| Title | : | Shatnerquake |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1933929820 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781933929828 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 100 |
| Publication | : | First published April 15, 2009 |
| Awards | : | Wonderland Book Award Best Novel (2009) |
Shatnerquake Reviews
-
A priceless premise but without exploiting its full potential.
SHATNER-CON IS OPEN
I was really excited to read this crazy story with a fantastic premise...
In the middle of a fan convention dedicated exclusively to William Shatner, the chaos explodes and all the characters, that he ever performed in his acting career, come to life menacing his own existence.
Ah?! That was brilliant!!!...
...Or at least it sounded so brilliant that I expected a really bizarre tale full of humor and horror.
However...
The humor is there... vaguely. The horror is there... scarcely.
WILL THE REAL SHATNER PLEASE STAND UP?
In a parallel universe where some key technology was created, "ShatnerCon" is realized, a fan convention dedicated exclusively to the one and only, William Shatner.
You have to have in mind that while this is supposed to be the "real" William Shatner, he is not, he is the expected portrait of William Shatner, the TV star who attends to conventions. Using the expected clichés of any star involved in these kind of fan activities.
To this "ShatnerCon", a band of "Campbellians" (crazy zealot cult fans of Bruce Campbell) got in and they set a "fiction bomb" who is an illegal technology used before by TV Networks to ruin the successful TV series of rival companies. These "fiction bombs" erased the filmed material to the point that nobody else even remember that that existed.
However, in the middle of trying to avoid the explosion of the bomb, something unexpected ocurred and all the characters played by Shatner come to life, with a bloody desire to destroy the "real" Shatner.
ENTER: BRUCE CAMPBELL FANS
You know? I am not against this concept, but if they were fan of Bruce Campbell, mmh...
...it couldn't be easier, instead of creating this "fiction bomb", that they could get, in some way, the "real" Necronomicon book and set some curse against the filmed material of William Shatner, with the explicit intention of making them insane killers?
I always think that to add something totally out of the realms of the fiction used on the story is okay, if the author exhausted all solutions inside of the boundaries of the characters that he/she used.
GET A SHATNER!
Okay, now we have a big bunch of TV characters invading real life: Captain Kirk, T.J. Hooker, Denny Crane, Rescue 911's Shatner, "Get a Life!"'s Shatner, Twilight Zone's Shatner, etc...
You have something so great and so big that you can make a wondeful insane and hilarious story.
However...
...I think that limited to a short story (100 pages) provoked that the full potential of this tale wasn't acomplished, in my humble opinion.
The story has some scenes of pure brilliance, and even some of the characters (the ones mentioned, and some that I kept to avoid spoilers of cool surprises) are used in a smart way.
However...
...some others, like T.J. Hooker was wasted, most likely due the limitation of being a short story and not expanding enough each character that gives wonderful possibilities.
TOO SHORT FOR SHATNERNESS
Also, there were really good support characters original to the story but sadly, they were wasted due again to the limitation of pages and the lack of interaction between each other and (in some cases) with the "real" William Shatner.
While I laugh some moments, here and there, I can't say that the tale was as amusing hilarious as I'd expected, since some of the strongest points of reading a story with a premise like this one, was to laugh and laugh a lot, but it wasn't the case, at least for me.
And even in the account of all that I commented, with a solid ending, I could be more forgiving...
However...
...honestly (without spoiling, of course) the final was poor in comparison with the initial premise.
I really wanted to give it a better rating, but honestly, I think that a 3-star rating is fair enough giving credit to the great premise and the sporadic encounter of brief brilliant moments.
If you are fan of Shatner (like me), you can give it a chance, while it wasn't as good as I would imagine (at least in my opinion) is an amusing reading nevertheless. -
A miserable William Shatner is attending ShatnerCon when Campbellians attempt to set off a Reality Bomb to erase his work from existence for the glory of almighty Bruce. The bomb malfunctions and various characters portrayed by William Shatner come to life, bent on killing Shatner, letting nothing stand in their way. Can William Shatner survive?
ShatnerQuake is awesome, no two ways about it. From William Shatner looking down on his fans to Denny Crane, Priceline Shatner, Rescue 911 Shatner, and Captain Kirk running amuck amongst rabid Star Trek fans, it's gold from start to finish. Where else can you read a line like "Oh shit! Captain Kirk's got a lightsaber!"
The Campbellians, with their missing hands honoring their idol, made good villians and were excellent targets for a rampaging Captain Kirk. The Kirk-Shatner fight was excellent. Kirk coming on to a green Star Trek fan and having her not reciprocate was awesome. The ending was straight out of a Twilight Zone and very satisfying. I even loved the way Shatner's dialogue was rendered with the frequent pauses.
