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Queer Fantasy :: Sci-Fi Romance
Surfing Samurai Robots
Mel Gilden
Science Fiction, Cyperpunk, Satire Lite (1988)
From Goodreads:
They have the agility of surfers and the loyalty of samurai. They are the Surfing Samurai Robots, the invention of America’s leading industrial genius, Knighten Daise.
Zoot, an alien with a big nose from the planet T’toom, is exploring the mean streets of Earth to find out where all the surfing robots went. Before he can say Philip Marlowe, he meets some Malibu dudes who want to know who adjusted their surfbots with a sledgehammer. As if that wasn’t enough, his life’s on the line to find the inventor’s gorgeous daughter.
Is Zoot a good enough private eye for any world or just an alien doing a job an alien’s got to do? It’s a mystery that’s science fiction, science fiction that’s a mystery. It’s a funny new book that introduces one of the hippest and most original characters of the Eighties.
This is the kind of book where you basically just need to look at the cover. See it up there? Yeah, that’s basically the book encapsulated into a single image.
Alien, raised on 40s Earth radio, comes here to be a private eye then immediatly gets embroiled in a real mess of a conspiracy around…wait for it…surfing robotic automatons. Like you keep thinking the book has sort of out played itself in terms of escalating absurdity, then a character goes and puts their brain into a lobster.
It’s peak 80s ridiculous that you’re either totally in for or totally out of. You’re either along for the ride, or you’re getting off before the first stop.
Something that’s a bit understated about the book and almost lost under the shenanigans is the approach to this fish out of water alien character, Zoot Marlowe. He comes to Earth with this preconceived notion of what it’s like that’s a few decades old at this point. He drops down in Malibu in the middle of a bunch of partying surfers, and he truly has no idea what the hell is happening. What’s a brewski? What are these fabric tubes the humans wear? What are these black marks on these papers? Yet he has something like a Frisbee on his home planet. Everything is sort of one degree removed from fully understanding and couched in his own experience, giving these little expanded glimpses into what his homeworld is like.
At the same time, it doesn’t treat Zoot like an idiot. He might not know what human clothes are the first time he sees them, but he can figure out how to drive a car and follow a map pretty easily. Those would be skills that transfer from interstellar travel. The logic is still intact.
The whole book does have a very strong voice, though. The kind it could be easy to bounce off of. It can be a little stilted and over expository. At the same time, it’ll drop a real banger of a line, and you’ll get a very sensible chuckle out of it. What I found myself doing is making my inner reading monologue have that noir styling that the book is trying to parody. Actively forcing that makes the whole thing come together in this very delightful way.
Key Lime Sky
Al Hess
Romantic Sci-fi, Queer, Alien Invasion (2024)
From Storygraph:
Denver Bryant’s passion for pie has sent him across Wyoming in search of the best slices. Though he dutifully posts reviews on his blog, he’s never been able to recreate his brief moment of viral popularity…
Driving home from a roadside diner, Denver witnesses a UFO explode directly over his tiny town of Muddy Gap. …Being both non-binary and autistic, he’s convinced his reputation as the town eccentric is impeding his quest for answers. Frustrated, he documents the bizarre incidents on his failing pie blog, and his online popularity skyrockets. …
The only person in town who takes him seriously is handsome bartender, Ezra. As the two investigate over pie and the possibility of romance, the alien presence does more than change the weather. People start disappearing. …Denver’s always been more outsider than hero, but he’s determined to ensure that a world with Ezra – and with pie – still exists tomorrow.
This is the second Hess book I’ve read, the first being World Running Down which I will always recommend (which…yeah, that’s a good one go read it).
This book is sort of my favorite approach to romantic books outside of Romance as a genre (ex romantic fantasy, romantic sci-fi). In that, you could make the relationship between Denver and Ezra completely platonic, and it wouldn’t fundamentally change the story. It’s a little extra something something but doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the plot.
And I find the pacing of the romance in this book particularly interesting because it tosses aside any will-they-won’t-they tension to basically hook them up pretty early in the story. It’s not smooth sailing. But they are together through the major conflicts of the story, and the relationship itself is only a small conflict in comparison. While there’s a little bit of miscommunication, it’s not frustrating. Rather it’s Denver’s autism trying desperately to read social cues and Ezra being extremely bad at communicating to begin with. So really it’s just two idiots struggling through a shared trauma.
In this, I find Hess is generally pretty good at creating main characters who are kind of assholes, but in the way that we’re all assholes sometimes. At the same time, we have a handful of characters as foils to this who are moved into desperation by the alien conflict, acting in extreme ways.
