Pierce Watters

If hillbilly mutant Atlanteans are your cup of tea you're going to love Henry Kuttner's Hogben family in The Hogben Chronicles. They don't refer to Atlantis much anymore because they're trying to keep a low profile in the "Kaintuck" hills. A lack of formal education doesn't seem to limit anyone except when it comes to their English language skills and consuming corn likker since they've built everything from a nuclear reactor to a cloning machine in their backyard out of junk (along with the show more usual hillbilly rusty junk). Oh, and Paw is in a gunny sack in the basement, Grandpaw lives in the attic, and the 300 pound "baby" lives in a sort of aquarium tank.

This series of five interconnected stories were written in the 1940s in pulp Thrilling Stories type magazines. They have never been collected before. I wasn't sure I'd really like these since I'm not big on overt sf humor, but these were so bizarre, almost surrealistic at times, that they kept me going and I read them all in one sitting. The first story is kind of weak but the other four are very good. There is a forward by Neil Gaiman, apparently a big Hogbens fan, and an afterword by F. Paul Wilson, also a big fan.

The stories are narrated by Saunk Hogben so the prose is Kentucky mountain hillbilly. Everything is driven by plot although we get to see the main characters eventually but most are one dimensional except Saunk himself. The Hogbens, unlike the usual Kentucky mountain folk, all have "powers" but I'm not going to spoil that here.

Anyway these are strictly for fun. There is no deep meaning here. Each story is illustrated with a frontspiece and the book is nicely bound and laid out with a nice full color dust jacket. This was a Kickstarter campaign so the press run was limited to 500 signed copies which are all spoken for.

Think of the Addams Family meets The Beverly Hillbillys meets Deliverance and you'll have a vague idea. show less

I suppose I count as opne of te 605 "Kickstarter stalwarts" who supported this edition --though less generously than some, at least generously enough to get a physical paperback edition, not an e-book. These are more humorous tall tales than straight sf, about a family of mutants living as hillbillies in Kentucky.