Review: Fantastic!!!!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 12, 2013
After reading one of Oleg Medvedkov's books last week, I had to come back for more. As I read the second one, I realized that his books are much deeper than they seem at first. They're filled with outrageous characters doing nonsensical things for absurd reasons. And that's already funny. My middle-school son and his buddies loved "Space Rabbit vs. Captain Doomsday" and "Chocolate Gun" and laughed at the point that chocolate guns "are good for one shot, after which the killer eats the gun, and hence destroys the evidence."Oleg's quick wit surprises the readers and keeps them thinking. Take a look at this first sentence of one story: "The morning felt like any other morning that I could remember." Sounds plain and ordinary, right? So, as a reader you feel you know where this is going and start to relax. But right in the next sentence, you read "Not that I could remember too many mornings." Didn't expect such turn of events, did you?But there's much more to his books. Remember Jonathan's Swift's satirical essay "A Modest Proposal" where he suggests that eating extra children will solve poverty problems in Ireland? Or the wild and wacky characters of "Alice in Wonderland," a book written by a mathematician who put logic and math puzzles behind the nonsense? What about "The Wonderful Wizard of OZ," a children's story still being interpreted by some as a political allegory of attempts to move the US from gold  to bimetallic (silver and gold) standard?  That's how deep Oleg Medvedkov's books are.When seeing a dangerous enemy ship approach, the captain states that it is "giving me a headache" and demands the image to be covered with the captain's own image "during the last awards ceremony." We all know people who solve problems this way, and some of them are world leaders.The reference to the Russian mafia being "twelve minutes late" to a weapons deal reminded me of Moscow in the 1990's when chaos reigned. Remember that failed coup of 1991? Many Russians still believe that lack of organization among the coup leaders contributed to the coup's failure. In Oleg's story, after the mafia receives the nuclear bombs they came for, the narrator says, "Just don't get killed before you pay me the money." Yes, it's possible to be that incompetent.And if you are not into politics, you can read about Space Rabbit and question whether our overmedicated society is overdoing it with Prozac and other mind-controlling substances. Here's a quote from the Rabbit himself, "I should stay off carrots for a while. I can't eat this stuff without my meds."My favorite stories in this collection are "Sins of Omission," "Space Rabbit vs. Spellchecker," and "Random Excerpt from US Army Official Field Manual on Dealing with Philosophy Students by Major David Grenbaum." Just the title alone made me laugh. What are the odds of such an encounter?The stories are short, but take your time with them to discover all the hidden meanings and layers. Highly recommended.