The Vicious Circuit: A Series by Robert Brockway
There should be a name for the genre of bizarre sci-fi, modern-fantasy, horror that the likes of David Wong, Robert Brockway and their ilk hilariously bestow upon this unsuspecting world. I like reading these books for a number or reasons, which I will list right now, in no particular order:
The main characters are hapless lay-about who don’t give many shits about anything, let alone the cosmic nightmares they have been thrown up against. They are often found stoned or drunk…or both.
However, said main characters are often assisted by a strong female counterpart who saves them from both monsters and their own stupidity on several hilarious occasions. These characters range from bookish to bad-ass.
And now that you mention it, stories that involve cosmic nightmares and untold horrors of a Lovecraftian nature are often the tea in which I gingerly pour into my ornate and chipped cup.
The dialog is raw and real with a lot of cursing. Not the Shakespearen pros you’d get from an episode of Deadwood, but rather the, punch-in-the-face gutter-speak heard after a night of heavy drinking…in which the drink of choice is gasoline with a spritz of ginger.
Where David Wong's books take place in, Undisclosed middle America, Brockway takes us into the often traveled streets of New York, London, and the far from glamorous L.A. scene. In Undisclosed, we suspend belief because, after all, this could all be some cruel aliens simulation in some unheard of town. But when the landmarks are found on our SnapInstaFace feeds when the monsters arrive is all the more unsettling.
Both writers also write for Cracked.com, which makes me wonder what the hell is in the drinking fountains over there. It's some pretty potent stuff!
Keep writing these types of books and I'll keep reading them.
And now that I think about it, a Lovecraftian-themed show, staring Karen Gilliam, Jeff Bridges as The Dude, and Ian McShane would be something incredibly awesome. We’ll call this tale of horror, It Came from the Deep, or The Waking Gods, or The Big Lebowski 2. Co-Written by CGMcGinn, David Wong and Robert Brockway. I’d get top billing though. I wrote this post and found the pictures on the Inter-webs.