More Stories about Spaceships and Cancer by Casper Kelly (Submission)
Genre: Bizarro fiction, short stories, social commentary in a fun, absurd way
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Summary: “More Stories about Spaceships and Cancer” is a collection of absurd short stories. Using several “hosts” including a skeleton, a super hot dead chick, and a werewolf who works in a fast food place, “you” the reader are guided through a bizarre world of stories that are anything but ordinary. There is no pretending to be something they’re not – these stories are 100% smart with intelligent things to say – the cave-like vaginas, large breasted ninjas, and universe-ending ejaculations are unapologetically awesome and necessary. This book will make you think about your place in the world and contemplate what’s really important in life. But mostly you’ll just laugh a lot.
Casper Kelly has written for Harvey Birdman, Squidbillies, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and more. He’s won an award for his work on “Scooby Doo.” He also asked us if we would review his book – I AM SO GLAD HE DID. More Stories about Spaceships and Cancer was absolutely awesome. It reminded me of buying a book or a DVD of Stephen Colbert’s – it’s immediately funny before you even get to the actual content. I was dying laughing at the Table of Contents which featured things like “These are not Short Story Titles” and “Go Ahead. Tap it. The Links Don’t Even Correspond to Anything.” Turns out it’s a story of its own, but I won’t spoil the ending. The dedication then reads, “For You.” For me? I’m so stoked before I even start reading!
Moving on to the Introduction, the book is in second person and a skeleton bursts out of my e-reader and introduces himself as host, Professor Badbones who along with assistant Snervley try to convince me that I do in fact want to read this book. Badbones compares a collection of short stories to “a hodgepodge of one night stands.” They’re not really long enough to want to develop a real relationship and usually they don’t really go together or connect. He continues with a bunch of commentary about the standard story and what we’ve come to expect from it and how even if it isn’t good, we still appreciate the symbolism or whatever. After that, we dive into the first story – where a duck is sad about his divorce and just when you think things are too normal, a guy gets sucked into a giant TARDIS vagina. (It’s so much bigger on the inside.)
