Northcutt, Wendy “The Darwin Awards 3: Survival of the
Fittest”. Orion, London, 2003. Hbk, xvii, 254pp, illus, appendices, index.
ISBN 0-75286-041-0 £9.99.
For those who have never heard of the Darwin Awards, the archive was instituted in 1994 at Stanford University. From this a website with its own domain was born in 1997 and from there it has gone from strength to strength. The aim is to record those members of the human race who, through their own free will, have benefited the gene pool by removing themselves from it, thus promoting the “survival of the fittest”. And most recently annual awards have been made and put into book form. Well that’s the “official” reasoning behind these collections of stories.
Not that there’s anything original in this collation of
material, as regular readers of Fortean Times’ Strange Deaths columns will
recognise. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the stories in this volume
haven’t, at some time, been published in FT. (I’ll leave to those with more
time on their hands than me to check that claim out!)
That said this is a fine selection of prime stupidity,
padded out with “discussions” which are not always particularly relevant and
the page count has been increased by the generous use of white space of pages
aided and abetted by some pretty vacuous mottos and saws. The illustrations are
fairly meagre but at least break up the text – don’t worry, they are just
cartoons, the publishers have wisely decided not to produce photographic
evidence of these demises.
As for authenticity – that’s a matter of opinion.
Stories from multiple sources are assumed true, single source stories are noted
but allowed to win awards and personal accounts are described as such unless
there is confirmatory evidence. The author is well award of “urban legends”
and I wouldn’t mind betting that some of these stories form the basis of quite
a few. Not least the person who apparently swallowed some nitro-glycerine and
then drank some vodka and then tried to commit suicide by banging his body
against a wall in the hope that the nitro would be detonated. The person was
allegedly a demolition worker. Although sourced to the Detroit Times, I can’t
help thinking this may be apocryphal.
The index appears pretty thorough (although there was no
entry for vodka) and there are even statistical analyses of the monthly
submissions to the forums where stories are initially placed and then discussed
(rather like the Fortean Times Message Boards.) But ignoring the pseudo-academic
guff this is just a collection of unusually stupid, if inventive, ways people
have found to kill themselves (or try to). I expect some people will feel it
inappropriate to find humour in death (and one can’t help thinking that some
form of karmic justice squad is lurking making note of what you find the
funniest – just to make sure you suffer it too – (or is that just me?)
Anyway if this sort of thing tickles you fancy, it’ll
make an ideal companion for the smallest room (but don’t try and read it at
one sitting) or as a gift to someone who hasn’t recently suffered bereavement.
I can imagine some people will (quite rightly) not find some of the stories very
amusing, but the rest of you will find much to chuckle over. For a hardback
it’s reasonably priced even if the page count is somewhat greater than the
content really justifies.
If nothing else it can function as a collection of
“don’t do-it-yourself” stories.
Recommended for those who enjoy “strange deaths” (but don’t try this at home children!)
Check out their website at: http://www.DarwinAwards.com
7/10
Richard Alexander