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DOOMSDAY WARRIOR: American Glory!


MinDonner

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Continued from here. Now reading Book 7 of Ryder Stacy's epic saga of HEROISM in the form of the DOOMSDAY WARRIOR.

The story so far... well, we're only on Chapter 2, so there isn't much of one yet. Blah, postapocalypse, Russians in control of the US(S)A, noble freedom fighters just had their city nuked, Nazis all got eaten by swamp monsters, various members of Rock Squad got injured by ninjas. If you're new to these threads, all of those things happened. Yes.

Rock'n'Rona are out huntin' to feed the inhabitants of CC until they can magically repair their unlikely hydroponics lab. Surprisingly, the second chapter continues this hunting trip rather than getting on with the slightly more important freedom-fightin' business, as they return home with their team of hybrid horses.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But not in the Colorado Rockies.

Must be due to the hilliness. Those Ottomans, they knew what they were doing.

This line is not explained, however, as Stacy goes off on a page-long digression about the various forms of wildlife that can be seen in the area. This includes razor-beaked hummingbirds, three-winged owls and armor-plated skunks. The singing ferrets are not mentioned, they must be endemic to a different part of the Rockies.

Now a bit of overblown authorial wanking over our hero. Brace yourselves.

Only when one soared closer, as if looking through the eyes of a hawk swooping down from its cloud-shrouded nest, did one see the face of the man who led the team. There was something about the face, something different from other men. Perhaps the eyes. Eyes in which one could see no fear. Not a trace, not a glimmer. Eyes that had loved and knew love, but now as they surveyed the trail, the thousand-foot drop below, the sky above, were clear and cold as a panther's, a snake's. Eyes of pure perception unclouded by the neuroses, the fears, the trembling nightmares of twentieth-century man. For those alive in 2089 AD lived the nightmare. Every second it threatened to strike out of nowhere. One had to be able to react with the speed of a striking snake, the strength of a cat, to live.

So Rock has.... the eyes of a snake and the strength of a cat? Er, OK then.

Not only this, but apparently he walks along by "carefully placing one foot in front of the other", and exists in perfect harmony with all nature, even the scurrying chameleon lizards, in a state of perfect warrior enlightenment. I was wondering what the point of all this was, until I got to the very next paragraph, where the purpose of the contrast becomes clear.

"Rock, I'm getting tired," Rona shouted from about twenty yards behind on the trail.

Yep. Women, eh? Never shut their yaps, distracting the men from their perfect warrior consciousnesses. Looks like AwesomeHardcoreRona has outstayed her welcome, and Stacy has remembered just how much he actually hates women.

"When the hell do we stop?" she whined, joining in the bray of the beasts.

Rock is rudely wrenched from his reverie of communing with nature by this shrill interruption. He takes a brief moment to acknowledge Rona's fighting prowess (though of course she's nowhere near as good as himself)... BUT.

And though he thought that perhaps sometimes he might love her, her frequent lapses into childish histrionics, particularly in the middle of the most impossible situations, made him want to put her right over his knee and spank some sense into her. The Post-Nuke world was not a place to play games in, or to sink into infantilism.

Yeah. Pfft, chicks, what can you do? Rona has further hissy fits and continues shrieking for at least the next hour, which our hero tunes out as a meaningless noise along with the animal howls.

Finally they reach a place to stop and camp, but Rona is now doing the Silent Treatment and stomps off into the trees without a word, as Rock smirks behind her back and makes helpful comments about how children should be seen but not heard.

But she had to learn. God only knew how she had survived all these years, tramping through forests and mountains, talking a mile a minute, complaining, stopping to admire the view.

Probably also picking flowers and breaking her nails at inopportune moments, I wouldn't doubt.