Hess, unfortunately, also falls into the trap that a lot of queer writers do where they feel the need to be a little over-explainy of queer issues in a real-world space. There just…isn’t a way to introduce pronouns when you’re first talking to someone that doesn’t sound extremely weird, even in real life. So on page, it always comes across as clunky when characters do it, and we just haven’t found the right solution to it, yet.
With a particularly long denouement and these minor complaints aside, it’s an overall fun, clippy read. A sort of cozy apocalypse.
Deadpool: Paws
Stefan Petrucha
Superhero, Sci-fi, IP novel (2015)
From Storygraph:
Marvel’s popular Merc with a Mouth in an all-new ARRGGH * Hey hey, book readers, take off those big thick glasses – this is Deadpool speaking! Sorry Marvel, somethin’ happened to your copy guy. Anyway, this is my first prose novel, and they got this dude Stefan Petrucha to write it. He’s good people, he’s written novels (Ripper and Dead Mann Walking) and comics (Power Rangers, X-Files). But here’s the thing: This book is about dogs. Dogs that turn into big nasty monsters. And then I gotta kill ’em. Thing is, I like killing people – the ones that deserve it, anyway – but I won’t kill dogs. No way. So that’s what we call a character dilemma. What – wait for the paperback? Who said that?! I’ll gut you right now-
I’m not overly inclined toward “IP” prose novels that started as visual media, but I’m not foreign them. I grew up with the Young Jedi Knights back and a few Star Trek books. That last one was a Mass Effect book, and that’s been a decade.
I’ve been sort of collecting some Spider-Man and Venom one’s, though, knowing there will come a day when I really want a Venom story and don’t have a new one to read. But also kitch.
So when I came across this book, I thought “fuck it, let’s go.”
Y’all….
I had such a fun time with this book. Oh my god. It is so unfortunate I can see a large chunk of people bouncing off it. If you’re a fanfic reader, you might not be one of those, because it all comes down to tense. It’s first person present, deep into Wade’s inner monologue which Petrucha writes extremely well, in my opinion. Having written Deadpool fanfiction, he’s a very difficult character to write without leaning too hard on the 4th wall breaking or being cloying in other ways. Even my favorite Deadpool runs, narratively, can get a little much.
To me this book is the perfect blend. And because of the 4th wall breaks, it ends up being a pretty good meta-textual examination on the nature of prosaic construction. It’s got a pretty high Lexile score from what I can tell, it lampshades the lampshades, and is a relatively smart book considering the plot is about taking out genetically engineered puppies that turn into monsters.
I can’t attest to how much you’d like this book if you weren’t already a fan of Deadpool or, at minimum, comics, but if you are, I reccomend it. So much that I’m picking up one of Petrucha’s original prose novels when I get a chance.
Petrucha writes a fair amount of IP prose and a solid chunk of middle grade and young adult. In terms of age of this book, it’s not YA in the traditional sense, but rather PG-13.
Comic Round Up
Recently Ended
Weapon X-Men
When this team was first announced (Cable, Deadpool, Wolverine, Thunderbird, and Chamber), I instantly made mental grabby hands. I’ve talked in previous months how much I love Cable. Love him in a team with Deadpool who I’ve developed a new affection for as an adult. And like any basic X-Men bitch, love a little Wolvie. Haven’t read anything with Chamber since I dug into Generation X a million years ago, and was eager to see something modern with John Proudstar.
I’m bummed it ended, because I saw the potential for some 80s action, and it just never got a chance to get there. With a team book, you need time to sit with everyone, anyway, and this one made the choice to split the team. Wolverine and Deadpool with one branch of the story, Cable et al with the other. The Deadpool-Wolverine breakout definetly feels like a marketing decision, and I think that might have been one of the choices that ultimately failed the book.
The people who are really into Deadpool and Wolverine want them to kiss on page. Everyone else is over-saturated, especially with Deadpool/Wolverine still going. I know even I, given this setup, would have much preferred Cable and Deadpool body swapping around a little more, and I think that would have appealed to a more nostalgic audience.
Say they had made the Weapon X-Men team the Uncanny X-Force team then given Forge, Betsy and Rachel something else to do? Would have that have worked out better in the end?
Because during those five issues I was having a really good time, and I feel like that first arc could have led into something.
Metamorpho: The Element Man
This actually ended in May, but I never got around to talking about how genuinly mad I am that this series got cut short. I’m literally trying to figure out who to contact at DC to bring it back with the same team. Ewing is one of my auto-buys, right now, and I was so desperately enjoying this series.
It’s a little camp. It’s a little satire. It’s a little light body horror out of nowhere but done in such a lowkey way that it sort of creeps up on you. It was exactly my type of humor to a perfect degree without being overbearing or too up its own ass.
