Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Star Warped
**** Star Warped by A3R Roberts. Science fiction/humor.
| (note: this video is not related to the book, but it's a similar sort of parody, including the British slant to the humor) |
I bought this for someone--probably Carl--for Christmas a couple of years ago. Eventually, all books in the house end up in my TBR pile. This one landed there after our move.
I really had no idea what to expect from this parody of the Star Wars series. I've seen all the movies, and I know that Han shot first, but I'm not up on all the minutiae that actual Star Wars fans know. So I expected to be a little bit lost. I wasn't. Since all six movies are covered in 384 smallish pages, there's not a lot of room for esoteric detail. And I think I expected it to be less respectful of the fans, because I was surprised that it wasn't, but on reflection, it wouldn't make any sense to be too critical of the movies or the fans--otherwise, who'd buy the book?
Some of the gags made mountains from molehills--it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that the reason Luke Seespotrun and his aunt and uncle were nudists comes from the Episode 4 title: A New (nude) Hope. *groan* That's typical of the humor, by the way, so if you have little tolerance for puns, I'd suggest skipping this.
Other gags were pretty predictable--Princess Leper's hair, for example. I don't think it's possible to spoof the original Star Wars without reference to her hair.
But the majority of the gags were fresh, relevant, and very, very funny. I even found myself laughing aloud as Hand Someman stuffed a frozen, snow-blind Luke Seespotrun into a dead piggibakka, with the result that now Luke is not just cold, but also slimy, smelly, and squashed. And there's the bit musing on why Pizza the Hutt (it's impossible for a parodist to re-name Jabba anything else) dressed Princess Leper in a metal bikini, reasoning that for his species, she'd be about as alluring as a lump of dough would be to us.
The biggest gag, of course, is the use of the Farce rather than the Force. Pratfalls are a big part of any fight.
Star Warped is obviously not great literature. And it doesn't really give you any new insight into the movie series. It does point out some of the illogic or inconsistencies that a casual fan, such as myself, might not have noticed before, but that's not really the point of the book.
It's just for fun. And it succeeds.
Categories: Books, 4stars, ScienceFiction, Humor
Labels: 4 stars, books, humor, ScienceFiction
