HADRON AGE SF (26)
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June 27, 2022
One in a series of posts about the 75 best sf adventures published during the genre’s Hadron Age era (from 2004–2023, according to HILOBROW’s periodization schema). For Josh Glenn’s Hadron Age Sci-Fi 75 list (a work in progress), click here.
Minister Faust’s The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004).
Hamza, a dishwasher who writes poetry (and who can find anything or anyone as long as he can visualize it), and Yehat, a videostore clerk who builds fully functional mecha-suits, are known in their Edmonton (E-Town) neighborhood as the Coyote Kings. Their low-key lifestyle, not to mention their close friendship, is interrupted by the arrival of Sherem, a mysterious and alluring young woman as obsessed with pop culture, mostly of the sf variety — Philip K. Dick, Alan Moore, Star Trek, sci-fi movies, Dungeons & Dragons, and more — as they are. Sherem, it transpires, is on the hunt for a powerful artifact; she has been tasked with keeping it out of the hands of various evildoers who are after it. Mayhem ensues. (I feel like this book should have been filmed as an Africentric, more violent and wised-up Stranger Things.) Digaestus, Frosty, Alpha Cat, and the other FanBoys — a gang of murderous nerds out for revenge on behalf of anyone who was ever picked on as a child for being different — are a lot of fun. There are other characters, as well, each of whom has a distinctive voice and worldview, and for each of whom the author provides a cheeky RPG-like stat sheet. Everyone gets a chance to narrate their own story….
Fun facts: Re-released as The Coyote Kings, Book 1: Space-age Bachelor Pad.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST HADRON AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES.