Samhain Publishing, $4.50, ISBN 1-59998-441-5
Sci-fi Romance, 2007
Evolving Man tells the story of three friends and housemates who clearly haven’t watched the three Back to the Future movies or else they won’t tinker with the time machine that one of them, Lila, has created. Lila is the scientist, Taylor is the gullible one, and Chrissy is the cynical one. However, when they turn on the machine and watch as Vikings dismember each other in a sea of gore, Taylor is the first to point out how hot one of the no-doubt blood-soaked marauders is, so maybe Taylor isn’t just the gullible one – she’s also the bunny boiler of the bunch.
As Taylor gets breathless watching Vikings tear each other asunder – I bet she takes a machete to cats when no one is watching her – Lila is busy announcing to all who will listen that with the aid of her translating device which she also created along with the time-machine, she can assemble world’s greatest thinkers from the past to chat with them. Boy she will be disappointed indeed when they tell her what a nitwit she is. Chrissy, who’s the cynical one, then presses that button just like you know she will and summons one of those limb-hacking blood-soaked Vikings into the present. I’m so disappointed that he doesn’t show up in front of the three Stooges biting on a dismembered arm.
The Viking breaks the machine and now the three ladies have a Viking to deal with in their place. Chrissy deals with the Viking, whose name they assume to be Gareth since that’s the closest English name they can think of to match the sounds he’s making. If you have read any time-travel story featuring a displaced Viking – these stories were really in vogue in the late 1990’s – you will probably find this particular relationship familiar in many ways.
Lila, on the other hand, masturbates while listening to Gareth and Chrissy shag as she wonders about her online buddy MathMan whom she’s never met. That’s really sad, don’t you think? I’d think a brainiac like Lila would at least have a modified vibrator guaranteed to deliver at least six orgasms with one press of the button instead of using her hand. Instead, she wastes her time making a time machine. Girlfriend here clearly needs to get her priorities sorted out. Right after she has gotten off using her hand, the doorbell rings and she runs to shake MathMan’s hand. No, she doesn’t wash her hand. MathMan, whose name is actually Zach, knows about the time-machine because Lila blabs everything to a stranger she has never met in person until now. Isn’t she lucky that he doesn’t work for some secret military group or something? Zach is happy to finally get the chance to meet someone from the past but he soon finds himself drooling over Lila’s “amazing breasts and mouth-watering ass”. It’s a good thing he’s not too interested in her brain, I tell you, because he’s going to be disappointed if that is the case. He’s spending the night because he has to help Lila fix the machine. You can imagine what happens from there, I’m sure.
Meanwhile, Taylor peeks into the near future in that machine, likes a guy in business suit looking like he’s about to meet a client, thinks that grabbing a guy from the future won’t hurt because Chrissy shagged a blood-soaked barbarian and it all ended up fine, and brings poor John Wilkins to her. Then she interrogates a befuddled John, complaining that his name is boring and his job as a corporate drone is unappealing, among other things. She then decides that she will spend platonic time with John so it’s not as if she intends to shag him as a consolation prize. I suppose she believes her presence is ample reward in itself. Taylor is very, very dim-witted and she behaves like an addled little girl throughout her story. I shudder at the sex scenes because this means she will have a chance of reproducing the last thing the world needs is children mothered by Taylor. Ironically, John is working on a top-secret reversal-Viagra kind of drug to cut down overpopulation so maybe there is some kind of method behind Bonnie Dee’s madness here. After all, John is the perfect fellow to ensure that Taylor will never breed, right?
Evolving Man is what happens when three very dim-witted women combine their meager intellect for pure folly. I’m just grateful that they don’t get their hands on some kind of weapon of mass destruction.
