Mellick III, Carlton. War Slut. Portland: Eraserhead Press, 2008. 116 pp. $9.95. ISBN 1933929537.

Mechanization of a Still-Life Soul

Stretching the fabric of sanity, Carlton Mellick III’s War Slut crafts a haunting vision into the future of military duty, political interest, and religious fanaticism. Here is another work of Bizarro fiction from Mr. Mellick that inspires revelations about the dangerous implications of collectivist thought and belief structures.

A band of forgotten soldiers blindly follow orders, continuing an arctic mission that was set in place months after the supposed “war” had ended—a war pitting everyone against draft-dodgers, anarchists and other rebels. The title of the book refers to a soldier engineered by the government serving as “sexual relief” for the rest of the platoon. The group is set to extinguish the last remaining anarchists, but they encounter something quite strange, yet familiar—stil-life.

Irony is a dominant trait in our society, and Mellick’s War Slut reflects this amusing reality by saturating the reader with consistent inconsistencies. Fighting a war against anti-war sentiment proves that there is, in Mellick’s world, no one or nothing left to fight. Because of his passing today, I feel compelled to quote the brilliant George Carlin, a man who appreciated the humour in irony: “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.” The general theme of the book is the keystone in irony’s archway. The soldiers lack any sort of individuality. They are simply a link in a chain, orders given to them before they were born. Their doll-like enemies have what they don’t have: free will. Thomas Carlyle’s writing speaks about war in the same vein as Mellick’s: “Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner” (The French Revolution, Vol. 1, Book VII, Chp. 4). The mechanization of war has turned citizens into robots who carry out orders without thought or question. Thus, war is patently de-humanizing.

Simultaneously, I found this book funny, frustrating and frightening. When paranoia and apathy compete for dominance in our world, the future becomes a Carlton Mellick vision. I was confused by why Mellick decided to name this book after one of the lesser, seemingly more mechanized characters. After exploring the theme, I realized that the war slut was the most convincing and humanized character. She demonstrated the ability to love, despite the fact that she was artificially created to engage in military debauchery; it’s kind of sweet when you think about it.

—Richard Nicol