “I’m dying of terminal joy,” thinks the afflicted. The sensual overload of his condition is unsustainable; that Barker can’t quite bring himself to destroy the world with it may make this something you’d never expect out of the author–a cautionary tale about immersion in the physical at the expense of the mental.
That’s usually Cronenberg’s territory; both artists are preoccupied with the dominion of the body over the mind, but the Canadian’s a lot more frightened of it than the Englishman, who usually all but embraces the transformative possibilities of acknowledging that biology is in fact destiny. It’s only in accepting this, Barker seems to argue, do we stand a chance of ever gaining control of that destiny. On the other hand, “The Age of Desire” warns us that the mind cannot be overthrown completely without dire consequences. “The dream of Casanova” is really just a tarted-up nightmare.