If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you crossed a travel guide with a load of well-trodden sci-fi/fantasy tropes and the wild imagination of a born storyteller…it turns out you’d get Nate Crowley’s Notes From Small Planets! Spanning eight fictional worlds, from the high fantasy Mittelvelde to the hard sci-fi SPACE¹ and so much more in between, it’s both a loving homage to and merciless satire of the highs and lows of genre fiction. Coming from a writer capable of work as dazzlingly diverse as revolutionary zombie novel The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack and alternative gaming history 100 Best Video Games (That Never Existed) it’s exactly as bonkers and brilliant as you’d imagine.
Right from the outset it’s clear that while this might be a guide to fictional worlds (just a handful of the many Worlds, in fact), it’s very much a proper travel guide…albeit an eccentric one. Each chapter of the book includes helpful maps and region-by-region breakdowns, ‘Can’t Miss’ activities, detailed itineraries, eating and drinking recommendations and visitor testimonials, all compiled from ‘author’ Floyd Watt’s extensive experience of travelling the Worlds. Floyd has a compelling way with words and many a witty anecdote, however he may be just a little bit of a bigot…and open to the occasional bribe…and liable to blithely interfere with the balance of the Worlds he visits, much to the frustration of his long-suffering editor Eliza Salt. Floyd and Eliza’s ‘robust’ dialogue in the footnotes throughout the book adds another layer of insight into the Worlds, not to mention an endless source of hilarity.
It’s obvious just how much fun Crowley is having with this book, blending madcap humour with cutting social commentary to offer all the laughs you could want but layering it with references, in-jokes and observations that make you stop and think as well. He takes aim at all the usual suspects (LoTR, GoT, Star Wars & Star Trek, Harry Potter, Conan etc.), not to mention superheroes, pirates (both living and skeletal), space opera, apes, robots and many more, but for every straight-up joke (like the brilliant faux-Latin names for various wild animals²) there’s a handful of much subtler and/or more thought-provoking references too. The nihilism of superheroes turning to crime³ instead of accepting lucrative sponsorship contracts, the misinterpretation of orcish names and culture, the implications of magical inequality between ‘Wizardes’ and ‘Mundanes’…Crowley spreads his net wide, demonstrating both his sheer inventiveness and a deep understanding of the genre.
In the wrong hands this could have been just a straight-up pastiche – amusing on the surface, but lacking depth – however with Crowley at the helm it’s so much more than that. The jokes come thick and fast of course, including a few running gags that just get funnier and funnier (pay close attention to the testimonials, for example), but it genuinely does work as a travel guide, bringing the featured Worlds to vibrant life despite having its tongue planted firmly in cheek. For all that it mocks many of SFF’s overused tropes and troublesome tendencies, it’s also a celebration of the genre’s strengths – imagination, inspiration, mystery, and hopefulness, among others. With Floyd and Eliza’s footnote-based war of words adding a little extra fun, and just enough meta-narrative for the Worlds to tie everything together in a satisfying manner, all together it’s very silly indeed but at the same time an absolute delight.
See also: RAPID FIRE: Nate Crowley Talks Notes From Small Planets
Pre-order Notes From Small Planets – also available as an audiobook.
¹(Sector of Pseudofictional Astro-Cultural Environments)
²My personal favourites being “the Battlepillar (Wrigglius Khan)” and “the abysmal Gurbo (Beastus Shittus)”.
³Stealing valuable resources from Eroica (definitely not Erotica) City’s businesses and redistributing it to the ‘criminal underworld’, for example.