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Six stories; forty-four illustrations; 250 pages; one Patent Investigator; one slightly maladjusted robot secretary; and more Mad Science than you can shake a centrifuge at, all from the author/illustrator of Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom.
In the city of Retropolis - which is where the future went, when we got something else - all science is Mad. So scientific laboratories are confined to the city's Experimental Research District. It's laid out in the zoning laws, but what it really is, is self-defense.
There's always the danger that something really awful might happen in the District, though: something so awful that it will escape to the city outside. That's why the Retropolis Registry of Patents keeps an eye on what the inventors of the District are doing from day to day.
At the Registry you might meet Ben Bowman, a patent investigator who's smart in at least one or two of the ways that are important, and his friend Violet, the robot secretary. Violet is convinced that she ought to be an investigator herself.
Between you and me, she's not wrong. But she's had a terrible time convincing one Patent Registrar after another that they ought to promote her; and, strangely, the Registrars never seem to last very long once they disagree.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
The creator of Retropolis, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, and the Pulp-O-Mizer, Bradley W. Schenck has worn a lot of hats in his time. He still has quite a few of them.
Bradley's a former printer, draftsman, and luthier. If you live long enough you'll find you've worked at jobs that don't even exist any more.
He did some illustration work back in the early days of fantasy role playing games, then painted and illustrated some more in the 1980's in fields like book and music publishing... sometimes for formats that don't exist any more.
In the late 1980's he freelanced for computer game studios and then, in 1991, founded Terra Nova Development with Michal Todorovic. Terra Nova produced 'The Labyrinth of Time' (Electronic Arts, 1993), an early CD-ROM graphic adventure game.
Later Bradley joined The Dreamers Guild ('I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream', 'Dinotopia', and 'Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II'), and following his stint at the Guild he worked for a series of game development studios that were, repeatedly, shot out from under him. They don't exist any more, either.
When this happens often enough, you have to wonder if it might be a pattern of some kind.
So early in the 21st century he decided to rely on his own wits.
So far, his wits still exist.
His work since then has included Celtic design, but increasingly he's worked on his world of Retropolis; first in art and merchandise, and later in serial and interactive stories at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual. The Thrilling Tales led to his illustrated novel 'Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom' (Tor Books, 2017) and to the collection 'Patently Absurd' (Radio Planet Books, 2018).
