Looking for a novel about exploding collars

[Jorge Perez]

I'm trying to find out the name of a novel that probably came out in the Nineties. I remember two things very well: a society where people are under control due to a metal collar that would explode and decapitate them if they do wrong, and a concentration camp were the inmates live splendidly, except that they are used as living organ donors in a kind of inhumane lottery... if they only lose an eye, or the spleen, they can go on living that way indefinitely until they lose a vital organ... like the heart.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I remember a novel, much older than 90's, where the protagonist has his head removed and re-attached to get rid of the "exploding" collar. Doesn't have the organ donations. Can't remember title though.

A Cordwainer Smith (not his real name) book/story features a prison planet where people grow organs and more that are harvested. Instrumentatlity of Man series.

 

[Jorge Perez]

Thanks. Similar theme, but the one I mention is definitely more recent than that. And it was a big novel. The protagonist eventually escapes and lead a revolution against the oppresors.

 

[HareBrain]

This page with a similar question concluded it's The Starchild Trilogy (or the first book of it) by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, though that was sixties.

 

[Jorge Perez]

Thanks so much! It was Starchild. I had a hard cover edition and thought it was much more recent than that.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I remember a novel, much older than 90's, where the protagonist has his head removed and re-attached to get rid of the "exploding" collar. Doesn't have the organ donations. Can't remember title though.

That one was I believe

1. The Reefs of Space - Pohl and Williamson old school SF tosh in which our hero holds "The Secret" (of somethingorother) somewhere in the recesses of his mind inaccessible not only to himself but also to the various bands of evil, not so evil, and are they really as evil as they look? bad guys who chase him around the solar system in their desperate efforts to extract it, erase it, etcetea it. It's teenage, wish-fulfilment fantasy SF; at one point our hero, holed up in a luminescent asteroid out beyond the orbit of Pluto with only the beautiful daughter of the President of Everything and her giant space-faring, alien guinea pig for company, actually asks himself: "Am I a superman?" He isn't as it turns out. Nor is he, as he also suspects for a while, a reanimated corpse assembled from a bunch of dead bodies in order to act as a decoy for an absurdly complicated escape plan! Gosh! This book was first published as a serial in a magazine (a lot of SF novels were back then) and it just stops when the authors reached their allocated number of words: Five pages from the end:
   
   Bish! Bash! Bosh! Secret unlocked! Baddies thwarted! Terrible threat hanging over our hero banished! Girl steps forward. Clinch. Fade to black - can we have our seven hundred dollars please? Ta! Another one next month? Okay, we'll see what we can do.
   
   The book also contained more exclamation points than most novelists use in a lifetime!

I seem to recall from Pohl's autobiography that this was a book that he and Williamson made up as they went along, taking it turns to write chapters.

 

[Andrew Lambert]

I've read this. The storyline was immediately familiar. Unfortunately, my recall is pants nowadays :-(

 

[JunkMonkey]

I've read this. The storyline was immediately familiar. Unfortunately, my recall is pants nowadays :-(

Exploding pants?

 

[Jorge Perez]

The questyion has been answered. It was The Starchild Trilogy.