While it's not Shakespeare, it doesn't pretend to be. It's a must read for Shatner fans everywhere.
I leave you with a song,
William Shatner by The Scofflaws.
Later:
1. Upon further reflection, I downgraded it to a 4.
2. I'm bumping this on William Shatner's birthday for maximum vote-whoreage.
3. Listen to the damn Scofflaws tune already! -
During a giant ShatnerCon, a group of Campbellians (terrorist devotees of actor Bruce Campbell all named Bruce, and each lacking a hand) explode a "fiction bomb" that backfires, unleashing a multiplicity of Shatners on an unsuspecting world.
As a consequence, the Real William Shatner is forced to do battle with Captain Kirk, "Boston Legal" Shatner, Black-and-White "Twlight Zone" Shatner, "Priceline" Shatner, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" Shatner. T.J. Hooker, Esperanto Shatner (!?) and others.
This medium-length novella, although cleverly conceived and precisely imagined, is poorly written and concludes in an abrupt. unsatisfactory way. In spite of this, I enjoyed it a lot. (Rated "R" for gratuitous violence and a disturbing plethora of Shatners.) -
HOLY SHATNER you are not going to believe this SHAT. Stuffed and crammedberried within the bizarro pages of this "mini-me" novella/novelette is not only THE William Shatner, but also Captain James T. Kirk… DENNY CRANE!... T.J. Hooker… Rescue 911 Shatner… Priceline.com Shatner… Evil Bill Shatner (from SNL)… Twilight Zone Shatner… and even Esperanto Shatner (from 1965 film Incubus)...I SHAT YOU NOT ON THIS!!!
This is basically a 75 page mind-blowing, ego stroking, SHATNERGASTIC "love me fest" that can be summed up as:
So how did all this crazy BATSHAT happen? I'm not sure it matters, but for those of you anals out there who live in detail land, Billy Shatner arrives at the annual ShatnerCon and is promptly attacked by Campbellians....you know followers of Bruce Campbell who are jealous of Shatner’s Movie star mojo. So, these Evil Dead loving Campbellians set off a "reality" bomb...YES A REALITY BOMB... that causes all of the characters that SHATTY BOY has ever played to life up. From there ensues a klingon-sized bag of chaos and madcap humor...not to mention (though I will anyway) several sightings of:
AND...
AND of course....
So with all this really coolio SHAT going down, you might be asking why only 3.5 stars? Well, that's a personal question but I will got ahead and answer Mr./Ms. Nosy. 3.5 stars means I more than just “liked it” but just couldn’t quite say that I “really liked it” so I am required by Goodreads law to withhold the 4th star. My biggest gripe is that when you have a premise like this, one that ranks among the truly GREATEST IDEAS since prehistoric man first discovered that heating the woolly mammoth over fire made it taste better...well you had better hit that ball out of the park.
Well, I didn’t find this to be a home run. It was good and I laughed out loud on several occasions (including a great introduction by the author in which he begs Shatner not to sue him). However, most of the Shatner personalities didn’t come across on the page as being anywhere near as funny as Shatner makes them and I didn't "hear" Shatner coming through several of the characters. Both Kirk and T.J. Hooker were actually pretty SHATTY and lame. On the other hand, Rescue 911 Shatner and Esperanto Shatner were very good. The rest ranged from okay to fairly decent but none were outstanding.
So overall I did enjoy the story which was helped by a truly EXCELLENT ENDING but I can’t bring myself to go higher than 3.5 stars. I do tip my proverbial cap to Mr. Jeff Burke for thinking up and writing this very original tale and hope to see more of his work in the future.
3.5 stars. Recommended. -
Fans of Bruce Campbell decide to erase William Shatner from history with a reality bomb because they are jealous of his success. They place the bomb at the ShatnerCon (Of course Shatner must have his own convention). But something goes wrong and suddenly every William Shatner character (T.J Hooker, James T Kirk, Danny Crane and so on) comes to life and they are all out to kill the real William Shatner.
This is a crazy book, it’s over the top, it’s violent and it’s absolutely hilarious! I loved it when I read it a couple of months ago and if you are a fan of William Shatner, and have a weird sense of humor, then you will love this book. -
The only thing I liked about this book was "Cartoon Kirk", which is a shame because Bruce Campbell and William Shatner have long been favorites of mine.
-
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a postmodernist!"
