I finally got around to reading this one the other day. I found it enjoyable in many ways, yet it caused me to ask myself a recurring question: what is like to write with characters that already exist?
Fan-fiction.
But is this fan-fiction?
No. Not at all.
Actually…despite the excessively nerdy setting (a William Shatner convention), the Shatner impressions (by various Shatner performances) aren’t even pedantically accurate. Having only seen a few Star Trek episodes, there appear to be very few stock phrases in evidence.
Therefore, one begins to wonder: if this is not a heavy-handed ode to nerd, doll-collecting culture…then what is it?
I feel, like the best of bizarro, it is a sort of half-hearted attempt a satirize a given concept or subculture without actually ridiculing it too harshly and, in that misadventure/misdiagnosis, creating some bold, original, and quick–a kind of blitzkrieg of an idea, half-executed and kind of spinning in a psychedelic direction while, due to the quick speed of its execution, it retains its b-movie robes so it can never quiet rest and dusty itself into a certain brand of literary experimentalism.
Instead, its intention remains like a blur of excitement, fun, and a weird idea never fully perfected.
nicholauspatnaude 