The Biggerers

Lilwall’s ambitious and often undisciplined debut cleverly sets up a chilling near-future scenario: an unscrupulous scientist is cloning and manipulating embryos to produce miniature humans for a huge and greedy government-backed corporation that tortures them, drugs them with memory suppressants, and sells them as pets—ostensibly to teach 22nd-century children to care lovingly about something other than themselves. “Littlers” Bonbon and Jinx gradually learn to communicate illicitly with the adult “biggerers” who “own” them, Susan and Hamish, relatively kind pet parents who eventually try to unmask this horrible business. Gruesome episodes involve Jinx’s victimized littler beau, Chips, and poignant others show Isabel, a littler illegally raised in secret by Drew, a lab technician repulsed by his work. Using inventive but occasionally disjointed prose, Lilwall complicates the littlers’ gradual awakening to their human ability to love with satiric reflections on inhumane attempts to halt overpopulation and an all-too-human love triangle among three biggerers. Science fiction fans will appreciate the unusual perspective of humans as seen through their pets’ eyes, but may wish Lilwall had focused this dark comedy more clearly. Agent: Dan Mandel, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Sept.)