I'm not much of a Trek fan. There, I said it. Draw me, quarter me, tar me, feather me. I'm not much of a Trek fan, but William Shatner is one of the most bizarre and intriguing personages in media history. From Kirk to a bizarre musical career to his numerous appearances in an eclectic array of commercials, I've found Shatner incredibly fascinating. Now in Shatnerquake, Jeff Burk explores the ins and outs of Shatnerdom, sci fi mania and the Jungian mess we live in. When a group of Bruce Campbell cultists sets off a fiction bomb, every Shatner comes together in one place, in a mayhem filled pop culture implosion that would bring tears to the eyes of Seth Macfarlane and leave his cries for vengeance against Kahn echoing through the tomb of Ricardo Montalban for ages. Shatnerquake is more fun than a barrel of Shatnermonkeys drunk on Shatnerbrau beer at Shatnerfest, celebration of the Shatnerox, the Shatnerest day of the year. If you like Star Trek, if you like Shatner if you like to laugh or just bask in the mediasaturated glow of our tv melting pot culture, you will love Shatnerquake. Buy this sucker and read it! -
It's like Lloyd Kaufman and Sam Rami's mutant offspring wrote a book. It's very funny, and doesn't try to be anything other than what it is: The William Shatner locked in surreal and hyperreal mortal combat with every character he's ever played, from the Priceline guy to Kirk.
I would have rated it higher, but it desperately needed to go to a copy editor, especially for the last two chapters.
With a little bit of clean up, though, this could become an underground sensation. -
My all-time favorite William Shatner project is his 2004 album Has Been.
If you haven't listened to it, YOU GOTTA! This was the pinnacle of his cultural zeitgeist; the culmination of so much of his career. A tongue-in-cheek caricature of himself as a celebrity, and a rumination on all the tribulation that brings. It was heartfelt and odd and funny and original. A true work of art.
Thing is, Shatner has been doing the meta-modernist thing long before Shia Labeouf or Miley Cyrus came onto the scene. Shit, he was doing his thing when their parents were probably still pooping in their Huggies! So it makes sense, in a way, that a novel like this should exist. Jeff Burk, in his introduction to Shatnerquake, makes it clear that although this book is a parody of both William Shatner and his body of work, he is not doing it out of mockery, but out of love...
Okay, maybe a little mockery. But, c’mon, we’ve all seen Star Trek VI, right?
This slim novel fully delivers on what the back cover promises: A ‘reality bomb’ goes off at a 'ShatnerCon' and then war between the real William Shatner and every character he’s ever played ensues. It’s gory and silly and funny and strange. Burk doesn’t concern himself with extravagant flowers and feeling. The prose is fast-paced and in-your-face; never once being bogged down by needlessly heady exposition. The book is just FUN with a capital FUN, and can easily be consumed in one glorious afternoon.
I’d like the think The Man Himself, William Shatner would approve of this book, and what’s more, were it ever optioned to become a movie, I’d like to think he’d INSIST on starring in it too. I mean, it can’t be any worse than Miss Congeniality, right? -
First, Marvin, thank you reading this and then letting me borrow it. The book was a wonderful bit of fun. :)
My first thoughts before reading this book involved a slight worry that I was not versed enough in Shatner's career to catch all of the jokes. I was afraid the book would rely on inside-humor too much. Thankfully, this did not happen and I'm fairly certain I caught all of the funny bits. Before I started the actual book, I was already laughing due to Burk's request for Shatner's consideration and to not sue.
In real life, my favorite Shatner is Denny Crane. He did not have as much face time as I had hoped here but he did land one of my favorite lines - "For suspense"! My favorite Shatner in the book was, well, Bob. And the sicko in me thought it was hilarious what happened to him. An honorable mention for Priceline Shatner as well. My other favorite moments include when Shatner screamed (those two words together will always make me laugh), the red shirt (enough said), and poor Adam West.
My complaints are minor. I was suffering from Shatner overload by the end of the book, rather funny now that I think of the ending, but this is all my own fault since I did not need to read the book in one day. But it was so short I couldn't help myself. I also remember noticing a mistake (I'm pretty sure it was a mistake), about the first person the book claimed to die was not really the first person to die. Anyway, the book needed a little more editing.
So, if you have ever been a fan of Shatner, laughed with him or laughed at him, then I can happily recommend this book. The author had a genius idea here. Now I would like a book from Campbell's perspective. -
Oh what a load of Shat, I mean literally LOADS of Shatner's everywhere!
I'm going to breeze through the summary just as the book breezed by me, not in a bad way, in a couldn't stop reading way. Shatner shows up at his first Shatner-Con, some Bruce Campbell'ians set off a reality bomb that goes sideways sending all of Shatner's characters he has ever played to life. Then it becomes all out chaos as the real William Shatner tries to escape the convention with his life!
