Schenck must have had tremendous fun writing this, and I certainly had tremendous fun reading it. As one could guess from the title (not to mention all the chapter titles), it’s an affectionate homage to the pulp science fiction-adventure fiction of the ‘40s and ‘50s; it’s not really a spoof, because the author isn’t making fun of the story or its characters even when he’s playing with them for all they’re worth. This is not laughing at, but the much better laughing with. The same is true of his treatment of the “Retropolis” technology, based on what that period thought the future would be—complete with monorails, an Internet-of-sorts maintained by human switchboard operators (“Hello, Central….”), and humanoid, vacuum-tube-powered robots not very far removed from the venerable Robby of Forbidden Planet.
The best thing about this is that it’s an actual great adventure story, populated by a host (perhaps slightly too large a host; some of them get lost in the shuffle for various periods of time) of delightful, albeit not especially deep, characters working to defeat the inevitable Supervillain; his identity is known from the beginning, though the exact nature of his Dastardly Plot isn’t. They are able to do so because, like many Supervillains, this one is intelligent without being imaginative; he thinks, so to speak, in straight lines. He also, essentially, works alone. The Good Guys, by contrast, have imagination to spare—they think in curves and dodecahedrons and tesseracts—and are able and willing to combine their wide variety of individual quirky talents to, ultimately, devastating effect.
Other reviewers’ comparisons to Futurama and Terry Pratchett (The Amazing Maurice, say) seem apt, Futurama perhaps especially. I very much hope that there will be more Retropolis adventures!
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