Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom: A Novel of Retropolis by Bradley W. Schenck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is another in the recently growing trend to update and display the adventuresome glories of the SF of yesteryear!

... and I have to admit that it's a rather fun ride. :)

Dash!

Where else can you find a hero's name quite so dashing? And then there are the funny bits.. and there are quite a few funny bits. I personally LOVED the world's smallest Giant Robot. He not only grew on me, but he became a very cool and well-rounded character in his own right. :)

But mostly, this is all a straight adventure that takes us to through Spider Gods and massive robot slave empires and a perfectly reasonable main plot mystery revolving the lost jobs of the switchboard women who I could almost see wearing hairnets and be being totally 1930's prim.

But most of all, there is a lot of love for all the classic adventures and the time period, the optimism, the sheer delight of funny and sometimes really fascinating personal tech, the excitement and thrill of getting your ear blown off, the sting of rejection letters sent from fiction editors.

Not only is our intrepid hero a dashing private-eye-ish adventure hero, but he also writes. :) Gotta love it. :)

RETROPOLIS! :)

What can I say? I had fun. Very cool SF/mystery mashup that updates the tech but brings us right back into a more hopeful SF time.



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