I really really enjoyed the concept here, I like bizarro done by Jeff Burk and was a fan coming into reading this. This is a great first work here, definitely a unique concept, done well in under 100 pages. It is a great one shot reader. The battle scenes and the carnage were awesome, loved the Captain Kirk w/ Lightsaber and Shatner w/ Klingon bat'leth battle, even some of the little one-liner nerd'isms that were slipped in here and there were hilarious. Mind you, i'm sure I missed some references as i'm not a Shat super fan.
But all in all it was well executed. As a couple other people stated in previous reviews I didn't think the TJ Hooker or Captain Kirk characters really came through that well. I didn't feel the Shatner love with those guys; however, I loved Esperanto and Rescue 911 Shatner, those characters were great and hilarious! The editing and typos were a bit much as well. All in all though it was a fun read. Good job Burk. -
ARRRRGH!!!! I had a great review typed and it got lost when I tried to save. I'll try again.
I couldn't resist
Shatnerquake when it came up on my Amazon recommendations. It was as funny as the title and the main character promised. It's pretty gory, but a lot of fun. Burk does a great job of capturing Shatner's speech patterns in print.
The only reason this book gets 3 stars instead of 4 is that it's too darn short. It only took 45 minutes to read. But, it was one of the most entertaining 45 minutes I've spent in a long time. -
This book is one of those that's been floating around for the last couple months and it finally arrived on my doorstep the other day. It is also one of the reasons I'm so glad I'm a Goodreads member, I never would have known about it otherwise.
I can't do a better synopsis than this:
"After a reality bomb goes off at the first ever ShatnerCon, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner. Featuring: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, Priceline Shatner, Cartoon Kirk, Rescue 9-1-1 Shatner, singer Shatner, and many more. No costumed con-goer will be spared in their wave of destruction, no red shirt will make it out alive, and not even the Klingons will be able to stand up to a deranged Captain Kirk with a light saber. But these Shatner- clones are about to learn a hard lesson . . . that the real William Shatner doesn't take crap from anybody. Not even himself."
Shatnerquake is everything the description gives and more. It's complete ridiculousness and I loved it. The body count is high and the characterizations of each of Shatner's characters is great for the most part.
Most of the time a Shatner character will just show up, perform a couple mannerisms and leave without a description of who it actually is. If I were a more well-versed Shatner fan I would have recognized more, but this helped:
Shatner Movies
Definitely recommended! -
Shatner on Shatner Action
Jeff Burk's Shatnerquake is the finest story ever told containing multiple William Shatners. Lesser authors have been shackled before now with writing only one role for Shatner. This is understandable, in the field of television and film, for logistical reasons. However, this has never been the case in the literary realm and Burk has led the way here with both great panache and bloodletting.
Unsatisfied with a single Shatner, Burk here provides a wall of Shatners. A smorgasbord of Shatners. Indeed, every possible variation of Shatner is set upon onlookers, each other, and the reader. No one is safe, let alone Shatner.
While some people have, in the past, mocked Shatner, deriding his skill as a thespian, song stylist, or margarine spokesman, Burk has shown that the problem has never been one of too much Shatner, rather too little. Free of casting limitations the literary form allows for full Shatner on Shatner action. At last Shatner is presented on a level playing field, where characters are of the same caliber.
With Shatnerquake, Burk has solved the Shatner dilema, which has plagued man since 1951, and he shall be remembered forever for this.
Denny Crane! -
I downloaded this short book to my Kindle this morning, finished it in less than a hour, and still had time to write this review before going to work. Some reviewers have stated that there are a lot of typos in the book but I was too busy laughing to notice. The basic premise is that the real William Shatner, through a plot gimmick that is too silly to repeat involving evil Bruce Campellians, is attacked by all the other Shatners; Captain Kirk Shatner, TJ Hooker Shatner, Priceline Shatner...you get the idea. My guess is the amount of your enjoyment of this book will depend on how well you know the career of William Shatner. Did you know Shatner appeared in the only film filmed entirely in the Esperanto language? Well,I did and I find my knowledge of that fact to be sort of embarrassing. Let's face it. Only people who have more than a little obsession with Shatner will probably be interested in reading this novella. Yet anyone who decides to take the plunge will end up laughing themselves silly.
I do wonder why Mr. Burk is so hard on Bruce Campbell and if it makes sense that Campbell fanatics would want to kill Shatner. Now if it was George Takei... -
In the introduction to this book, the author states that he truly admires William Shatner - he states that Shatner is a man who has made a career out of caricaturing himself, remaking himself over and over again with no looking back, no shame and - as far as we know - no regrets. He finishes by kindly asking William Shatner not to sue him.
