REVIEW: Last Man On Earth Club by Paul Hardy

Saxon Brenton saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
Fri Apr 6 17:51:30 PDT 2012



I have just finished reading Paul Hardy's _Last Man On Earth Club_  
(sitting up reading until 2am, in the process utterly wasting myself 
for the third time in one week, and once again procrastinating the 
completion of the Feb 2012 EoMR; bleah).
   
Like many long time RACC particpants I fondly remember Paul's amateur 
fiction here.  And upon learning that he'd written something new I 
specifically told myself, 'If this book is anything like _Legion of 
Occult Heroes_, then I want to read this'.  I was not disappointed.
   
Let me describe it in these terms for those who were here at the 
time.  You remember how the stories in LOH kept getting longer, such 
that by the time of issue 7 (the crossover with Matt Rossi's _Load 
Island Renegades_) it was a eleven-plus-epilogue parter, but we 
couldn't be exactly sure when they were being posted because at the 
time Paul was on his 'Operation Arsedeath' bus tour of the U.S. and 
we had to wait for him to meet up with the next RACC participant and 
use their internet access, so we were all hanging out for the next 
episode because it was such a page turner?
     
Yeah.  And methinks that's why _Last Man On Earth Club_ is such a 
hefty 400+ page book.  The premise is original, the characterisations 
are engrossing, and even the infodumps are integrated  pretty much 
seemlessy.  There is more stuff that I could ramble on about (the 
early throwaway mention of crowds committing mass suicide in sports 
stadiums immediately brought to mind the scene that Blue Canary found 
in LOH #5, which is surely about as RACC-centric a reaction as you 
could imagine.)  However I will simply finish by noting that upon 
completing the book I immediately wondered whether this had been 
nomiated for the 2012 Hugo awards - which by coincidence are due to 
be announced this weekend.  The book has gotten a number of good 
reviews, but it may be hindered by its micropress publication status.
     
     
---
Saxon Brenton
Currently reading:  (I'll decide on what to read next when I get back 
from RPGing this evening.)
 
  		 	   		  


More information about the racc mailing list