The Skelzi Invasion (Voyage Into the Unknown: Station Post One)
It just gets better and better, doesn’t it? (h/t PJ)
| Should this cover be in the Lousies? |
The Skelzi Invasion (Voyage Into the Unknown: Station Post One)
It just gets better and better, doesn’t it? (h/t PJ)
| Should this cover be in the Lousies? |
Wasn’t the structure a space station previously? How did it turn into a castle? And why are their suits looking like dried fruit?
I vaguely recall some schlocky old movie that presented itself as a swords-and-sorcery-style fantasy movie with the hero trying to rescue his love interest from a medieval-looking castle full of monsters and stuff, but then—with no particular explanation offered—casually displayed in several scenes a modern-looking concrete building in the middle of a forest with a sign on it (which none of the characters could read since they were illiterate) indicating it to be some kind of welcoming center for colonists from Earth. In other words, all this fantastic seemingly medieval stuff was actually taking place on some distant alien planet in the distant future. It was a pretty clever twist for what was otherwise a rather dreary low-budget movie.
Maybe this book is something like that movie: the characters live in an otherwise seemingly medieval setting, but they’re actually battling extraterrestrials with energy weapons on some Earth-like planet they’ve colonized in the distant future. If so… well, that’s a great concept, dude, but the story’s (and this book cover’s) execution of it is killing it! Maybe take a lesson from Orson Scott Card’s short story “Kingsmeat” which was set in a similarly low-tech medieval-style civilization on a distant planet colonized by humans in a space-faring future.
That sounds like a movie that I would seek out to watch and then regret watching. (It also, sounds, dare I say it, like an even lamer version of YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE.)
Indeed, I wish I could remember the title as it was the very kind of movie you used to review on your Cold Fusion movie reviews site. As mentioned, that welcoming center for Earth colonists was pretty much the only part of it even remotely interesting and therefore memorable. The rest… well, I sorta got the impression the movie itself was made as something to be played in the background of young teen couples’ make-out sessions in a drive-in or bargain matinee theater, and so that background detail was there for the benefit of the rare few bored employees at such theaters who might actually be paying attention to what was happening on the screen for some reason.