The Quanderhorn xperimentations

Rob Grant

Book - 2018

Churchill is Prime Minister for the last time. Rationing is still in force. All music sounds like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. People like living in 1952: it's familiar and reassuring, and Britain knows its place in the world. Few have noticed it's been 1952 for the past 65 years. Meet Professor Quanderhorn; a brilliant, maverick scientific genius who has absolutely no moral compass. With his Dangerous Giant Space Laser, High Rise Farm, Invisible Robot and Fleet of Monkey-driven Lorries, he's not afraid to push the boundaries of science to their very limit. Even when it's clearly insane to keep pushing. Despite the fact he's saved the world from several Martian invasions, the attacks of the Mole People, the Troglod...yte Shape-shifters and the Beatniks from Under the Sea, plus countless other sinister phenomena which threatened to rend the very fabric of reality, the Government would like to close him down. Why? Because they're terrified of him. Of his reality-warping experiments, of the mysterious button on his desk which he's constantly threatening to press. Of the unearthly secret locked in his cellar. And yet they're even more terrified it might stop being 1952 and they'll be out of power.

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Subjects
Genres
Alternative histories (Fiction)
Science fiction
Humorous fiction
Adaptations
Published
London : Gollancz 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Rob Grant (author)
Other Authors
Andrew Marshall, 1954- (author)
Physical Description
viii, 464 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781473224025
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This adaptation of Grant and Marshall's BBC Radio 4 series is a ridiculous mash-up of bad 1950s sci-fi and distinctly British humor. Primary narrator Brian Nylon is bereft of his memories and living through the first days of 1952 for the 66th time. This "infernal temporal MA¶bius band" is one of the many bizarre effects of Prof. Darius Quanderhorn's weird experiments. His research team includes Dr. Gemini Janussen, who has mechanical emotions; Quanderhorn's part-insect "son," Troy Quanderhorn, who is a "major breakthrough in Artificial Stupidity"; and Guuuurk, a hostage from the last Martian invasion. It also includes Brian, who has no idea he's the group's test pilot as well as a secret agent of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and others who want to thwart Quanderhorn's unspecified plans. Quanderhorn's team faces dangers such as a giant broccoli woman, a hypnotizing meteorite, and being stranded in a bus shelter on the moon. The hapless Brian comes from a long line of British milksop heroes such as Douglas Adams's Arthur Dent. There's nothing here that really makes any sense, but that's part of the humor, and fans of absurdist science fiction will find it very enjoyable. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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