LoveSpell, $6.99, ISBN 978-0-505-52743-1
Sci-fi Romance, 2007
Star Crash is Elysa Hendricks’ prize-winning entry for some kind of contest where the prize is the story being published by LoveSpell. I don’t know what that contest is, but after reading this one, I can only imagine that it must be some kind of parody-writing contest where contestants are encouraged to lampoon the campiest sexploitation movies from the 1960s that they can think of. It’s either that or I am completely missing the point about the merits of this book.
After her spacecraft Freedom crashed onto a distant planet and the man she loves, Alex, is presumed dead, poor Cora Daniels find herself naked on the table of a bunch of bird-like aliens – called the Flock by Cora – who would love to do nothing better than to molest her and probe her rear end with shiny metallic rods. Trust me, the actual account is more hilarious than gynecological. Soon she is set to work as a slave along with a bunch of naked female slaves. Naturally, the overseer wants to cop a feel here and there and get some. And so on and on the story goes, it’s like I’m reading a long-lost and recently unearthed script to a Barbarella sequel that the original people behind it were too embarrassed to submit to a studio. Oh, and Alex is alive, but alas, he has amnesia. His penis is in working order though, and if you think about it, that’s what really important at the end of the day.
This story has all the sex-related clichés you can think of, from mating in captivity to biological instincts gone awry to near-rapes and various other phallic assaults on our heroine’s citadel of virtue. Of course, in the end Cora and Alex rally the slaves to overthrow the tyrants so that everyone can copulate happily ever after, but come on, who cares. It’s all about how many times the author can sneak in a chance for the heroine to be placed into a sexual situation either with or against her will. I mean, how many stories do you know begin with an anal probe in chapter one?
Do I think that Star Crash is a work of art? Well, in a way, I suppose it is, since it’s easily one of the funniest masterpiece of pure camp and unabashed cheese that I have come across in a while. This is one of those books that I find so bad that it transcends the meaning of good and bad and becomes instead something quite perversely glorious to behold. There is no way I can not enjoy such an entertaining story, although I suspect that my brand of appreciation may not be the kind of appreciation that the author would prefer her readers to have.
Come to think of it, if this is the best of the entries of what just has to be a contest to write the biggest and the most unabashedly cheesy sexploitation story that will send an Ellora’s Cave acquisition editor into a blissful swoon, I have this sudden urge to read the other entries. Star Crash is just so bad that it hurts so, so good. A sequel is a must. The gods of MST3K demand it.