On cue, a scream! Rock dashes to the rescue, only to see Rona being threatened by... a moose. Rock is so awesome that he immediately recognises it as a herbivore, and scares it away with a few warning shots, then lectures Rona on how stupid she was to walk around unarmed. And its teeth were really blunt anyway! Obviously those are the only possible danger from a 1500-pound animal with huge antlers and hooves that can charge at fairly high speeds, but we'll let Stacy's lack of wilderness knowledge slide here in the face of the egregious and continuing misogyny.

Rona is contrite and sheepish. She knows she's being a bitch and now she can't even look Rock in the eye, so ashamed is she of her behaviour. It's only because she loves him so much and now she's jealous of Kim! It serves her right for all those times she led men on and broke their hearts.

Rock, for his part, has done little to discourage Rona's affections, even as far as telling her he loves her. But it looks like Kim may be making a reappearance sometime later this book. Watch this space!

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Rona is contrite and sheepish. She knows she's being a bitch and now she can't even look Rock in the eye, so ashamed is she of her behaviour. It's only because she loves him so much and now she's jealous of Kim! It serves her right for all those times she led men on and broke their hearts.

Nice reference to when she was worshipped as a living Goddess and reincarnation of Eva Braun - indeed how many numberless hearts were broken in the daily licking of her boots?

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I liked that post because of what you had to endure to make it.

But jesus christ, did I not like that post.

I may end up writing some fan fic some day after all. It may go a little something like:

Richard Rahl steps up to the podium and begins to speak: "Listen up fuckers! You need to BLEAAAARGH!..."

Ted Rockson wipes Richards blood off of his (made in the USA) knife and says: "Nice try, chief, but you don't get to tell AMERICAN'S what to do! We're made of sternerBLEAAARGH!!..."

Mike Harmon re-sheaths his K-BAR: "I don't like who I am. Not at all. But you seem to have two whores you're currently not raping and I'm running low. Mmmm... raping whores."

*Ghost looks at the wounded bodies of Richard and Ted in front of him; contemplating whether or not to put them down.*

*Jar-Jar Binks randomly appears and accidentally kills all three of them through pure hilariousness and stupidity as they deserve.*

Fin.

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How the hell does a three-winged owl work? I can only think it operates in the manner of the haggis, with its two long and two short legs so it can run efficiently around (but not up or down) mountains.

Yes, that'll be it. Now, another G&T.

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*Jar-Jar Binks randomly appears and accidentally kills all three of them through pure hilariousness and stupidity as they deserve.*

Fin.

Sir,

I am not yet a literary agent of any kind but I am willing to make that career move purely to bring your work to the wider audience it so richly deserves. Please provide me with the plot outline of your first two novels so I can begin discussions with leading publishing houses by return.

Sincerely yours,

etc, etc

Yes, that'll be it. Now, another G&T.

keep 'em coming.

I see one kind of sticking up vertically, like a sort of rudder or shark fin....

I think its more there as a reserve wing in case one of the others gets a bit tired on a long flight.

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Up to this point I was leaning towards the opposite interpretation - I think Kim's absence coincided too neatly with the breakup of the Ryder/Stacy partnership (I think the end of book 4?), and Rona took centre-stage after that. I'm now suspecting that perhaps the remaining author got rejected by a real-life redhead in the meantime ("I wrote you into this book as a Nazi love slave" being far from the best of chat-up lines) and is taking this opportunity for revenge.

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("I wrote you into this book as a Nazi love slave" being far from the best of chat-up lines)

Now you tell me.

What more do we know about Ryder and Stacey? They actually broke up, or is that conjecture?

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Regarding the Ryder/Stacy breakup, there's not a whole lot of info out there, but this link pretty much confirms what I thought - Stacy was only involved in books 1-4. Though even with both of em writing, the sheer number of books published each year is pretty telling... :lol:

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Wow, thanks. Three to four books a year and poor Stacey dead - of exhaustion no doubt...but this series goes on for eighteen books! Presumably it all ends with the death of the last ninja-communist?

Still if Ryder still lives, somewhere out there, maybe he could write even more of them?

