Imagine, if you will, a fight to the death amongst James T. Kirk, T.J. Hooker, Denny Crane, Priceline Shatner, Rescue 911 Shatner and the inestimable William Shatner himself. Who would emerge the victor?
Welcome to the world of bizarro fiction courtesy of Shatner Quake:an action novel by Jeff Burk. The first ever ShatnerCon was the terrorist target of the Cambellians (all named Bruce) whose object it was to erase all fictional representations of William Shatner with their “fiction bomb”. Technology being what it is, the bomb malfunctions and releases all the versions of Shatner into our reality, all intent on the others destruction. If you are not intimately knowledgeable about William Shatner’s career from Esperanto Shatner to cartoon Kirk to Priceline and beyond, you will need to have the Internet Movie Database open as you read. My favourite was Rescue 911 Shatner who would unhelpfully would stand by and coldly narrate a victim’s gruesome demise.
If the bizzaro genre of fiction with its weirdness, absurdity, and unpredictability (though sometimes offensive) is up your alley, you might want to try other suggestions from Bizarro Central.
If your tastes run in a slightly tamer direction consider:
The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun by Robert Kaplow “America’s most beloved writer, Lilian Jackson Braun, author of twenty-four Cat Who… mysteries is now the subject of a mystery herself. In this spoof by one of her most ardent admirers, her beheaded body has been discovered in the men’s room of a gay bar in Lower Manhattan. The police are baffled, and so it is up to Braun’s eccentric writer friend, James Q. (Qafka), and his Siamese cats Ying-Ton and Poon-Tang to solve the ghastly mystery. Q.’s quest leads him on a hilarious, ribald chase that’s a cross between a story by Lenny Bruce and Dashiell Hammett. Before it’s done we’ve encountered Pulitzer Prize-winning Philip Roth, a sex-starved suburban housewife, a mysterious Hollywood diary, Britney Spears, an ancient secret society, and two gifted cats whose trail of urine and hairballs leads Q. and his spunky undergraduate assistant to finally unravel the riddle of The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun.” – publisher
Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon “About three things I was absolutely certain. First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe. Second, there was a vampire part of him which I assumed was wildly out of his control that wanted me dead. And third, I unconditionally, irrevocably, impenetrably, heterogeneously, gynecologically, and disreputably wished he had kissed me. And thus Belle Goose falls in love with the mysterious and sparkly Edwart Mullen in the Harvard Lampoon’s hilarious send-up of Twilight. Pale and klutzy, Belle arrives in Switchblade, Oregon looking for adventure, or at least an undead classmate. She soon discovers Edwart, a super-hot computer nerd with zero interest in girls. After witnessing a number of strange events, Edwart leaves his tater tots untouched at lunch! Edwart saves her from a flying snowball! Belle has a dramatic revelation: Edwart is a vampire. But how can she convince Edwart to bite her and transform her into his eternal bride, especially when he seems to find girls so repulsive? Complete with romance, danger, insufficient parental guardianship, creepy stalker-like behavior, and a vampire prom, Nightlight is the uproarious tale of a vampire-obsessed girl, looking for love in all the wrong places.” – publisher
