AUTHOR: Mark Roman
PUBLISHER: Cogwheel Press
AVAILABILITY: Amazon US (Kindle e-book), Amazon US (paperback), Amazon UK (Kindle e-book), Amazon UK (paperback)
APPROXIMATE LENGTH: 300 pages (paperback)
Recommended for fans of science fiction comedy (such as the Hitchhiker
series by Douglas Adams, The Cyberiad
by Stanislaw Lem, and the Doctor Who series) and British humor
GENRE
Science Fiction—Comedy
The Ultimate Inferior Beings is
a space adventure that is written with a satirical lilt. While technologies are
described, there are no lengthy scientific explanations.
PACE
The Ultimate Inferior Beings
includes enough mystery and intrigue to keep you turning the pages while taking
the time to enjoy each scene.
PERSPECTIVE
Third person omniscient. The narrator has a
very distinct storytelling voice and every so often will address the reader.
Each character’s thoughts and motivations are explored, and at times the
perspective is fairly limited.
CONTENT REVIEW
The Ultimate Inferior Beings
takes place in the distant future in which humans have colonized space. The
story begins when a starship that had been making the journey from Earth to one
of its most remote colonies, Tenalp, arrives with all of its crewmembers
mysteriously deceased. As explained in the book’s brief introduction, the
residents of Tenalp are hilariously bad at everything. Therefore, after much
deliberation, the Tenalp government determines that the best way to find out
what happened is to send another starship on an identical mission.
jixX is a landscape architect who happens to
be appointed captain of The Night Ripple, the ship that is sent on this
mission. Although he repeatedly protests that his “flight experience” consists
of him sitting on his pilot father’s lap as a child, he is given little choice
in the matter. jixX is very much the everyman—not especially bright but smart
enough to realize how ridiculous the circumstances are, making him likable and
easy to sympathize with. His personality and physical features are left
intentionally vague, and in some ways he represents the reader’s position in
the story. He is the only somewhat normal character in this world of oddities.
The rest of the cast is a downright madhouse
of colorful, peculiar personalities. Soon after taking off, jixX is introduced
to his relatively useless crew: a carpenter who has only ever worked with wood
substitutes and is obsessed with real wood, a scientist who is adamant that God
left puns in the English language and that uncovering these puns will prove His
existence, and a rather psychopathic gynecologist, who is also the only woman
on board. In addition, jixX soon uncovers a mysterious stowaway who has made a
career out of her ability to hide. And then there’s LEP, the ship’s highly
incompetent central computer with an entertainingly lame sense of humor and no
sense of direction.
It is LEP that suggests the name “Mamm
aliens” for the race of slimy green blobs that jixX and his crew stumble upon
after they enter the Pseudogravitic Continuum, a bubble universe through which
they are meant to pass on their way to Earth. The Mamms’ civilization is
centered around the almighty brick, and among them is a group of religious
fanatics who believe in the Ultimate Inferior Beings—a race of beings so bad at
everything that they will one day destroy the universe. One of these fanatics,
Jeremy, uses circuitous reasoning to determine that humans are these beings and
that he is the Chosen One who must destroy them. Jeremy’s blowhard speeches
satirize the kind of roundabout arguments often heard from real-life fanatics,
religious and otherwise, and it is up to jixX to stop him and save humankind.
Given what we are shown of
the Tenalp civilization, Jeremy, despite his erroneous thinking, probably has a
point. The bulk of the book’s humor comes from watching just how incredibly
daft the characters, especially those in positions of authority, can be while
still believing in their own flawed logic and inherent superiority. And then
there are the scientist’s “discoveries” in the English language—messages found
in the Periodic Table that convince him that he is getting closer to finding
proof of God’s existence.
At the back of the book is a Glossary
defining some of the terms used in the novel—and then some. All technologies
and locations are explained in the narrative itself, and so the Glossary isn’t
required to understand what is going on. Rather, it serves as an entertaining
bonus feature that partially explains some of Tenalp’s characteristics (such as
why all citizens of that planet have lower case names ending with X) and provides
as another opportunity to enjoy Roman’s unique wit. In addition, there are appendices describing
the evolution and history of the Mamm aliens, a bonus story, and another one of
the scientist’s pun proofs. Finally, there is what I initially believed to be a hysterically worthless index of
the kind that might have been created by the citizens of Tenalp, featuring
words such as “me” and “that.” However, it turns out that Roman has pulled a fast one again—it is in fact a puzzle.
The Ultimate Inferior Beings is written with a very distinctive attitude, and
at times it feels as though the narrator himself is a character in the story,
making quips about the situation as he describes it. And yet this voice never
gets in the way of the story itself—rather, it lends to the book’s offbeat
atmosphere. While verisimilitude isn’t a priority in a story that features
green blobs with posh Oxbridge accents, the universe is nevertheless believable
in its own quirky way. It is easy to become immersed in the story’s many
absurdities and to become quite attached to its wonderfully eccentric style. Original, clever, and droll, Roman has created a thoroughly
enjoyable work of science fiction comedy that will appeal to anyone who
appreciates intelligent humor.
THE NITPICKY STUFF
The Kindle version has a table of contents at
the beginning.
This book is pretty G-rated – no adult
language, no sex scenes, no violence (other than bricks smashing through
windows and an explosion in space)
AUTHOR INFO
Mark Roman is a scientist who lives in London
with his wife and two children. He has published around 80 papers, reviews, and
book chapters under a different name and has worked in a number of fields from
architecture to astrophysics.
GREAT review!! I really enjoyed this book too =D
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