title: Crawlers: A Novel
author:  John Shirley 
description: In Shirley's frightening new novel, he extends the smart work he did in Demons (2002), investing a fierce genre tale with spiritual import. Here Shirley reaches back to the classic pulp scenario of a small town beset by an alien invasion. In this case, though the townspeople of Quiebra, Calif., initially assume that the capsule that crashes originated in space, it's actually a satellite put into orbit by a hush-hush military research outfit fearful of the out-of-control nanotechnology experiment it contains. The experiment involves nanoparticles that have evolved into a kind of group mind (as in Michael Crichton's Prey), taking over human (and animal) hosts and, by incorporating pieces of hardware, refashioning those hosts into an amalgam of human and machine ("Deputy Sprague's neck was gone, replaced with a metal stalk..."). Humans differ as to their vulnerability to takeover, with some adults more resistant than others, and younger people quite resistant; this allows Shirley to use teenagers-a likely readership for the book-as the novel's heroes, and his understanding of teen ways and patterns of speech is deep and exact. This tack also allows for some profound emotion, as kids-particularly Adair and Waylon Leverton, whose father is the first person taken over in Quiebra-witness the soul-destruction and/or death of their parents. The novel's depiction of humans devolving into group-mind-controlled machines proves an excellent metaphor for Shirley's take here on the human condition, which posits that some of us are already machinelike and others more "awake"; but the narrative does slide slightly into didacticism as it elaborates these understandings. Overall, though, this is an exciting novel of ideas wrapped in red-hot pulp. <br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: Title Page
  LEARNING TO CRAWL
  by
  JOHN ARGUS
  Publisher Information
  Learning to Crawl published by
  Chimera Publishing Ltd
  PO Box 152
  Waterlooville
  Hants
  PO8 9FS
  Digital edition converted and published by
  Andrews UK Limited 2010
  www.andrewsuk.com
  This novel is fiction – in real life practice safe sex
  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
  resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of
  binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being
  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real
  person or actual happening.
  Copyright © John Argus
  first printed in 2000
  reprinted in 2006
  The right of John Argus to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with
  section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
  Introdu