2 out of 4 stars
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Joe Meets Sasquatch & Nanobots by Don Slaymaker tells of Joe who is befriended by a Sasquatch shaman called Sam. Sam performs a blood transfusion to save Joe’s life, which introduces nanobots into Joe’s system. With the nanobots comes increased health and the art of teleportation. Telepathy is also included but is linked to the genetic makeup of the individual. The book also includes three very short, anecdotal stories: ’Revenge’, ‘The Case of The Oily Pump’, and ‘Now You See ‘em, Now You Don’t’. They are respectively: a boy seeking revenge on a college tutor, a job made more difficult than it should be, and a man justifying his viewgraph (overhead projector transparency) to a supervisor.
This is a rather oddball book in that I can’t work out what market it would appeal to. The storytelling is rather simplistic with too much ’telling’ and not enough ’showing’ which would appear to make it aimed at younger people. However, the author is obviously very intelligent, and you suddenly find him getting into the nitty-gritty of genetics and directing you to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle on Wikipedia. This would indicate an older readership as the intended market. A cross-species sexual encounter is also included, though it's only referred to with hindsight and even then, obliquely.
The genetics part bothered me because it went into a fair bit of detail and stated the probability of the genetic inheritance of the second generation. This can’t be done without knowing if the parents are homozygous or heterozygous for the dominant and recessive genes. Even if the nanorobots can direct which sperm will reach the egg, the parent can only donate the genes that they have.
The grammar is pretty good, but I don’t believe that the book has been professionally edited. There are two notes saying ’insert picture of Sam’ and ’insert picture of Alice’ though the picture has not been inserted in either case.
The cover looks like it’s homemade and, at first glance, looks more like a gardening book than a story of ‘man meets Sasquatch’.
I can’t really say what I liked or disliked about the book as I felt rather ambivalent towards it. I never felt that I really got into the story or particularly related to any of the characters. I felt I was just skimming over the top. I did enjoy ‘The Case of The Oily Pump’ as it had a moral and it made me smile. The other two stories left me unmoved and I’m not sure, in this age of PowerPoint, if younger people would even know what a viewgraph is.
For the reasons given above, I have awarded this book 2 out of 4 stars.
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Joe Meets Saquatch & Nanobots
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