Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain

With the title and the cover art you know what you're in for: a humorous jab at science fiction, or something imitating old campy B-movies.

The story moves fast, all action and wise-cracking dialogue. In Martinez's version of the galaxy, our solar system is filled with sentient aliens from Neptune, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and so on. The title character is an “evil genius” from Neptune who has conquered Terra (Earth, kinda sorta) via a mind control device.

The plot is structured with Emperor Mollusk acting as a tour guide for a Venusian called Zala, a character whose goal is to protect the Emperor from his unknown assassin and then arrest him for crimes against her people. This gives the Emperor a chance to show her, and therefore the reader, the various civilizations on and around Terra, which he has taken over, and get into various scrapes before confronting his final nemesis. They face monstrous creatures and other sinister beings that the Emperor has pissed off over the years.

The novel is episodic, as though it were originally published as a serialized story in a science fiction magazine. I don't think it was the case, so I assume it was done deliberately to invoke older pulp and fantasy writers.

Martinez attempts to get us to like the Emperor by showing us his guilt (and boredom) over how easily he dominated the Terrans, not to mention his endless cleverness. We don't see him gradually learn this, he's already in this mental state when the story begins. It might have been more interesting to see his humility grow with the story.

The “great hilarity” promised by the cover never occurred. There's some mildly amusing dialogue that invoked an occasional snicker. Each little adventure the Emperor and Zala get into is pretty easily solved by the Emperor, which doesn't make for much tension. Seeing a character who always knows what's going to happen or has some trick hidden up his sleeve that undoes every conflict is tedious.

When we get to the final episode, the reason for the Emperor's omniscience (other than his vast genius of course) becomes clearer. I got the joke but it wasn't enough of a surprise to really astonish or impress. Cute, but I was hoping for something original that transcends the material it is imitating.

“We have to destroy the radioactive brain of Madame Curie.” When I read this line in the book I thought for a moment that the author had gone too far down the slippery slope of absurdity. But, then, I realized that he'd done that in the first chapter.

This book is a great lot of fun. It's old school pulp done with flair and intelligence - and, it's a great read.

What a fun read (not hilarious, as the cover implies–and I believe, Martinez tweeted he didn't like the word)!

This tale of our solar system's biggest supervillian, conqueror (and would-be conqueror) of planets, destroyer of armies, and uber-mad scientist reads like a semi-serious Douglas Adams book. All of the wit, all the imagination, all the “where did he get that loopy (and great) idea from?”, none of the compulsion to go for the laugh every x number of paragraphs. It's a great look at what makes a supervillian of the evil-scientist variety tick.

I've read about half of Martinez' works, and he seems to go out of his way to make each significantly different than the last–but there are certain hallmarks–they're clever, very enjoyable, and they display an essential humanity in characters you wouldn't normally sympathize with/think of in this way. Such a treat.