MAKE THE COSMOS GREAT AGAIN!

Rodney Wyckham, a Napoleonic-era British mariner repatriated to outer space as governor of his own alien-populated planet, offers relief to the stricken Earth of 2028—only to run afoul of buffoonish right-wingers.

Scully continues a comical SF/mashup series commenced in Grapeshot & Demons (2012), here tweaked as a broadside against the administration of former president Donald Trump. The narrative does a coherent job illuminating a crazy backstory. Via alien portals, Rodney Wyckham—a Horatio Hornblower–esque British naval officer from the Age of Fighting Sail—was teleported, along with a small fleet of 1814 seafarers, to a distant alien planet. There, with courage and cleverness, they allied with other species to defeat the Dreash, giant warthoglike monsters that terrorized the universe. In gratitude—and perhaps some self-serving machinations—the League of Worlds allowed the humans (their lives prolonged by ET medicine) to continue administering the Dreash planet, remade as a showcase world called Freeport. Gov. Wyckham has been sympathetically monitoring the wretched affairs on Earth, battered by climate change and Balkanized by corrupt leaders. In 2028, Wyckham reveals Freeport’s existence to an amazed humanity, offering tourist opportunities and science-based advice. But one faction isn’t grateful. In 2020, a fat, blustering demagogue U.S. president with bad hair, a certain “Victor Triumph,” running for reelection on a right-wing anti-immigrant ticket (despite secretly being a Latino illegal named Rodriguez), lost the vote to actor Leonardo DiCarpaccio. Triumph simply declared himself “emperor of Earth” to the cheers of white supremacists, religious zealots, and greedy businessmen. Thus the USA split into separate countries: two progressive coasts vs. Triumph’s supporters in a reactionary-puritanical Midwest and a resurrected Confederate South. As the assorted Earth leaders descend on Freeport for diplomatic visits, it is, naturally, the vile Triumph who—using trumped-up accusations over “illegal aliens,” kidnappings, and unfair trade deals—colludes with remaining Dreash in a full invasion (“People are saying they’re rapists, they’re murderers, they sell illegal drugs on dozens of planets. And these aliens get to keep Americans out of fantastic new markets? Not gonna happen, folks, not gonna happen”). With live coverage arranged via Fox News, Triumph pits modern American weaponry against Wyckham’s centuries-old cannon and single-shot firearms. But the defenders of Freeport have some tricks of their own.

Scully doesn’t specify which characters are Democrats and which are Republicans, but readers smarter than the average QAnon conspiracy theorist can pretty much figure it out themselves, with renamed caricatures of Steve Bannon, Mike Pence, and even Stormy Daniels (“Squally Gales”) teleported in from the headlines, largely to look even more foolish and grotesque than their real-life inspirations. The use of cannon-carrying whales and chemical projectiles may well qualify this as steampunk—or maybe steamPunk’d. Sometimes these genre mashups run out of gimmick fast and deflate well before the finis (RIP, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), but this ephemeral romp keeps the action fast, the combat huuuge, and adds a trio of Olympics-class female fencers from San Francisco as visiting tourists, one of whom becomes the series’ presumptive new love interest for the stalwart Wyckham. One must note that the writer’s penchant for out-of-this-world sex and scatology is just as unsubtle as the politics. And it may be noted that admirers of Donald J. Trump may find some contents objectionable, believe it or not.

Ribald SF/fantasy sends a cannonade of gross humor against the big target that was the 45th president.