Can you believe that? I can't. And I watched myself write it.
It's called A Twinkle on Mars and it's about the first manned mission to Mars and how it all goes wrong. Aliens are involved, and giant glowing mushrooms. You've GOT to have giant glowing mushrooms.
It features Captain Cambridge, possibly the most heroic figure in the entirety of his own mind. Professor Prestwold, a delightful chap who doesn't know a life-threatening situation when it tries to bite his head off. Mr Blunderberry, a very large and very angry man. And Dr Khatagi. Not much is known about him but he's probably an assassin or something.
As you can probably imagine, this is not one of those hard sci-fi things where the author can (and sometimes does) write an essay about how every bit of technology depicted is totally possible given the current state of scientific knowledge.
It is, of course, a comedy. And a funny one, I reckon. Some people polish their every sentence to a poetic shine, I tried to make 'em all funny.
I've been working on it for a while but what really helped was when I started reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels for the first time a little over a year ago. They were the first books I ever read where I thought not only this is really good, but also I could probably do something a bit like this. And so I... did? Tried to but failed?
If you'd like to be the judge of that then head on to Amazon and give it a read. You might even consider reporting your findings in the form of a review, I hear they help.
Neat! Does it have cool critters in it? :)
ReplyDeleteThere are a few, yeah! I even got a few Latin names in there!
ReplyDeleteYay!!! On my way to Amazon. :)
ReplyDeleteGotta pick one up soon, just have to find my Amazon password.
ReplyDeletemeanwhile...
(A) sounds like you may be writing in the proud tradition of Harry Harrison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Smashers_of_the_Galaxy_Rangers
(B) in case you don't already know this one... Some SF is funny without meaning to be funny at all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyB0hEoluBo&list=PL_nsbqP6HLnVTY3OaXPXkBez5ivjJnhfS
[sorry for the line wrap]
Well, that's two things I'd better check out!
ReplyDeleteNever heard of Commander Cody, though I have heard some really good modern parodies of stuff from that kind of era.
As for Harry Harrison, I was eyeing up some other things by him a while ago but I'll try to get to that particular one soon. I can't resist something called 'Star Smashers'!
You ought to look up this movie too:
ReplyDelete"Dark Star" (1974)
It's been a while - I saw it in a repertory cinema in the late 70's - and I can't remember too much about it except the key point that I nearly fell out my seat laughing.
...Oh look,it's on Dailymotion!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x39408j
That was a pretty fun read!
ReplyDeleteWacky and with some really good sentence-slinging in there!
@Susan DA: Ooooo, I'll definitely check that out. Thanks a lot. I'll see if I can work out the bit where you fell out of your seat!
ReplyDelete@Lear's Fool: Thanks a lot, man! There was quite the learning curve trying to put it all together. Hopefully the next one will be better!
Nice! I'll give it a read and a review. I'm a huge Pratchett fan, so if he was your influence, I'm very intrigued.
ReplyDeleteThanks, John!
ReplyDeleteYes, I really can believe you wrote a book. Not hard at all to believe that. You´ve been writing the most intresting and fun blog for eight years, so why not a book? I read and liked Pratchett to(many yaers ago, but anyhow), so I probably would enjoy your book as well. You don´t happen to have it in a Swedish version :) ?
ReplyDeleteEight years, wow. Where does the time go?
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid there's no Swedish version. Maybe one day someone would be interested enough to spend time doing one, but that might another eight years!