Shatnerquake by Jeff Burk

Shatnerquake by Jeff Burk

I have read many thousands of novels over the course of my life, but never encountered anything quite like Shatnerquake. The setting is a convention (Shatnercon) dedicated to the career of William Shatner. The hero is William Shatner, himself, who is also the guest of honor at the convention. The villains—or at least most of them—are also William Shatner—sort of. The other villains are fans of Bruce Campbell (of Army of Darkness fame). These fans are so fanatical they have all cut off their hands to be more like their idol, and they have decided that William Shatner has to go so that their hero can get more of the acclaim that he deserves.

 

Actually, crazy as this is, it would have made a good plot, but Burk has something even more zany in mind. In his version of the earth, the Network Wars went violent and produced a fiction bomb which can erase an actor’s entire career. The Campbells try to set one off but things go wrong and every fictional character William Shatner ever played comes to life with the desire to kill the original man.

 

Frankly, the very absurdity of the story just increases the fun. How many roles for William Shatner can you remember? Everyone will say Star Trek and T.J. Hooker, but did you recall he was in Rescue 911? The truth is, he’s been in hundreds of roles and Burk brings many of them to life in this novel. It’s an amazing amount of fun as you look for ever more bizarre Kirks to come around the corner. In fact, my only complaint about the story is that we didn’t get to see even more of these characters differentiated from the mass of Shatners (but to be fair, Burk gives us a lot of them). A large chunk of my enjoyment came from figuring out which Shatner character Shatner was facing.

 

The ending is also interesting—and a little bit hard to decipher. I told the person who recommended the book my interpretation and he wasn’t certain he agreed with me. Perhaps I’ll have to read the sequel to find out which of us is right.