2000;
278 pages. New Authors? : No, and No. Genre : Classic Science Fiction; Anthology;
Humor; YA. Overall Rating : 5*/10.
The book cover picture tells you all you need
to know to understand Hokas. They’re
teddy bears on steroids. They’re Ewoks
with panache. They’re charismatic and
cuddly. Well, I’m not too sure about the
“cuddly” part, but by nature they’re friends with almost everybody they meet, and can drink all other species under the table. Hokas are
also avid readers, and are especially partial to the classics and anything that has to do with
history.
But they’re extremely impressionable, and routinely become completely immersed in role-playing
according to whatever Terran tale they’ve last been exposed to. If you gave them a Harry Potter book or
movie, the next thing you know, they’d all be waving wands and trying to fly
around on brooms. If they're taught about Columbus, they’re apt to build a couple wooden ships and go sailing over the
oceans on their home planet of Toka, hoping to discover new lands.
So care must be taken as to exactly what sort of Earthly culture one might expose the Hokas to. If you let
them read up on Genghis Khan, the resulting role-playing could be deadly. If they are taught about Napoleon, they might break off into the British side and the French side and civil war might
erupt, all in the spirit of pretending.
Which is what that book cover is all about.
What’s To Like...
Hokas Pokas!
is a collection of three stories previously published in Sci-Fi/Fantasy
magazines. They’re of unequal length (the final tale
takes up 2/3 of the book) and are:
1.) Full
Pack (pg. 1)
2.) The
Napoleon Crime (pg. 37)
3.) Star
Prince Charlie (pg. 99)
Each
story features the Hokas’ take-off of some book or historical situation. “Full
Pack” uses Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books. “The
Napoleon Crime” taps into both Lord of the
Rings and the 1800’s military campaign in Spain pitting Napoleon against
Lord Nelson. “Star Prince Charlie” loosely follows the Scottish uprising led by
Charles Edward Stuart, aka “Bonnie Prince Charlie”. I’m both a bookaholic and a history buff, so
the book's genres was a nice fit for me.
The
third tale is the only one with chapters, and Gordon R. Dickson and Poul
Anderson title them to give some other authors. It’s possible that all 17 chapter titles do
this, but some of the ones I recognized were
Kidnapped, Fahrenheit 451, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Redheaded League, The
Return of the Native, The Prince, and an earlier Hoka anthology by Anderson and Dickson, Earthman’s Burden.
I
think the target audience is YA boys since there’s not a hint of romance in
any of the stories. There is a small
amount of cussing, and some alcohol gets consumed, but but this is mostly incidental. I liked one of the Hokas’ quaint version of a
cussword they’d recently learned, “damme”.
YA-oriented or not, the authors also manage to work in several neat, obscure
vocabulary words; they're listed in the next section.
I
chuckled at the reference to “Lemuria”, a mythical lost continent aka as
“Mu”. The riddle contest in Star Prince Charlie was a neat take-off
on some classic posers, and there’s a modicum of French, Spanish, and
German vocabulary worked into The
Napoleon Crime. I thought the “five feats of
the Prince” (on page 130) was a quite clever plot device.
I
wasn’t impressed with the way the first two stories ended. Both felt contrived and hasty to me, but
maybe that’s a function of being written as short stories in a magazine. The Star
Prince Charlie ending was better; it at least had a worthy moral to it:
Freedom wins, as does the Common Man.
Kewlest New Word ...
Sophont (n.)
: a being with a base reasoning capacity equivalent to, or greater than that of
a human being.
Others : Chivvy
(v.), Cozen
(v.), Calefaction (n.).
Excerpts...
“Ouch!” howled
Heragli, regaining full consciousness.
“What the sputz? Get the snrrowl
off me! Leggo, you illegitimate forsaken
object of an origin which the compilers of Leviticus would not have
approved! Wrowrrl!” And he made frantic efforts to reach over his
shoulder.
“Striped killer!”
squeaked Bagheera joyously. “Hunter of
helpless frogs! Lame Thief of the
Waingunga! Take that! And that!”
“What’re you
talking about? Never ate a frog in m’
life.” (pg. 34)
“Not only is
yakavarsh an excellent means of self-defense, Prince; it is in truth an art,
yes, a philosophy, a way of life.
Consider the lovely curve as a body soars through the air! Create an infinity symbol when you elegantly
dislocate his arm! See a gateway to
eternity in the angle of his broken neck!”
(pg. 172)
“It’s enough to make a
paranoid out of a saint.” (pg.
49)
A
great YA Fantasy series is one that entertains both adults and YA’s. Examples are Harry
Potter, Percy Jackson, and His Dark Materials. This was my third Hokas book, and unfortunately, none of them are in
that category. I’m pretty sure I
would’ve enjoyed Hokas Pokas! when I was in
junior high. But now, the plots seem
simplistic, the resolutions forced, and the wit repetitive.
It
must be kept in mind that Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson originally
wrote these stories for Sci-Fi/Fantasy magazines, whose readership was mostly
young boys, and just like “professional
wrestling”, they should be judged by their YA standards.
Both Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson were prolific science fiction
writers. The total number of Hoka short
stories is less than 10, and the fact that neither author tried to develop the
Hoka universe into a long-term series seems noteworthy. I’m guessing that the Hokas occasionally garnered them a few
extra bucks from the magazines, but I doubt either one of them wants their careers to
be defined by Hokas.
5 Stars.
Add 2 stars
if you're in the target audience; you’ll likely find these stories
hilarious. And even if you’re an adult, you
can still build your vocabulary, learn a couple foreign phrases, get acquainted with some
classic novels, and pick up some interesting history
tidbits.
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