Adaptations usually go from novel to film (okay, unless you’re Dave Eggers, in which case all bets are off). But later this month, Rick Moody will publish The Four Fingers of Death—a 700-page novel involving a (fictional) novelization on the B-movie The Crawling Hand. io9 takes a closer look at the novel:
It’s the year 2025, and the NAFTA bloc has fallen into such a perilous decline that we barely have an economy or a functioning society any longer, and we’re at the mercy of the much more powerful Sino-Indian economic bloc. A failed writer, Montese Crandall, wins the rights to novelize a trashy science fiction movie called The Four Fingers Of Death, in a chess game. The bulk of Moody’s 700-plus page book consists of Crandall’s sprawling novelization of this 2025 film, which is a remake of the 1963 classic The Crawling Hand.
Curious? While you’re waiting for the novel to drop, you can watch The Crawling Hand here in all its campy glory:
