Bipolar Express, 85,000 words by B. C. Bell, is a near-future science fiction novel revolving around Holt Dreivek who might just be insane. At least that’s what he’s trying to figure out in the beginning. The problem is he doesn’t even know where he is. All he really knows is that it’s cold. Holt is coming back from a blackout drinking binge he hoped would kill him and is so far gone he’s repeating his thoughts back to himself in an effort to recognize whether he’s having a psychotic episode. The fact that he’s hearing voices other than his own could be a clue. Two of the voices turn out to be from a past he’d rather forget. They belong to Jack and Wesley, patients from a psychiatric facility.
Four years ago Holt had been institutionalized for a dual diagnosis: bipolar disorder/substance dependency. He gives us the play by play of his last hospital stay, showing how his mind works and how he dealt with the tragic flaws of the institutional system. Holt was just functional enough to fall through the cracks, abandoning treatment. Since then, he’s built a new life for himself. Then his wife died. Now he’s back where he started—emotionally shattered. Fortunately, at the institution he met Jack, another manic-depressive, and Wes, a schizophrenic with the mind of a ten-year-old.
Jack and Wes rescue Holt and take him to an abandoned house in the midst of a blizzard. Soon the three of them begin breaking and entering their way across a frozen, empty Chicago. Along the way Holt finds out its actually August. The magnetic poles have begun to shift and the city has become a magnetic “hot-spot.” Chicago is this week’s North Pole. The city has been evacuated and the less fortunate are locked in their homes or forming gangs to survive, unaware that the altered magnetic fields are affecting human behavior. |
