Please Ignore Your Broken Window; I'm Writing a Review · 6:35pm Jul 11th, 2016
A review? “How strange!” you might think. I only know Aragón for one thing—sneaking in my house uninvited and eating all my food—and that has nothing to do with reviewing! Well, that’s a wonderful thing to say, my dear. Put down that telephone, please? I cut the line anyway, so it’s not like you’re gonna contact the police even if you try.
Thank you! Anyway—it’s always hard for me to review stuff, because I tend to be really excited when I like things. I can’t really explain why I love Indiana Jones so much, y’see, I’m busy using this belt as a whip and punching the closest thing to a Nazi I can find, which just so happens to be your wife. As such, it takes a toll to actually stay still, calm down, take a deep breath, and articulate why I—
Oh? Oh, I hid your wife under the sofa. Yeah. Well, I think she was unconscious, but, I mean, if she wasn’t then she sure is now. One heavy sofa you’ve got there, I gotta say. No, I wouldn’t really move it if I were you, actually. I heard something go “crack” a while ago, and—eeeexactly.
See, I said it takes me a lot to review stuff, but I do it when it’s needed. If I can help the author by doing so (and if I’m allowed to be completely honest, I guess) then what the hell, I’mma do just that, don’t you think?
Hence, I’m reviewing something that you probably haven’t read, what with the majority of mankind not knowing of it. Shame, if you ask me, but I’m going to review it with that in mind, so think less spoilers and more impressions to build hype and discuss literature in general. I’ll be talking about a little indie sci-fi book named Company Town, by one Edward Pink. You might know him as Chuckfinley here in Fimfiction.
Neat, huh? One smart cookie we’ve got there, writing books and all while we’re all distracted with our unconscious wives. Okay yeah I see you’re going to call the police now no matter what I say, so just go ahead. Here, take my phone. Ask for Sergeant Molly to come, if you don’t mind? She’s sweet on me, so she won’t beat me up so hard.
What? You aren’t calling the police? Woah! Thank you very much! I knew you were a nice person—I’ve always got a good eye for people. I really should come rob your house more often, but what can I say? Your wife scares me. There’s Nazi-looking, and then there’s Nazi-looking.
So, seeing how the cops won’t come to brutalize me, let’s talk indie sci-fi! Wanna sit down to…? Oh. Oh, right, yeah. Crushed wife, better not. Let’s walk around the house then.
Nice kitchen, I dig the curtains. Oh, no, no! No need to offer me a cup of tea, thank you! I already swallowed all the bags when I raided it and all. Yeah, while you were sleeping. Wasn’t that yummy, not gonna lie—I can’t for the life of me stand chamomile tea. It tastes like lava.
Anyway.
I heard of Company Town from the author itself, when he blogged about it and explained that “Edward Pink” is not his real name either, which is probably the most indie thing you can do without being a white girl with a guitar and a so-so singing voice.
Not much to say about the book’s presentation, I guess. It’s just a book you read on Kindle, which is a thing I’d never used—but it has a free app for your PC and it’s easy to use, so I can’t really complain, I’d say. I spent around half an hour trying to download the thing, though, but that’s more because I’m bad with computers.
I mean, turns out you gotta log in Amazon to buy stuff. I had no idea. I legitimately thought it sorta was like, I don’t know, like when you buy bus tickets or something. No, I’d never bought anything over Amazon before. No. Yes, I know. No, I’m not sixty-seven years old. Yes, I am slightly idiotic. Anyway, it took me a while to realize this, and once I was logged in the sodding website asked me about my address, and as I was trying to buy a digital book, I assumed I had messed up somewhere, so I closed the tab and…
…yeah I had to, uh, to ask for help to do this. They didn’t laugh at me too much though, so there’s that. It’s surprisingly easy to buy the books once you know how to do so, however—you log in, you put your info in there, and then the book is sent to your Kindle account. In case you don’t have a Kindle, you just download the free app, open it, and voilá! Book is there.
Amazon should really give you a goddamn .PDF file.
Nah, I don’t mind if we take a walk, being in the kitchen is dumb if we can’t have a drink. Upstairs? Uh, sure I guess.
