Kid Space Heater
Is it possible to smack a scanner into compliance? I imagine it actually involves learning how to work the thing and fixing it that way, but all these images being too large to put on my website (when they’re nothing of the sort) is getting on my nerves. Luckily I found another cover image online, not that you needed to know any of that, but I ramble even more than usual on Fridays. Kid Space Heater! A look at that cover would give you one impression for this book, and that impression would almost certainly be wrong. Things start off with the prospective lead character leaping from a plane. Why he was dropping was never fully explained, but his parachute didn’t open and he ended up as a splat on the pavement, so it’s a moot point. I also have to mention the fact that the pilots were an alligator wearing sunglasses and what looked like a mountain goat, purely because that image was wonderful to behold. So five pages in we have a dead hero and pedestrians are looting his body. Among these looters is a kid who touches a cube. This cube tries explaining what it is to the child, who couldn’t care less about long explanations and whines about it until he is let out of the training course. Unfortunately a couple of thugs are coming to steal the cube and the cube talks the kid into shooting the thugs. Or maybe they were nice people? Again, never explained, and I loved the ambiguity. The kid had no interest in becoming a killer, but the gun tricked him into it, which leads to the rest of the issue and a few more of his adventures (told in short, highlight reel-like fashion) before ending the same way that it started: with a leap from a plane. Fantastic shit all around, with Josh’s skills really shining through with some of those intricate and ridiculous backgrounds. Only real haters of anything to do with science fiction should avoid picking this one up, and even those people should probably at least give it a shot. No price, but it’s hefty so…$6!