Like DC is going to put Metamorpho in the new Superman movie, merch him (which I bought the figure, ngl), yet cut his ongoing? Bullshit.
1st Issue in June
Spider-Girl
I really liked Gronbeck’s work on Venom, so I was paying attention for any new releases when Spider-Girl was announced. It’s really cute! My comic shop gal and I have agreed she should work with Taskmaster, at some point. Calling it now.
The New Avengers
I’m on the lookout for how they’re going to roll Eddie Brock into this a few issues down the line, but seeing The Jackal as a big bad is a lot of fun. I don’t feel like I’ve seen that in a while. Should have kept I the Thunderbolts.
Through the First Arc
Eddie Brock: Carnage
When this was first announced, a lot of people in my Venom comic circles were like “why?! He hates Carnage?!” And like…yeah…he does…but Eddie brock is also a slut for symbiotes. When faced with “die” and “take a symbiote I don’t like” I can see him making that choice. And as the story is developing, the logic is coming together. Eddie knows that Carnage is dangerous and that they’ll have to bond with someone at some point. If Eddie takes that hit, he knows he can handle it, and then figure out what to do with the guy in the interim. And we’re seeing that unfold.
This is also just a very interesting depiction of Carnage with…just…the best outfits. We’ve been giving the symbiotes more and more of their own personalities. So Carnage getting to have this sort of direct conflict with a host who can fight back is bringing out this interesting side to him that I’m enjoying. Just waiting to see how they end up working on the New Avengers.
All-New Venom
I MJ as Venom. I love having a 616 female main host, and MJ is a good choice in the Spider-Orbit. I have to admit that part of this is because I don’t like Jackpot. I think the powerset is kinda dumb. So if this gets rid of that, then bully for it. I really like the idea of a host that already kind of knows Venom. These people have a contentious relationship already outside of being bonded, and I think that adds an extra element of intelletual connection. They aren’t working in perfect harmony; they have to think about what they’re doing. That adds a level of complexity that hasn’t really been explored since the Toxin mini-series.
There was a criticism when the book first launched about MJ taking in Dylan, the son of the man who once terrorized her, and I think that’s super unfair to MJ as a person. She’s always been someone who was deeply drawn to being a mother, finally got that chance, just to have it ripped away. Of course she would take in Dylan. She’s not a bad person and would have seen some of herself in him. And that’s all well before we even knew she was the new host.
Then the outcry was “why would she bond with Venom! They terrorized her!” Then the narrative explains is pretty immediately. Large parts of the Spider-Man fandom were really ready to hate this book just because Paul was there or because they didn’t like Venom War.
As a sort of Omega level Venom canon reader/keeper, I feel like I’m reading a writer who loves the alien as much as I do, agnostic of host. And who sort of groks the symbiote experience and is sort tackling head-on how we’ve applied human linguistic constructs to them. There’s such good semantic additions that I’m just eating up om nom nom.
There’s a lot of foreshadowing that Ewing is going to continue with and buckle down on the “family” element of the symbiotes, and I’m so excited to have more of my little symbiote babbies on page really interacting with one another.
I also like that we’re running street level again.
Back Catalog
Venom Chronological Reread
Since this is my favorite era, I’m really trying to savor it, but I’m through the “Land Before Crime” arc which is, generally, one of my favorite arcs! The Moongirl/Venom team-up is so unexpected but weirdly works.
I feel like up until now I’ve never really good an proper appreciated Mac Gargan at the start of this run and his reaction to realizing Lee had Venom. His time with the symbiote is more recent in my memory, and now I almost feel bad for him. He really bit off more than he could chew with Venom, and it kind of fucked him up forever.
I’m about to enter the first part of the Venomverse storylines, and this is actually going to be some new territory for me. Every time I read/reread the Costa run, I just sort of skip the Venomverse/Poison even. I know what happens. I’ve read bits and pieces, and I know how it slots in. I’ve just not read it all “in order.” I’m a bad Venom fan, in that regard.
Marvel Knights Punisher: “The Streets of Laredo” arc
I’ve gotten up thought the “Streets of Laredo “story in the Ennis run, then I’m taking a bit of break.
But this arc.
This whole arc makes me want to do a full breakdown on the utilization of the Bury Gays arc in a revenge fantasy. If we’re ignoring supposed bisexuality of the character, I’m in love with a version of Frank that just…does not give a shit what you do with your parts. This sort of vengeance incarnate that only focuses on his own, primitive sensations and only cares if you can hold a gun. I’m developing a new appreciation for Frank as a queer ally through sheer virtue of apathy about the human condition.
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Pixels and Pins Studio 