So now, to the book itself—Company Town is indeed a sci-fi book, and Chuckfinley really knows about sci-fi. You don’t need to know anything about the genre to like it? But I’ll say, and this is important so listen up because it’ll come up later, I’ll say that he’s clearly aiming for a pulp angle, a pulp feeling to the whole thing.
This is hardly a surprise if you’re familiar with the author’s work, but as it stays, I’d really say Company Town works as an introduction to pulp if you don’t know the genre, or as a celebration of it, if you’re already familiar with it. The pulp inspiration never really takes the spotlight, however—it serves to tell the story, but the plot is what matters the most, and the book doesn’t seem to be afraid of dropping the standards of the genre to try to make the most of every moment.
Man, these are a lot of stairs. Oh, the plot? Yeah, I haven’t really said what the plot is about yet, that with all the talk about genres and celebrations. Well, it follows Detective Clay, a standard pulp not-by-the-books detective—not noir, though, don’t expect long monologues from her—who is tasked with what sounds like an impossible case.
Sounds like, because it kind of is. The world is falling apart around her after something destroyed FTL travel, most AIs and computers if not all, and overall anything that’s remotely technologic. Society is kind of destroying itself because you try to take Iphones away from us now and see how long we last, and so Clay gets her assignment:
She has to catch a dangerous criminal. But nobody knows who that person is, how does that person look, what’s their gender, what’s their age, what’s their race, what’s their nothing. And anybody who’s ever known about said person is either dead or amnesiac. There, Clay. Go and find this thing, you’ve got sixteen hours or you’re dead, bye-bye.
And Clay goes hahahah f—uh. Um. Excuse me, but this room is…? I mean, it kind of looks like, you know. Oh? Oh, your daughters? This is their room?
Ah. So they’re named Sylvia and Sonia, then? Beautiful names, beautiful names. It’s just, ah, with your wife looking the way she looks, don’t you think writing their initials on the door like that is kind of…?
No? It’s just my imagination? Okay, if you say so. It’s just that it looks sorta weird, sorry.
Anyway. So that’s the hook of the book, which is fairly good and fairly standard for pulp fiction—impossible mission, smart hero who doesn’t play by your daddy’s rules, and of course, there’s a twist at the ending.
This twist is what convinced me to review the book? But to be honest, all that came before sure planted the reviewing seed in my womb before it.
The thing is, literature is hard as it is, but immersive literature is harder. Company Town is not perfect—the start feels too sudden, almost rushed, and feels oddly rougher than the rest of the book. The ending brings closure, but the very last scene could have used a little more fleshing out to really hammer it home—but what it does well, it does extremely well.
If I’m bringing this out, it’s obviously because—Wait, this is your room? This? Huh. That’s… that’s a lot of swastikas. That’s a lot of swastikas. Wow, that one’s signed? That must have been expensive! Hahah. Hm.
Neat portrait, I suppose. Really brings out the, uh, the tiny mustache. I…
Okay, I need to ask. Is this a sex thing? I can’t tell if this is your actual ideology or just a sex thing. I wonder if this being just a fetish is better or worse, morally speaking, though. Now, that’s a question for the ages, eh?
Woah! I’d never seen a bedroom with a hidden staircase. Sure, I don’t mind going first, hand me the torch. Hahah. This feels like a dungeon! I’m having so much fun. I really love the hospitality of this part of the city. Way better than the people in the suburbs, am I right? They’re so coldhearted.
Anyway, so Company Town again.
Immersion is the name of the game, because when you get to it, sci-fi is all about that. Worldbuilding is outright mandatory when detailing a completely different world. But Company Town is about the character’s mission, not a sorry excuse to gush about the planet the author invented.
So the world, while fully fleshed out, is presented to us at an organic way. Everything is perfectly planned out—I wouldn’t be surprised if Edward Pink had planned the entire sewer system of the planet, judging by the amount of detail the book throws at you now and then—but it’s never sluggish, because everything is introduced when it needs to be introduced.
Nothing is unnecessary, is what I mean. It all feels tight, like part of a bigger picture. The reader discovers how this particular part of the Police Department works, and the tidbits of exposition we get are succinct and fall naturally into the narrative.
