Hoka! Hoka! Hoka!		Rating
			F
	Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson
	Series	Related Books
	N/A	N/A

Imagine an alien race. Imagine they like humans. Imagine they like us so much they want to emulate us. Imagine that, like Galaxy Quest, they're a bit confused about what "fiction" is. Imagine these alien teddy bears trying to emulate westerns and whatever else they see and read.

Hard to believe? Unfortunately, seeing it written out doesn't help any.

I had thought that this would be a fairly humorous book, filled with absurd situations. Instead, it's just stupid. I just cannot make it work in my head.

Worse, I had thought this was a book. Instead, it is an anthology. As a book, I might have pressed on, waiting for it to end, or for the big climax where all this twisted take on human history bears fruit by saving the universe or something. But as a series of short stories, it's not worth it, because like a bad sitcom, everything returns more or less to the situation it was in at the start. The Hokas never learn, and there's only a series of minor climaxes instead of a single big huge one.

And worst of all, the stories were all written... well, long ago. There are three copyrights given in my copy (1957, 1983, and 1998) and far more than three stories, so I'm not sure exactly when. But they feel old and dated.

I had high hopes for this one. But, alas, this book failed to live up to them, or anything close to them. Luckily, I bought this in a used-book store. That's surely where it'll end up eventually.

By Title

By Author

By Rank

Back to top