I don't think he has too much to worry about, really. This book is a quick, fun read that, while not necessarily painting William Shatner in the best of lights, certainly pays homage to his long and varied career.
The story goes as follows: William Shatner is on his way to the very first ShatnerCon, a convention celebrating his life and works. It is a convention mobbed with fans, devotees who are there to see their idol, whether he caught their hearts as T.J. Hooker, Captain Kirk, or the host of Rescue 911. In the new Cathode-La convention center, tribute can be paid in full to William Shatner, a man who has changed so many lives.
But there are those who do not adore Shatner. They don't like him or even tolerate him. They are the Campbellians, known by the bloody stumps where their right hands used to be and each known only as Bruce. They hate William Shatner with a passion that borders on madness, and seeing him dead is not nearly enough for them - they want his entire body of work to never have existed. Their weapon is a Fiction Bomb, a metaphysical WMD that can erase stories from existence. No one remembers them, no one knows they ever existed. Should the Fiction Bomb succeed, William Shatner's entire body of work would cease to be. And so, in short order, would he.
But what if a Fiction Bomb should go wrong? What if that interface between fiction and reality should be breached, spilling its contents into what we commonly call the Real World? In that case, dozens of William Shatners - every character the man had played - would emerge in our world, with only one thought on their minds: Destroy the real William Shatner!
This book is a very quick read - only eighty-three pages - but it certainly packs in a lot of action, and as works of fan-fiction go, it isn't too bad. Because that is most assuredly what this book is - fanfic. Burk has a very basic concept here - get all of Shatner's characters out to kill him. Simple. Add lots of blood and gore and guts, because that's always fun, and you have some entertaining reading. This is the very best kind of fanfic, really - you know it's just a send-up, never intended to be a serious work of literature. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
It suffers from some serious editing problems, though, and Mr. Burk would have done well to have hired a good proofreader. There are some very basic grammatical mistakes, dropped plurals and a few sentences that just don't make sense. To a regular reader, it might not be important, but to someone whose bread and butter is the proper use of English, it's kind of glaring. But then my expectations weren't all that high - I went into this expecting a rollicking adventure and that's what I got. Complaining about the grammar in a book like this is like complaining about the quality of the vegetables in your Big Mac.
Still, there are some redeeming points to it, above and beyond the weirdness of the whole thing. The beginning of the book does a very good job at setting up a real dreamlike atmosphere – a building that covers a hundred city blocks and has a parking lot that stretches out as far as the eye can see. Upon reaching the convention center, Shatner finds out that he is already late, and is led through a maze of hallways that result in almost instant disorientation. He has to sign hundreds of photographs for hours on end, and ultimately faces off with his own doppelgangers. Burk has reached into the bag of common nightmares and put together a scenario that is both familiar and disarming, which propels you through the rest of the book. After all, if you're struggling to keep up with events, think about how Shatner must be feeling?
And of course, one can't help but wonder if this is a commentary on the very nature of the actor/fan dynamic. Who is William Shatner, after all? Depending on who's looking at him, he could be Kirk or T.J. Hooker, Denny Crane or Buck Murdock, the guy who saw gremlins on his plane or the guy trying to sell you cheap airplane tickets. On top of that, Shatner has another character to maintain – Shatner as a public figure, the guy who goes to conventions and book signings and does guest spots on TV shows.
Who is the real William Shatner? Who are any of us, really? In this age of online presences, there could are electronic doppelgangers of ourselves all over the internet. The person that your Twitter followers believe is you is not necessarily the same person that the people on your Mad Men slash fic forum know. You present a different face to your Facebook friends than the people you know in your World of Warcraft game, and like Shatner in this story, you ultimately have no control over the different renditions of you that other people see.
The good news, of course, is that those different Yous are unlikely to rise up and try to kill you.
Ultimately, this book has no over-arching message about the nature of identity in a world where different versions walk around without our knowledge or consent. I don't think that it was ever Burk's purpose to write a treatise on the modern concept of identity, but rather to write a quick, bloody thriller about William Shatner. So, it has no real lessons to teach us other than that if you see a deranged Captain Kirk approaching with a lightsaber (and how that got in there, I'll never know - a little artistic license for the sake of awesomeness) you run away. Very fast.
--------------------------------------------------
"I'm a... professional. I can deal... with anything."
