Sci-Fi

William Marshall’s Sci-Fi isn’t sci-fi. It is an early eighties police procedural set in British Hong Kong. Influenced by Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, the cops from the Yellowthread Street station are a culturally mixed bag of oddballs that remind me of characters from MASH as much as they do McBain’s New Yorkers. Sci-Fi has a hilarious opening scene in which the station runs out of cells to put costumed miscreants from the All-Asia Science Fiction convention. There is a green blob with burglar tools, an enticing jar with a million dollars, and a spaceman in an asbestos suit with a flamethrower. Violence happens, and brains get teased.