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.)
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