- William Shatner, Shatnerquake
-------------------------------------------------- -
I'm a slow reader, even for 80-to-90-page novellas, but I consumed this one in less than 24 hours. The premise gets an A+ - a so-called reality bomb, planted by Campbellians (devotees of actor Bruce Campbell) goes off at the first ShatnerCon, causing fictional Shatner characters to come to life and wreak havoc at the convention.
The plot is great and rips along at breakneck speed. Almost too quickly for my tastes, really. There's very little set up before the reality bomb goes off, 11 pages to be exact, and then it's all-out Shatner War. I have no qualms with the execution and the action, which was bloody and excellent, as exemplified by this line from page 56: "Oh shit, Captain Kirk's got a lightsaber!" Exactly. There were a few references I either didn't get at all, or just barely, but I'm not a huge William Shatner-ophile, so I assumed some of it would fly over my head. But that didn't bother me much. There was plenty to like, from the lightsaber-wielding Captain Kirk to the on-target satire of typical convention-goers, to the ending, which was pitch-perfect and left me with a smile on my face.
What I struggled with was this seemed closer to a first or second draft at times, with too many grammatical errors and typos for my editorial senses to ignore. The second half, especially, got a little messy. No, I did not necessarily expect a book called SHATNERQUAKE to further the English language or dazzle with poetic prose, but my internal copy editor wouldn't shut up towards the end. Despite that, SHATNERQUAKE was entertaining as hell and kicked much ass. 3.5 stars out of 5. (NOTE: The publisher contacted me to say that they have re-copy edited the book since its first printing, so that's good to know...) -
I have read many thousands of novels over the course of my life, but never encountered anything quite like Shatnerquake. The setting is a convention (Shatnercon) dedicated to the career of William Shatner. The hero is William Shatner, himself, who is also the guest of honor at the convention. The villains—or at least most of them—are also William Shatner—sort of. The other villains are fans of Bruce Campbell (of Army of Darkness fame). These fans are so fanatical they have all cut off their hands to be more like their idol, and they have decided that William Shatner has to go so that their hero can get more of the acclaim that he deserves.
Actually, crazy as this is, it would have made a good plot, but Burk has something even more zany in mind. In his version of the earth, the Network Wars went violent and produced a fiction bomb which can erase an actor’s entire career. The Campbells try to set one off but things go wrong and every fictional character William Shatner ever played comes to life with the desire to kill the original man.
Frankly, the very absurdity of the story just increases the fun. How many roles for William Shatner can you remember? Everyone will say Star Trek and T.J. Hooker, but did you recall he was in Rescue 911? The truth is, he’s been in hundreds of roles and Burk brings many of them to life in this novel. It’s an amazing amount of fun as you look for ever more bizarre Kirks to come around the corner. In fact, my only complaint about the story is that we didn’t get to see even more of these characters differentiated from the mass of Shatners (but to be fair, Burk gives us a lot of them). A large chunk of my enjoyment came from figuring out which Shatner character Shatner was facing.
The ending is also interesting—and a little bit hard to decipher. I told the person who recommended the book my interpretation and he wasn’t certain he agreed with me. Perhaps I’ll have to read the sequel to find out which of us is right.
If you liked this review, you can find more at
www.gilbertstack.com/reviews. -
Shatnerquake is a gimmick. Like putting a ton of old action stars together in one movie and calling it The Expendables without a care in the word for plot, dialogue, or general coherency, Shatnerquake places all of William Shatner's iconic characters in one book in a scenario that couldn't possibly be anything but ridiculous. Like the Expendables, none of that matters, because fans of the actors will see the movie and love it for its novelty, just as fans of Shatner will read this book and love it for the same reason. And also like The Expendables, Shatnerquake is bizarre and silly. But unlike the movie, at least Shatnerquake is supposed to be.
The writing is okay at best and more editing was needed. But my biggest criticism was the story's failure to use the characters as full comic caricatures of their TV and film incarnations. For example, Denny Crane says, "I'm Denny Crane, the greatest lawyer that ever lived." But he never makes so absurd legal argument or do anything Crane-ish beyond saying that phrase and dressing like him.
Still, Shatner fans will love this book because they love Shatner. It works in that respect. And the nod to Bruce Campbell fans is a huge plus. -
A good Bizarro book is like a good punk rock record: fast paced, aggressive, and passionate enough that you’re compelled to look past rough edges and the occasional sour note. Jeff Burk’s Shatnerquake is not a good Bizarro book; it’s a great Bizarro book. From it’s geek-tastic premise (William Shatner is trapped at a convention, besieged by the many characters he’s played) to its other-side-of-strange setting (Burk knows his SF conventions… not to mention his Shatners) to its gleeful sense of violence, Shatnerquake delivers everything it promises (including Captain Kirk with a lightsaber). Throw in fiction bombs (television networks’ competition has escalated to all-out warfare, creating these brilliant plot devices), Bruce Campbell-venerating terrorists (Hail to the King, baby), and an ending that begs for a sequel (never fear, Shatnerquest and Shatnerpocalypse are on their way), and you’ve got one “action novel” that’s well worth your lunch money. It’s Shatner-tastic!
