1990; 248 pages. Book 3 (but
Volume 2) (out of 7) in the “Bill the Galactic Hero” series. New Authors? : No, and Yes. Genres : Science Fiction; Humor and Satire. Overall Rating: 3*/10.
Central Headquarters needs a volunteer and
Space Trooper Bill is the perfect fit.
Maybe it’s that pair of
Deathwish Drang fangs he sports. They’d
scare a Chinger right out of its lizard pelt.
Of course, since Chingers are only seven inches tall, that's not saying much.
Maybe it’s that alligator foot
that the military surgeons at Camp Diplatory have just attached to Bill’s
leg. Alligator feet are quite powerful. But since Bill only has *one* of them transplanted
so far on him, all it does is make him walk lopsided.
Maybe it’s because Bill’s a
part of the famous “Fighting 69th Deep Space Screaming Killers” unit. But heck,
there’s fifty thousand such troopers stationed here at Camp Diplatory. So what makes Bill so special?
Actually, it’s because Bill’s
been classified as expendable, and that’s exactly the kind of soldier
needed for this next mission. It’s a trip
to “Tsuris”, a mystery planet where objects passing nearby – even starships – get plucked from space, disappearing into thin ether, only to reappear
again millions of miles away. Someone
needs to go there and reconnoiter, even if they also get zapped to who-knows-where
and are never heard from again.
Someone expendable.
What’s To Like...
Bill, the Galactic
Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains is the third book in Harry
Harrison’s 7-volume humorous sci-fi series, and the first to feature a
co-author, which then became the norm for subsequent entries, although the co-authors change from one
book to the next.
The book is first and foremost
a spoofery of other Sci-Fi series, most notably Star
Trek (with Captain Dirk and Mr. Splock) and Star
Wars (with Ham Duo and Chewgumma).
Bill gets introduced to time-travel, thanks to a gizmo called a "Temporal/Spatial Displacer", and a bit later experiences getting sucked into a computer as well.
The writing is a vocabularian's delight, featuring some kewl words I’m familiar with (such as “simulacrum” and “tintinnabulation”)
plus some that were new to me, a couple of which are listed below.
The multifunctional expression “bowb”
(it can be used as a noun, verb, interjection, and/or adjective) is back; I think it should be added to everyone’s vocabulary. I enjoyed the nod to Robert Heinlein by
having Dirk “grok” things, and of course the journey back through time to Carthage and the encounter with Hannibal resonated deeply with me.
There's some subtle wordplay, such as a capital city named “Graypnutz” and some hilarious mistranslations as Bill’s computerized translating device
struggles with the idioms of the Tsurisian language. I chuckled at some of the religious references, including the “Church of Very
Little Charities” and the “Zoroastrian
Winter Solstice Defloration Festival”. Nowadays we call that latter one "Christmas".
There are multiple plotlines
to keep the action and excitement flowing: will Bill get a brain transplant?, will he
fail the intelligence test?, can he successfully steal a temporal/spatial
displacer for his superiors?, can he avoid being court-martialed and executed? I guess the answer to that last one is self-evident, since there are four more books in this series.
Kewlest New Word ...
Zaftig (adj.) : having a full, rounded figure;
plump, (a
Yankeeism)
Others: Crampon (n.); Concomitant (as a noun, not an adjective).
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 11
ratings and 5 reviews.
Goodreads: 3.42*/5,
based on 811 ratings and 18 reviews
Excerpts...
“Yipe!” Bill yiped. “What the bowb are you doing with my ear?”
“I’m fastening a translating device to your
ear, so if you find any Tsurisians on Tsuris you can talk to them.”
“Tsuris!
The place nobody ever comes back from?”
“You catch on fast. That’s the whole point of the operation. Your non-return will give us the excuse to
invade.”
“I don’t think I like this.” (pg. 16)
“They’re giving me the Usladish look; you
know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t,” Bill said, desperation in
his voice, a trapped feeling coursing through every fiber of his being.
“I keep forgetting you weren’t born here,”
Illyria said. “An Usladish look is what
we call a look that means, I know you’re up to something sneaky and rotten but
I’m not going to tell anybody about it yet because I’m sort of sneaky and
rotten myself.”
“They don’t have that feeling where I come
from,” Bill said.
“No?
How curious.” (pg.
22)
“When they handed
out the brains you were in the corner picking your toes.” (pg. 181)
Sadly, there are a bunch of
weaknesses in Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet
of Bottled Brains. Overall, the
writing is bad, and the storytelling is even worse. I felt like I was reading a high school
student’s effort. The various plotlines
meander all over the place in the tale, and there is no overarching storyline to tie everything together.
The first part of the book has
some funny moments, but things soon devolve into just plain silliness. I felt like the authors were trying to spoof Starship Troopers and its “so bad it’s good” reputation, but ended up
instead with a “so bad it’s terrible”
result. I’m also at a loss to say who
the target audience is; the book’s too silly to appeal to most adults, but it’s
also got too much cussing and sexual references (tumescence,
phallus, copulation, detumescing) to be appropriate for a YA audience.
Summing up, there’s just too
much wrong with this book, and the series as a whole, to recommend it. The low Goodreads rating and the scarcity of
reviews/ratings at both Amazon and Goodreads (B,tGHotPoBB has been
around for 32 years now, and both Sheckley and Harrison are well-known sci-fi
writers) should’ve clued me in that this was something to
avoid. I doubt I'll go any
further in this series.
3 Stars. The book’s cover lists Harry Harrison and
Robert Sheckley as co-authors, (with Sheckley’s
name getting the smaller font size), while the Wikipedia article
(the link is here) says Harrison was merely the editor. Also, Harry Harrison’s
comments in Wikipedia sound like he really didn’t want much to do with this
series, likening it to “sharecropping”.
Personally, the 72 chapters of Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of the Bottled Brains seemed like a friendly contest between the two writers. I got the impression that one would write a chapter, but end it with a ill-fitting and superfluous sentence, and it would then be the other writer’s challenge to somehow make it fit. For instance, Chapter 60 ends with this sentence: “Surprisingly, the answer was to be provided by a single long-stemmed blue rose.” Oy. Good luck making that segue smoothly into the next chapter.
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