Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.
Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance by Bill Kelter (writer) and Wayne Shellabarger (artist)
Promo copy:
It’s a tired but true cliché that every American Vice President is just a heartbeat away from the most powerful job in the world … a job they’ve often never really interviewed for. Who are these people? We all know about the one who shot his hunting partner in the face, but how about the tavern owner who once married one of his slaves and then sold her at auction when she tried to leave him? Or the one whose President went to his death regretting that he hadn’t had his Vice President hanged? Or the one who was too frequently inebriated to serve out the whole of his term? Over more than 200 years, the American voters have sent a platoon of rogues, cowards, drunks, featherweights, doddering geriatrics, bigots, and atrocious spellers to Washington D.C. to sit one bullet, cerebral hemorrhage, or case of pneumonia away from the highest office in the land. VEEPS tells the sordid, head-scratching, perversely-entertaining stories of these men we’ve chosen to ride shotgun in the biggest rig in democracy, without ever seriously considering the possibility that they might have to take the wheel.
With short (3-4 pp), educational, and humorous essays about every Vice-President and notable VP candidates, Veeps makes for the perfect bathroom book. A thoroughly enjoyable romp through the history of the strangely contradictory position: one heartbeat away from the most powerful job in the US and at the same moment wielding absolutely no power.
Starship: Rebel by Mike Resnick
Promo copy:
The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, dominated by the human race, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation.
Almost a year has passed since the events of Starship: Mercenary. Captain Wilson Cole now commands a fleet of almost fifty ships, and he has become the single greatest military force on the Inner Frontier.
With one exception. The Republic still comes and goes as it pleases, taking what it wants, conscripting men, and extorting taxes, even though the Frontier worlds receive nothing in exchange. And, of course, the government still wants Wilson Cole and the starship Theodore Roosevelt. He has no interest in confronting such an overwhelming force, and constantly steers clear of them.
Then an incident occurs that changes everything, and Cole declares war on the Republic. Outnumbered and always outgunned, his fleet is no match for the Republic’s millions of military vessels, even after he forges alliances with the warlords he previously hunted down.
It’s a hopeless cause…but that’s just what Wilson Cole and the Teddy R. are best at.