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Couldn't resist. But I think I may live to regret it!
When I described the basics of the story (various Shatner characters/guises trying to kill the real Shatner) my partner said "Good. I hope they succeed!" Now that's not very nice ;-D. -
Well, that was ridiculously Shatner-tastic!
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I pissed myself
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How does one review a book like Shatnerquake? Is it art? No. Is it a heck of a lot of fun? You bet your life. This book had more Shatners than you can shake a stick at! Its premise is hilarious and moments made me laugh out loud. I'm not going to spoil it, but my favorite part has to be with TJ Hooker. I'm knocking off 1 star because I didn't like the ending. Otherwise, it's a fun read.
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A great little one sitting piece of bizarro reading.
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The premise is simple: Insane fans who worship Bruce Campbell use unexplained technology to destroy William Shatner while he's hosting a convention, but instead it pulls many/most of his characters into our world and seals off the convention and pits the characters against "Real" Shatner in a battle to the death.
When you put it that way, how could it fail?
On the plus side: It's a novella, so the joke doesn't have time to fall too flat. It treats the "Real" Shatner kindly. Great running gags about the Singing Shatner. Includes Elizabethan Shatner and Twilight Zone Shatner and others that are easy to miss. Has Denny Crane Shatner, which more stories need.
But there are plenty of minuses, mostly in the world-building. We have a hyper-violent society with unnecessarily explicit torture that only seems to matter once. Convention security are referenced repeatedly but only appear in two scenes. Some thought seems to have gone into how the two high-tech bombs work and how the failure of one leaves the imported characters (Kirk Shatner is able to activate a toy light saber, creating a spectacular crossover at the expense of a deus ex machina), but we get minimal, muddled explanations, as well as other plot devices like a "static field" that keeps anyone from leaving for help. The relationship between the rest of the world and the Campbellians is unclear and hard to believe. Some history about "network wars" and other celebrities being executed feels hand-wavey at best.
The writing was readable, although muddled on any details that weren't action and avoided most action details by describing action after-the-fact. I couldn't tell it if was supposed to be a thriller, a comedy, or satire. The level of violence seemed erratic and probably gratuitous. The writing around the cold, murderous convention organizer was completely different in tone from the earnest, doomed terrorists or the desperate "Real" Shatner or the various parodies of Shatner's characters. Add in a bizarrely superfluous faux-Shatner character and a completely unnecessary and jarring scene with Animated Kirk Shatner and it felt a little like reading a shared-world story.
But really, it's short, it's cheap, and it has Rescue 911 Shatner standing around dying people asking the air to stay tuned and see if paramedics make it in time, while The Negotiator Shatner (from the Priceline commercials) keeps saying he can get them out of here cheaper and every shatner stops to remind you not to interact with Singing Shatner, since "he only does it for the attention."
As a wrapper for some fun fanboy slapstick, it's 3 or 4 stars. As actual science fiction, it's 2.
Call it 3 stars, get the ebook version cheap, and have a fun, quick read. -
The main thing you have to remember with bizarro fiction is not to get your hopes up. It is a genre that rewards form over function, style over substance. A lot of the time it’s a complete crapshoot whether what you read is going to be as cool in execution as it is in concept, or a lump of lazy shovel-lit churned out to cash in as quickly as possible. But some of the best writing in the genre, even if it’s not Shakespearean, is still subtle and well developed enough to at least be subversive, subtle, and to crawl its way inside of your head. Even if the stories are short, they can still be finely crafted and clever.
Shatnerquake is not one of those stories, and Jeff Burk is not one of those authors, if this is any guide.
You see, the premise is actually pretty good. Fans of Bruce Campbell detonate a “reality bomb” at a convention dedicated to Shatner, and the various fictional characters that Shatner has played end up crawling out of the rubble with murderous intent. It should be hilarious. One William Shatner has enough comedy possibilities, let alone a dozen of them. But Burk works very hard to completely avoid any of the possibilities here, settling instead for sophomoric ultra-violence in the place of comedy.
