From Publishers Weekly
Irrepressible, irreverent and unpredictable, this hilarious fantasy with nostalgic touches of yesterday's SF shows off the narrative skills of an inventive author altogether comfortable in his metier. Legends of the Old West, plus characters both real and fictional, enliven the shenanigans, commencing with Buffalo Bill Cody, a head in a jar atop a mechanical body (after his ax-wielding wife caught him in bed with singer Lily Langtry), escorting his Wild West Show by zeppelin to Japan. Wild Bill Hickok romances Annie Oakley and discusses his old friend George Custer with his new friend Sitting Bull, who packs much comic punch in few words ("White eye motherfucker in wrong place at wrong time"). A ribald tall tale only gets wilder and wackier. In Japan, Cody spirits away Victor Frankenstein's monster, here fresh from the Arctic and unwillingly serving, from his foot up, as an aphrodisiac for a local shogun. Cody wants to go to "the island of Dr. Momo," in order to get that scientist to make him a similar body. Escape proves more difficult than arrival, however, when Japanese biplanes shoot down the zeppelin over the ocean. Happily, "Captain Bemo" in his submersible, the Naughty Lass, comes to the rescue, and the gang proceeds to Momo for more amusing adventures. With a striking jacket design and interior line drawings by Mark A. Nelson, this novel is one big joyride from start to finish. (June 18)for best novel.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
A tribute to such works as Richard Brautigan's Hawkline Monster, and Philip Jose Farmer's wackier novels, like The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Zeppelin's West is a wild parody of Westerns, Alternate Universe novels, classic science fiction and horror, comic books, pulps, and dime novels.
A Lansdalean holiday into weirdness and camp, this is a special confection from one of today's most original, multi-award winning writers.
The Wild West Show travels by Zeppelin to perform before a Shogun, soon to be emperor of Japan, only to discover the Frankenstein monster is being whittled down slowly and ground into aphrodisiacs by the would-be ruler. Buffalo Bill, who, due to a recent accident, exists only as a battery powered head in a jar of liquid manufactured from the best that modern science and pig urine has to offer, along with Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, and a cast of historical as well as literary characters, rescue the monster, only to be shot down over the Pacific, where they are saved from sharks by Captain Nemo and his intellectual seal, Ned.
And then things get weird.