Динозавр

Three young couples carrying Ј200,000 of drugs to Morocco are marooned on the North Sea when their boat explodes. They end up on a Brinkstone oil rig, but there is no drilling equipment and no crew. They soon discover the place is a secret genetic laboratory set up because Lloyd J Brinkstone, the billionaire owner of the oil rig wanted to give something back to the world. He firmly believes that the world will end in nuclear fire, and thus hired a team of microbiologists to develop a gene that would enable man to adapt instantly to his new environment. Needless to say, it all doesn't work as expected and it all ends up with a genetically altered shark who wanders about eating people, absorbing their personalities and imitating their physical appearances. Gradually the six get whittled down and the beast designed to be invulnerable seems to be just that.

What would happen if, through a genetic experiment gone awry, fungi-mushrooms, toadstools, molds and yeasts — were to go out of control and grow with unprecedented vigor and speed and tenacity, and in places formerly inimicable to them? Knight has pulled out the stops to produce an imaginative and fast-paced sci-fi horror tale set in the British Isles. The protagonist is Barry Wilson, a semi-successful author of spy novels and a former mycologist. Barry's wife Jane, from whom he is separated, is the scientist whose experiment has lead to the disaster, and the British government has called upon Barry to help find Jane and her lab notes. Crossing London in an armored tank, Barry and two other volunteers observe all sorts of grotesqueries: people and animals covered with multicolored fungi, some still alive, some now quite insane; farms and buildings and forests draped in spongy shrouds; mushrooms tall as skyscrapers. Barry survives a series of hair-raising adventures and eventually locates his wife, who has gone mad and has become the high priestness of a cult of fungi-loving female separatists. But he gets the research notes. A first-rate and vivid thriller.