The Great Temple of the Cola Gods, a gathering site for the nomadic tribes
Thrax and team return home to The Pit, only to find a gigantic 3-C Cola battle-crawler towering over it, bristling with armaments. Everyone they knew is now hopelessly addicted to their beverage. The Sales-Priests try to get Thrax hooked, but he’s already addicted to Cocainola, 3-C's deadly rival brand. Cocainola’s in-product defense memes protect him from becoming a 3-C slave.
Thrax’s loved ones are forced to go on a suicidal Cola Crusade to destroy Cocainola's impenetrable headquarters, fired up by Sales-Priest sermons.
With the help of a Cocainola agent, Thrax sets out to save the inhabitants of The Pit from certain death. But to do that he has to defeat the God-Rex of Cocainola: a T-Rex with the dual-brain of P.T. Barnum and David Ogleme.
Can Thrax save his loved ones and his favorite beverage?
Reviewer Fred had this to say about Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom:
"Now this is one strange and awesome book. This book reminded me of "Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse" by Victor Gishler. It is unabashedly over the top and as weird as you can get. If it was made into a movie it would probably be Directed by Mel Brooks, in the vein of "Space Balls", "Flesh Gordan" "Barbarella" and "Ice Pirates". Beneath it all is a very sound plot that plays out well right up to the end. I got this book prepared to rip it to pieces but instead must praise it as a nice bit of fun satire! Is this book for everyone??? No but for the ones who get it, YES."
Kirkus actually links to Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse from their Magnum Thrax review. Go-Go Girls is a fabulous piece of pop-pulp sci-fi, so that's a plus.
Fred's review is a few years old now, but I wanted to note it because in the review title he says: 'Got this one so I could trash it but someting strange happened instead...'
That's noteworthy because another reviewer (who also enjoyed the book, and gave it the best review it's ever gotten) also felt the book was not as he expected from the title, blurb and imagery.
Which is a shame.
It shows that I chose badly when, well, 'branding' the book.
At least, for me they do. I can try to cajole an emotion into being. I can try and ‘be’ an emotion, but if that emotion does not then manifest, it’s not real.
It’s false, the pretense of a feeling, and that’s inauthentic and empty. I need to really feel it. So for me, emotions are not something turned on and off like a switch, but things to manage. I’ve had a number of people in my life tell me that they can turn their feelings on and off, whenever they like.
Which would be great. I can’t imagine how awesome that would be.
But they aren’t like that for me. They occur of their own accord, when they feel like it. And then I have to manage the damned things.
And this leads to the issue of attachment.
I came to Buddhism many years ago, and joined (briefly) a cult. But that’s another story. Anyway. A formative experience I had, which taught me how painful attachment can be, is what ultimately led me to Buddha.
Buddhism crystallized things I already knew on a subconscious level but could not articulate in a clear, concise, conscious way.
There were emotional truths that I kenned without knowing, or fully understanding.
Buddhism delves into why we suffer. Why life can be so agonzingly painful. Why our own emotions betray us.
It’s all about The Wheel of Life, or in more contemporary terms, how our genes us emotion to try and control our behaviour, often to the detriment of our conscious selves. How we try to hold on to things that are illusory and ephemeral. Everything changes. We can enjoy in the moment, but if you try and hold on to that moment? It’s not meant to last.
Trying to hold on will only lead to pain.
Buddha knew the selfish-gene eons before Dawkins.
And so Buddhism teaches non-attachment.
We can become attached to all kinds of things: success, wealth, power, beauty, fame, sex, love, excitement. Drugs. Whatever.
Jim Carrey muses that he had to find success in order to give up.
The evolution of ego. Never thought I would be looking to a guy who has talked literally out of his butt for wisdom, but (haha) there you go.
He’s endorsing non-attachment. He’s moving beyond extrinsic to intrinsic value. He found the material empty.
And I agree with that, while at the same time having issues and doubts. But I understand the thinking behind it, and the wisdom of the concept.
And then I go and develop attachment.
One that defied logic and reason, that I couldn’t understand.
It did, however, teach me valuable lessons and spur growth, which, ultimately, is why it had to happen.
And that leads to the idea of soul mates.
Soul mates are people who come into our lives to wake us up, to make us grow and change and face things we’d rather ignore. Truths we don’t want to face.
The process isn’t pretty, it isn’t logical, and it isn’t easy.
And the teacher may not even know they are teaching us, at least not on a conscious level. But they provide us with an invaluable service, nonetheless.
Surface events that don’t seem significant can connect us to our past, triggering old wounds, surfacing issues. Like toppling a domino.
Or butterfly wings in the South Pacific.
That’s the service. Everything else is on us. It’s internal, all part of our journey.
So let me say this to my teachers in life (and one in particular): I will always be eternally grateful. Thank you.
Joel Smith took a look at Magnum Thrax and wrote what is perhaps the nicest and most awesome review my work has ever elicited. I just couldn't help but want to share it.
"Comic Sci-Fi Is So Hard -- This Is A Worthy Contender
This book is much, much better than the blurbs and the cover might lead you to believe...."
This is a good thing, but damn, I have to work on my blurb.
"With the reference to Pleasurepit Five and the combat sexbots, the impression is that this is going to be a sci-fi Dean Martin/Matt Helm action sex comedy. Well, it is a little. But, and this is a big "but", only a little, because the author has some fun with the idea of sexbots being repurposed as soldiers, and then once we've done some leering and oogling and a few jokes, he lets that go and moves on to a much better book.
The story is that the few remaining civilized outposts on Earth are threatened by an attacking rogue amusement park, (think Disney by way of The Borg). An android delivers a weapon to Pleasurepit Five and our hero, Magnum Thrax, is the only one who can travel across the Death Zone to enlist the technowitches into the fight against this evil. So, what you really get is a sort of Mad Max, Lord of the Rings, Dirty Dozen, high tech mashup.
But here's the really good part -- the post apocalyptic world is beautifully conceived, the techno/nano/quantum gobbledygook is wildly inventive, the characters are inspired, and the narrative and dialogue are unrelievedly funny."
This is just so gratifying. To have someone really get the book, understand what I was going for, and get something out of it. I writer can't ask for more.
"Very little of the humor is in your face, and none of it is heavy-handed or stoopid. There are lots of dry throwaway lines, deadpan observations, and wry or edgy musings. The narrative is funny, but actually fairly subtle. There is a lot of cross-talk and snappy dialogue, especially between Thrax and his techno-nerd best friend. It's smart and clever stuff."
Read the whole marvellous thing here on Goodreads.
