his volume follows Zeppelins West (2001), which introduced us to a postmodern alternate Earth in its Victorian period, where fictional characters such as Frankenstein's monster and Doctor Moreau (here Doctor Momo, the "original" whom Wells used as his model) consorted with real ones such as Annie Oakley and Wild Bill Hickock in a rock-'em-sock-'em adventure modeled not even on pulp fiction but on pulp's ancestor, dime novels.
Here, the main carryover character from this first adventure is Ned the Seal. In body a mere seal, Ned has been experimented on by Doctor Momo and is now highly intelligent (thanks to a strap-on mechanical brain of Monty Python vintage). Ned has also been granted thumbs grafted onto his flippers so that he may write on his omnipresent slate and thus communicate with humanity. Much of this book is in fact narrated by Ned.
But we do not focus on Ned at first. Instead, we witness the launching from Mars and landing on Earth of assault capsules bearing octopoid invaders, a la Wells' classic. Then we encounter Mark Twain—or this world's version of him. Twain is living in North Africa, a drunken washed-up loner in the Burroughs-Bowles mode. Coming into a little cash, Twain seeks to improve his lot by ferrying over to Spain to visit his buddy Jules Verne, who is living the bachelor life of a famous and rich expatriate author (and inventor!). Verne's wife, you see, ran off with Phileas Fogg, leaving Passepartout loyal to Verne as his servant.
Twain encounters Ned, bringing the wounded seal home to Verne's house. The three humans and brother mammal are just becoming good friends when Martian tripods emerge from the sea and send them fleeing. Their balloon vehicle eventually deposits them on a mysterious island full of dinosaurs off the coast of Africa. Rescue arrives in the form of a pirate ship bearing some of Ned's old friends as prisoners. The pirates are overcome, and our heroes depart, heading for London to assess how the war with the Martians is going. But three of the newcomers, a giant ape named Rikwalk and two time travelers named Bill Beadle and John Feather, reveal a larger problem: The multiverse is disintegrating, with gaps opening between dimensions. Unless this process can be stopped, all will end in chaos.
Reaching a London in flames, our crew must first defeat the Martians before facing the larger assault on the continua.
Thanks for all the fish!
It's hard to know where the postmodern urge to appropriate famous fictional characters and blend them with historical personages into new ironic meta-adventures first originated. Mainstream historical novels have always employed real people, of course, as characters. Then, "sequels by other hands" have resurrected famous characters created by, say, Jane Austen or Charles Dickens for extended lives. But the unique mix exemplified in Joe Lansdale's new book probably stems from two genre titans: Philip Jose Farmer and Michael Moorcock. Their efforts to emulate old forms of genre fiction and to create fresh hybrids opened up vast new vistas of collage and pastiche. Second-generation writers like Alan Moore, with his The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman, with their Back in the USSA (1997), crystallized the format. In some sense, these romps are alternate histories. But they defy the sober, linear speculations of mainstream counterfactuals in favor of wild effects.
Surely no one can do gonzo better than Joe Lansdale. Early Blaylock and Powers, allied writers, come across like clergymen next to him. His scatalogical, ribald, violent, anti-all-that-is-respectable attitude furnishes forth a steady stream of hilarious slapstick situations, one-liners and absurd yet striking figures of speech. This book aims for laughs and scores numerous bullseyes. Until you've seen two octopuses with twin anuses abusing each other over who gets to kill an Earthman first, you've not experienced gonzo.
But carrying the whole tale on a deeper level is Ned the Seal. Ripped from his edenic native state, a stranger in a world he never made, Ned is still the eternal optimist. Granted plenty of fish—his constant preoccupation—and occasional "seal nookie," Ned is willing to battle pirates, Martians and dinosaurs equally, while chiding his companions about their own shortcomings. The creation of this highly original character proves that Lansdale borrows icons not out of lack of ingenuity but out of principled playfulness.
The book's structure, with a long detour from the war on the Martians intervening in the middle of the book, is somewhat problematical. Likewise, the swift collapse of their invasion, for the same Wellsian reasons, is a bit anticlimactic. But aside from these structural quibbles, I can recommend this book more highly than a banquet of sardines and herring.
