“It looked to Jim like the Starfleet recruiters were really scraping the bottom of the barrel, but he tried to frame his appraisal more diplomatically. "I’m probably the wrong person to ask,” he said. “I feel like I outgrew Star Trek a few years ago." Then he gestured to Gary’s crotch. "But your sack is right there.”
Gary Tugged resolutely at the suit’s inseam. “Better?” he asked.
“You might want to do that every few minutes. Just to be safe.”
Gary sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I’m whupped,” he said.
“Maybe the zombie milf infected you,” Jim suggested.
“Dude, I never said she was a zombie. That’s you talking.”
“But think about it. She tried to bite you,” he mused. “She was obviously out of her mind. And at least some of that slime on your shirt is blood. I’ve seen enough to know the look. And the smell.”
“Now you’re freaking me out,” Gary said.
“I’m freaking myself out,’ Jim said. “But I know two people who were bitten today. One of them developed a really strange rash on her shoulder. And a lot of my coworkers are calling in sick. Isn’t this how zombie movies always start? With lots of minor, seemingly unrelated incidents?”
“There’s just one problem with your theory,’ Gary said. "Zombies don’t exist. Those are movie fiction.”
“I know,” Jim said, “but the data all points to the same conclusion.”
“The same highly illogical conclusion,” Gary clarified. “Speaking as someone with a really tenuous hold on reality, I think you might want to take yourself offline and undergo a full diagnostic; if you get my drift.”
I’m not the one in the form fitting jumpsuit, Jim thought, but he didn’t see the point in debating it further. He didn’t really believe that the world was being overrun with the walking dead -- he just knew that his instincts were buzzing, and he was desperate to understand why…”
From Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin Anderson and Sam Stall (2010).
So. Just finished Anderson and Stall's Night of the Living Trekkies, a novel which concerns the staff at a Houston hotel as they brace themselves for the onslaught of a weekend Star Trek convention only to be overrun by something far more sinister -- and hungry.
Here, our story focuses on a certain bellhop named -- wait for it -- Jim Pike, a former Trekker whose enthusiasm for the fantastic has been scuttled by an IED reality check after two tours in Afghanistan.
But once the shit hits the fan, this disgruntled vet, along with his Andorian sister, a hired cosplayer decked out as Slave Leia, a Klingon from Atlanta who builds replica sci-fi melee weapons, an overweight computer programmer who still lives with his mom, a keynote speaker on xenobiology from Harvard, and a Red Shirt named, you guessed it, William 'Willie' Makeitt, must fight their way from room to room and floor to floor, trying to escape before they're all assimilated into the zombie horde.
Well, technically, they're not really zombies, but more of a Van Vogt-tian space parasite infection.
Anyhoo, filled with about a gabillion inside jokes, several of which had me barking out with laughter, the dual-authors really know their Trek lore; and though their end result is completely disposable once the last page is finished, the novel is still well worth a read.
Sure, the plot and characters are all unrepentantly silly, but it's in a 'having fun with the cliches' as opposed to 'making fun of them' if that makes any sense. I mean, What is a Zombie Apocalypse but a total Kobayashi Maru?
Now, the only real disappointment I had with Night of the Living Trekkies was it barely scratched the surface on the whole notion of Gene Roddenberry's optimism butting heads with George Romero's pessimism -- an idea I felt deserved to be explored further.
But! What we got was good enough and manages to actually exceed its novelty trappings while embracing them at the same time, as the novel finally answers the eternal question: What will it take to make a cross-fandom relationship work? Alien Zombiegeddon.
Beyond that? Only 250 pages and a quick read. Track it down and engage thrusters as soon as possible, Fellow Programs.
Originally posted on May 1, 2014, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.
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