The reader feels that the world is alive and breathing, but not that the author is trying to dunk our face in his bathtub, so as to say. We immerse ourselves instead of drowning in needlessly convoluted prose.
Here’s where the twist comes in, by the way.
Because, so far—okay wow, this is a dungeon, no kidding. What’re those shackles for?
What, me?
To the wall?
Huh.
Well, okay. But the surprise better be worth it!
Anyway—so far, in the book, the reader just follows the narrative, because the adventures of Clay are actually rather fun. It’s sci-fi detective work, which is always a pleasure, and it has all the ingredients for a good fun adventure: red herrings, investigations, foreshadowing, quick pace, neat dialogue, lots of legwork. Clay is a smart lady, and it’s a joy to follow her.
But the world is in the background, covering it all like a cozy blanket, and that really helps to suck you in. And the book knows this! I won’t give away the twist, but it works both as an in-story twist and as a meta twist.
It takes your expectations and plays with it, you see. This is what, in my book, elevates Company Town from merely an entertaining book to something that you have to read.
Because you look at it and see it for what it is: a short story with a clear pulp inspiration. Remember that? I said that was important. So you go on with that, but then the twist comes, and turns out the book has been in the same ride as you from the very beginning.
I can’t really say anything else without spoiling it, and I won’t do that to you. It’s not a fourth wall thing, in case you’re fearing that—I can see it in your eyes!—nor is it something that requires you to be genre-savy. It’s the kind of twist that, if you’re somewhat experienced in this kind of book, will throw you out for a loop. And if you aren’t? It’ll throw you out for two of those. The story is perfectly self-aware, but in a subtle way, so you don’t realize it’s self-aware till you’re done.
And then you close the book, frown, and go “damn. Damn!”
I couldn’t stop grinning for the last fifteen pages or so, when everything unfolds.
So that’s why I’m reviewing it! I usually don’t do that, but the book is indie as hell—it won’t be known unless people talk about it—it’s short, it’s cheap, and it’s available on Amazon. I can’t force you to buy it, but I sure did buy it myself, and I don’t regret it.
Don’t judge by the first scene, though. As I said, it feels oddly rushed. Company Town isn’t perfect. But it’s the best short sci-fi pulp story I’ve read in over two years, and I read a lot of those every month.
That’s my humble opinion, and—what? Why would I scream for help? Especially if you say nobody would hear me. I mean, it sounds counterintuitive. Congratulation on the insulation, though, if that’s true. An entire dungeon that’s soundproof? That has to be useful!
I gotta say, though, these shackles aren’t really comfortable. Does it need to be so tight around my wrists? I can’t move.
Oh, hey. What’s that knife for?
"So I'm writing a review, right, and it starts with me punching your wife out cold, and the twist is you're a nazi".
Father doesn't like what I write anymore.
Company Town is based on a prompt by MrNumbers, who I'm sure will reply to this comment with a link to his explanation on it, because I'm on mobile and can't do so myself.
I'll publish my own short story in the same universe soon, so look forward to that.
wow c.c
Huh.
That doesn't sound even remotely like anything Numbers came up with in the universe he said Chuckfinley wrote a book in.
Also, nice narrative.
4084543
Really? My goodness. I'm almost afraid to imagine what you'll make of that universe.
You're a star, Aragon. Thanks for the review!
Crap. I'm positive this is referencing a fic on here, but I can't for the life of me remember which one it was.
4085182
Boop.
Look at sneaky lil' Aragon, referencing his own stuff.
What was that about my window?
I may have some bad news for you about the way a lot of those bus ticket websites operate now.
i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/903/458/f7b.gif
Also, get out of my (long overlooked) review lawn you whippersnapper. I need my terrible romance advice to complete a masterpiece of awfulness. (But really, thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten to add this to my wish list).
This review was awesome. I give it a 7.5/10
For apl the mentions of pulp and fiction, I would've expected more Pulp Fiction references. But, then again, I don't really know much about Pulp Fiction so... uh, oh well!
Good luck escaping.