First Lines: Unidentified Funny Objects 3

Like its predecessors, most of Unidentified Funny Objects 3 was a hoot, and again, all over the place:

In “Master of Business Apocalypse” (Jakob Drud) a company specialized in apocalypse prevention gets a new CEO. “Company Store” by Robert Silverberg deals with a colonist who kinda gets conned by the company that sent him into space, which nicely contrasted with “The Door-to-Door Salesthing from Planet X” by Josh Vogt. Saving a salesthing from Planet X from exploding if he doesn’t meet his sales-target is quite different from a company extorting a helpless colonist.

Both “Picture Perfect” by Matt Mikalatos (featuring my favorite vampire-vampire hunter-hunter, Isaac Van Helsing) and Camille Griep’s “Into the Woods, with Zombunny” (zombies, bunnies, squires, witches, … you get the point) got a good chuckle out of me with a nice pop-culture shout-out:

Further favorites included “The Newsboy’s Last Stand” (Krystal Claxton), where a newsboy literally makes the news, “The Full Lazenby” by Jeremy Butler about a world where everyone loves a dynasty, even a scientifically dubious one. So people who are almost genetically similar to, say, George Lazenby, get to live the Bond experience. (Its final line? Quit Bond after one adventure? That is so Lazenby.). Then there is “Do Not Remove This Tag”, a genie in a mattress story by Piers Anthony, and “The Fate Worse than Death” by Kevin J. Anderson and Guy Anthony De Marco, about a vampire who gets found out as being the literary genius behind most vampire fiction.

Since it took me a good while to get to these first three UFO-collections, I passed up on volume four. But now, having really liked all of ‘em, I had no qualms to back the just (successfully) finished UFO5 Kickstarter (with volume 4 and more as bonus perks).

Book read

Unidentified Funny Objects 3 (edited by Alex Shvartsman)

First line

Patient Name: Tamara “Puff” Jones (from “On the Efficacy of Supervillain Battles in Eliciting Therapeutic Breakthroughs” by Jim C. Hines)