Review: Mighty Peculiar... but Verrry Interesting
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 3, 2014
Ian Thomas Healy's "The Mighty Peculiar Incident at Muddy Creek" effectively blends two distinctive fictional genres, Westerns and science fiction, more specifically, time travel. Despite the obvious challenges involved, he has crafted an intriguing page turner, Surprisingly, he has done so in less than 15 pages.As you might expect in a story this short, Healy doesn't spend a lot of time establishing character or setting the scene. Instead, the story begins when the sheriff of the small town of Muddy Creek realizes that a train that was supposed to drop off passengers in town has instead gone straight through without stopping or slowing down. Since the train was going at a fairly low rate of speed, Sheriff Jesse decides to chase down the train on horseback and board it. His posse consists of one man, Angus, the town barber, who had the misfortune of being the person to tell Jesse about the train.When Jesse and Angus do manage to catch up to the train, they come across a scene straight out of, well, to be honest, straight out of a science fiction story. Everyone in the passenger car is frozen in place, not moving. The passengers include a Pinkerton's detective and a couple of characters who are dressed unlike anything Jesse has ever seen... like modern day Goths. Moreover, Jesse figures out pretty quickly that the Goths were planning on robbing the train, which carried a large amount of cash intended as the payroll for some local mines."Muddy Creek" may blend two fictional genres, but the story telling style is straight out of a Ned Buntline dime novel. Healy is able to capture the feel of Old West storytelling perfectly... the first third of the book could easily have led to Sheriff Jesse shooting it out with garden variety desperadoes. Once Jesse and Angus come across the robbery that was most literally stopped in progress, Healy shifts his style seamlessly and flawlessly.Because of the story's brief length, author Healy sacrifices some of the story's plausibility by having Jesse figure out in seconds that the robbers actually came from the future. Still, the story moves quickly enough so that readers shouldn't mind. Once Jesse encounters the robbers, things begin to move at a very rapid pace, and despite the short length of the story, Healy is able to introduce and cleverly resolve some of the best known staples of time travel stories, including the paradox of attempting to change the past.Healy has told a highly effective time travel story here in less than 20 pages. He's also told his story in an authentic Western manner, so that it sounds like something guys would talk about around a campfire some day. And, since the story appears to be offered for free, there's no question about value for money (although people may question whether the story is worth it if the author begins to charge for it). When an author tells a story this complex in such a clear, smooth manner in a handful of pages, I'm willing to overlook the lack of niceties about character development. I'm just pleased to come across a rip snorting tale about a brave sheriff and some mangy varmints from the future.