So, we have someone getting cut in half by a runaway ambulance (LOL!). A guy dressed as a redshirt having his skull smashed in by pewter spaceship model (Hilarious!). A homicidal Captain Kirk cutting someone in half with a lightsaber (Zuh?). Ultra-violence can be funny in the right hands, but Burk handles it with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast to the face, while simultaneously ignoring the plethora of comedy options he’s presented with. TJ Hooker shows up and jumps over a car hood, Denny Crane shows up and drops a couple of catchphrases, and Shatner-the-Singer is spotted singing Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, but they’re quickly dispatched before they have the opportunity to do anything more. And the less said about the final two chapters, the better.
On the one hand, it would be easy to just give this one star and move on, but come on; it manages to completely butcher the idea of multiple murderous William Shatners interacting with each other! The multiple typos that have somehow made it through to the final printing indicate pretty well the amount of time and care that went into this. Readers’ time would be better spent reading the blurb, imagining how funny the concept must be, and then moving on to avoid being disappointed by the crappy execution. -
William Shatner. No other name in popular culture pulls so many emotions from the consciousness of the media-consuming public. Alternately reviled and respected, loved and hated, the man and the myth surrounding him have been inseparable since his first utterance of Shakespeare. He has become a self-perpetuating in-joke, and his fans love him for it.No fan, I think, has expressed this love in quite the same way as
Jeff Burk has with his 2009 Eraserhead Press release
Shatnerquake. This one-hundred page action-movie-in-a-book delivers a highly entertaining look at the many facets of Shatner's storied career, all while those facets attempt to kill each other.Yes, that is the premise. At the first-ever ShatnerCon a militant group of Bruce Campbell fans detonate a fiction bomb, a device designed to wipe all knowledge of a creative work or works from the collective consciousness of mankind. In this way, Shatner would become a nobody, and Bruce would reign supreme on the convention circuit. Of course something goes wrong, and instead of erasing all forms of Bill Shatner, his many fictional incarnations are pulled from the celluloid with a burning desire to destroy the source of their two-dimensional pain, the real William Shatner.
The bloodbath that ensues leaves a pile of fans, convention staff, and Shatners littering the convention complex. In equal parts of humor and horror, Burk disposes of the many characters in very poetic ways.
More incredible than the violence is the many versions of Shatner that are included. From the obvious choices of James T. Kirk and Denny Crane, to the more obscure or almost forgotten “Rescue 911” Shatner and Esperanto Shatner,
Jeff Burk leaves no cinematic stone unturned to bring his audience a memorable and engaging story of one man forced to fight his own past in a very literal sense. More than that, he also brings to light the absurdity of the fan-boy mentality, the lengths that some will go to express their undying devotion to the object of their passion. -
It's a gimmick book, so I knew it would be bad, but this transcended whatever foolish notions I had of what "bad" really means. And it's a shame, too, because Burk actually has a lot of good ideas. Captain Kirk with a light saber? I can't believe it hasn't been done already. Shatner dodging assassination attempts from obsessive fans of Bruce Campbell (who naturally, have already taken out Adam West, and, equally naturally, have all cut off one of their hands)? Inspired. And of course, there's the book's central premise: that William Shatner must face off, not against himself, but rather against the characters he has portrayed.
But alas, Burk's characterizations are terrible. He seems to have attempted to mimic Shatner's style of speech by simply throwing ellipses in at random places, with no sense of rhythm or timing, and the various manifestations of the Shat are uneven at best. I enjoyed Rescue-911-Shatner and Priceline-Shatner, but Kirk is a thuggish boor, and the less said of T.J. Hooker, the better.
Even worse, the plot is unforgivably sloppy, littered with pointless side characters, who exist for little reason other than to die. And anyone who, like me, was hoping for a chance to see who would triumph in a battle royale among Shanter, Kirk, Hooker, etc., will be sorely disappointed.
On the plus side, it's mercifully short, and I liked the end. And seriously, no one who picks this up is expecting War and Peace. -
Aside from a few nerdgasmic moments introduced by the author, the book consisted primarily of jumping from plot point to plot point to plot point with little room for anything else to transpire.
I'm not a huge fan of long, drawn-out descriptions (Herman Melville, you are evil), but I had a difficult time trying to follow the action at times. You could tell Burk had a picture in his mind of what was happening, but he didn't describe it well enough to convey the events to the reader in order to achieve the full effect.
There was also a severe lack of any kind of characterization in this book, and the few characters that did receive any usually ended up as pointless cannon fodder a few pages later.
The less said about the ending, the better. Judging by other's comments here, there seem to be one or more sequels, but on its own, it was rather ambiguous and nonsensical.
This is my first "official" bizarro book, so I'm not quite sure if I'm as qualified to review it as others more familiar with the genre, but this didn't do a whole lot for me.
