“Engage the Mesmerizer.”
No, the Mesmerizer is not an Austrian bishop minion of Ming the Merciless who thence performs a philosophical fan dance to convince you of Thomism which isn’t really there.
This is a line from the rollicking fun SiFi novel… I learned of it over a recent dinner conversation with a bishop: “Did you know that Archbishop Myers wrote a scifi book?”…
SPACE VULTURE
An homage to Space Hawk.
In the esteemed lineage of early boys science fiction magazines like Planet Stories, through comic books like Captain Marvel, through Lost In Space and the boyish elements of Star Wars, a few fun episodes of Star Trek – Voyager … and pretty much all of Firefly, this rapid read is fun from the first paragraph.
You know what genre you are in from the first paragraph which deals with the theft of glowing green mushrooms that let you eat all you want without gaining weight.
Space Vulture is co-authored by Gary K. Wolf and the Archbishop Emeritus of Newark, John J. Myers. They were boyhood friends who shared a love of the genre in question and have remained friends and fans to this day. So, they wrote a book together that captures the attitude of that 50s fun.
There has to be a ship that is nearly falling apart, flight from authority, a smart-ass robot or two, mystical sounding weapons … like The Mesmerizer.
The Mesmerizer, as I learned, is always positioned between the gyrofluxer and the 55X Square Tuner.
Ham radio operators would be proud of those names.
If you are interested, dig in. It’s fun.
Silver suits and ray guns!
Also fun, and sharing many of the same elements as Space Vulture are the fast-read novels of Chris Kennedy, starting with
Eventually, I – Fr. Zuhlsdorf – become the star character later in the series. Well… maybe not the star, but a major player. Well… if not a major player, I have some great lines. And I get killed! But… do I really? In fact, I come back to life… or do I?
As a matter of fact, Kennedy may be operating from his own homage stance. Here is the moral patch for the unit Sci-Fi-I belong to:
It seemed appropriate to put it on one of my range bags.
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As a rule, you should never definitely die in a work of fiction until the issue of a sequel has been resolved.
[Thanks for the tip. On the other hand, I did get to say that I returned from the “existential periphery”.]
Is that the same Gary Wolf who wrote KIllerbowl and Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
So Archbishop Emeritus Myers wrote a sci-fi novel with his boyhood pal? That’s cool.
On a long flight last month I read GK Chesterton’s epic Ballad of the White Horse. Perhaps someone could turn Michael O’Brien’s Voyage to Alpha Centauri into an epic poem.
Looking at Fr. Z’s range bag, one wonders if he has the Flux Capacitor tucked away in there.
[Nope. Just the usual, including a good med kit.]