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The chapter continues as the two return to the ruins of CC, which are described with the usual odd mixture of unnecessary specificity and gratuitous gore. For example:

It had been painful digging out the dead, their bodies already rotting into a grotesque misshapen stew beneath the tons of debris. So much of Century City had been destroyed, the inhabitants had found themselves teary-eyed for days. Hydroponics, which supplied nearly 75% of the city's nutritional needs, had been swept away in the tidal wave of nutrient-filled fluids that had exploded from the cracked cases.

Luckily, the plucky freedom-lovin inhabitants have been hard at work fixing everything with handy steel girders that they had lying around, and now Lincoln Plaza (a forum for public speakers, entertainment and Saturday-night dances) has been restored to its former glory, even the broken bits of the Lincoln statue have been stuck back on. Priorities!

Rona tosses her fiery hair and walks off somewhere, while Rock heads to the Decontamination Chamber, which oddly appears to be somewhere in the middle of the city. The process, however, apparently involves things like the sound of a gong and some soft purple lights, so I suppose it's going to do as much good there as it would anywhere.

Rockson could feel the million-times-a-second vibration caused by the deep sound waves hold his body in a blurring grip. The subsonic waves were literally shaking loose any bits of virus or ensconced germ that were trying to take root in the Freefighter's skin.

Anyway, Rock is glad to finally be wearing some clothes that are not covered with the blood of a hundred slaughtered animals. Then it's off to visit his injured friends.

On the way, he passes some burn victims, and the author treats us to some amazing Scientific! insights into the effects of radiation on human flesh.

Gamma rays, which the neutron bomb had released, burn with an insidious pain deep into the body, disrupting the cells, stabbing into their nuclei and destroying the subatomic brains that regulate them. The body melts from the inside out, the very substance of the flesh turning into a pinkish gruel that flows out of the eyes and nose and ears - and any other opening that it can find.

WTF is this crap? I mean really, I grew up in a very anti-nuclear family, full of dubious pamphlets on radiation from my mum's hippy mates, and none of them had anything nearly so preposterous. I expect it's only the eevil Russian radiation that has this effect, proper American nukes just kill you with a straightforward punch in the face.

The presence of Rockson fills all these burn victims with hope, by his sheer heroic existence. And now to see Dr Shecter.

Shecter quite rightly castigates Rock for going off hunting when there's so much organisational work to be done here in CC, but Rock is having none of it. And the good doctor has been pretty busy in the meantime. Just a few weeks at most have passed since his spinal cord was severed in the battle, but he's already built himself a "neurological bypass" - Stacy makes an attempt at the science, but basically he's just wired his legs up to his brain with wires and now they work again.

"I'm no Jesse Owens," says Shecter, then about a page later Stacy realises that this might sound a bit anachronistic, so adds some helpful explanation.

The people of Century City liked to refer to famous people, places, slang of the past. It linked them up with an America they had never let die in their hearts. For when the Reds were finally defeated, a new America would re-establish her culture, and they'd need every bit they could salvage.

Good save!

Shecter, thinks Rock, is a real testament to the human will and spirit. If only every Freefighter in America had as much spunk!

Detroit, similarly, has had a miraculous recovery, and they've stuck his arm back on. Luckily the doctors had found some "ancient books" on microsurgery and were able to reattach it and retain full limb function. Detroit will even be pitching in the softball game against Eisenhowerville on Sunday!

Yes. In the postapocalyptic world where the wastelands crawl with beasts and commies and cannibals, there is still a national softball league. I... I'm speechless.

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Ah, back to the guilty pleasures of reading edited highlights (er...lowlights) of some entertainingly flawed pulp fiction, together with humorous commentary (are they all cyborgs by now?)... thanks again Min :)

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I am baffled by how the burn victims can be either a. alive or b. cheered considering the description of their symptoms. Is it normal to be cheered when your innars are melting and flowing out like pinkish gruel through your eye sockets? Perhaps only if you are for freedom, as it insulates you to the effects, or something?

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