Book Review: Spacehawk, Inc.

Book Review: 'Spacehawk, Inc.' by Ron Goulart

1 / 5 Stars

'Spacehawk, Inc.' is DAW Book No. 132 and was published in 1974; the cover illustration is by Hans Arnold.

Kip Bundy is a fun-loving young man who likes nothing more than to party and spend time with pretty girls. However, his Uncle Wenzel, an executive in the BKE Corporation, has a task for him. It seems that a cohort of BKE androids, marketed as butlers on the planet Malagra,have a flaw that may cause them to behave in potentially embarrassing, even dangerous, ways.

Accordingly, Kip needs to visit Malagra and fit each butler with a repair module. Accompanying Kip on his journey to Malagra are a lubricious photographer named Palma, and a toothsome young woman named April Arthur.

Once on Malagra, Kip and his friends quickly realize that this is the most chaotic, recklessly governed planet in the system, and seemingly simple tasks will require the utmost in skill and daring.....

This is a really bad book. I gave up on it at page 76 of 160.

I freely admit that I have never been a fan of the sub-genre of humorous / absurdist SF. I've never had the slightest interest in any of the Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett books. So maybe I just don't 'get' the humor in 'Spacehawk'.

But it's the one of the lamest efforts at being funny I've ever encountered. Author Goulart tries to take Woody Allen / New York Jewish humor and graft it onto a standard-issue SF theme and fails miserably.

Goulart produced a very large number of novels and short stories during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, not all of them in the humor genre, so I'm hoping that some of that material is worth looking into. But his comedic work is something I'm going to avoid.