Band of Gypsys (novel)

Band of Gypsys, a science fiction novel by British author Gwyneth Jones, came out in 2005. It forms the fourth installment in Jones’s five-volume “Bold as Love” series, with each book taking its title from a work linked to Jimi Hendrix. The story unfolds in a near-future United Kingdom.

The plot picks up months after the events concluding *Midnight Lamp*. A secret military test of the Neurobomb went live, and the altered-brain neuronauts died while wiping out the world’s fossil fuel reserves. This “A team event” seemed both terrible and beneficial, much like the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It ended the latest US/Islamic conflict instantly and cut short the terminal illness of post-peak-oil society. There is no returning to business as usual; a new, better world must emerge. At the novel’s opening, the Triumvirate—Ax, Sage, and Fiorinda—are in Paris staging a grim John-and-Yoko-style bed-in to protest conditions in English labor camps, having failed to negotiate with a corrupt Westminster government. Ax then learns that US President Fred Eiffrich, who “Banned the Bomb,” is about to fall due to a manufactured scandal. Time is running out. The rescue of Ax’s family, held as hostages, demonstrates the Triumvirate’s skill at achieving bloodless victory from a dire situation. A festival takes place at Reading, and a secret mind/matter tech space program operates in the basement of the Heads’ Battersea headquarters. The ideals of the Rock and Roll Reich no longer resonate with a post-Crisis generation. The new leaders of fashion are neo-feudalist dandy Jack Vries MP, secret chief of the secret police, and Toby Starborn, a sinister young virtual artist. Ax, Sage, and Fiorinda have become outdated icons, corpses in the mouths of the bourgeoisie. When Ax and Sage become engulfed in the Lavoisier Massacre Scandal, a brief loss of control triggers disaster. The Triumvirate are imprisoned, like many English royals before them, forced once more to serve as rock-star window dressing for a reactionary, degenerate Green regime. This time, Ax Preston has no miraculous solutions. Locked away in the shadowy fortress of Wallingham House, the prisoners hear distant echoes of a new blitzkrieg: the Chinese, emerging from their own Crisis years, are taking over Central Asia and nearing the gates of Europe.