Book Review: Will Save the Galaxy for Food
While glancing through the new additions of Audbile.com’s library, I stumbled across ‘Will Save the Galaxy for Food’ by Yahtzee Croshaw. The book blurb looked interesting enough, so I took a gamble forked over my money, and bought it. The author, as it turns out, was the narrator which in far too many cases, is never a good thing.
As it turns out, my gamble with worth it and Croshaw’s reading lifted what turned out to be a great book to an even higher level.
The book is described as a not-quite epic satirical science fiction adventure and it certainly lives up to that description.
The story is set in the distant future where humanity has established itself on hundreds of worlds throughout the galaxy. As we quickly learn, the Golden Age of space travel is quickly fading into history due to revolutions is wormhole technology, called Quantum Technology. All but gone are the days when Star Pilots ferried cargo and passengers from planet to planet, fighting off aliens and pirates alike, saving desperate worlds from disasters or invasions, and just generally being big damn heroes.
A lone Star Pilot, looking for work, finds himself thrust into the unlikely role of masquerading as the galaxy’s most famous hero, Jacques McKeown, in order to fool a mob boss who wants the legendary hero to take his son for a trip through the stars. The only problem is that the real McKeown has been writing a series of books, telling his adventures as the best Star Pilot. Only thing is, most of those stories are not his. It seems that McKeown has been stealing the real-life stories of other pilots and making money off their past. So, every Star Pilot in the galaxy have plenty of reasons to hate the man. Not a good thing when you’re impersonating him.
Needlessly to say, things do not go as planned.
I’m not going to go into the details but the story was well written and the plot turns more than a drunk mountain biker with an inner ear condition. Croshaw’s biting sarcasm is on full display throughout the story and makes for plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.
On a personal note, the idea of the Golden Age of space travel being left behind in favor of the quick and easy teleportation struck a cord as I listened to the story unfolding. This book is a very modern take on the Sci-Fi movie, book, and comic serials of the past. The Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and the other tales from the early and mid 2oth Century were full of big, damn heroes, doing dashing deeds until our more modern, serious take on space travel began to dominate story telling. Yes, the old stories were cheesy, but they were also fun and offered up ideas of worlds where we, as kids, would want to live. This book offers a satirical look at that brand of Sci-Fi storytelling and will make you want more.