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    Go, Mutants!: A Novel
    Go, Mutants!: A Novel
    Go, Mutants!: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    Go, Mutants!: A Novel

    Written by Larry Doyle

    Narrated by Robert Petkoff

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Larry Doyle, the author of I Love You, Beth Cooper, returns with Go, Mutants!, a hilariously outrageous novel of teenage angst and restlessness, populated with heroes and villains straight out of the classic sci-fi and teen movies of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Soon to be a major motion picture from Universal Studios, Larry Doyle’s Go, Mutants! is the funniest, most original bit of genre-bending since Pride, Prejudice and  Zombies. This story of alien high school rebels without a cause is sure to bring out the unabashed B-movie fan in everyone.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 19, 2011
    ISBN9780062067913
    Author

    Larry Doyle

    Larry Doyle goes by thelarrydoyle on Facebook, Twitter, and in real life. Too much information about him is available at larrydoyle.com.

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    Reviews for Go, Mutants!

    4/5

    26 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Go, Mutants!Author: Larry DoylePublisher: Ecco, HarperCollinsPublisherPublished In: New York City, NY, USADate: 2010Pgs: 354REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERSSummary:What if all those 50s sci fi movies were Earth’s actual history of the era? What would the world look like by 1959 or the early 60s? Earth has survived repeated alien invasions, attacks by hordes of mutants, and the ravages of ancient beasts coming back to life. Now we’re in the blissful future...for most. J!m, the son of the alien who nearly destroyed the planet, is a brooding, megacephalic rebel with a big forehead and exceptionally oily skin. Along with Johnny, a radioactive biker ape, and Jelly, a gelatinous mass passing as a fat kid, J!m navigates a particularly unpleasant adolescence in which he really is as alienated as he feels, the world might actually be out to get him, and true love is complicated by misunderstanding and incompatible parts. As harmless school antics escalate into explosive events with tragic consequences, J!m makes a discovery that will alter the course of civilization, though it may help his dating life. Replete with all the rock ‘n’ roll, hot rod racing, and heavy petting of classic teen cinema.Genre:AdventureApocalypseEnd of the WorldFictionPulpQuirkScience fictionSpace operaSuperheroesZombiesWhy this book:The big headed teen on the cover looking very Mindflayer-ish in a 50s high school, angsty, James Dean sorta way.______________________________________________________________________________Favorite Character:J!m the hypercephalic, metazoid alien.Johnny the radioactive biker ape.Least Favorite Character: Russ the human bully and his grandpa, the General.The Feel:Amongst the aliens and mutants and teenagers, there’s some echoes of a horrible high school experience playing out here. Well done.Favorite Scene:The scene where Jelly the protoplasmic mutant gets a swirly and is sucked down the High School bathroom toilet and loses his way coming back out ending up in the Principal Brook’s bathroom eliciting a scream though whether delight or fright is never stated. This is very Porky’s like.When J!m gets excited and isn’t paying attention to the way he is walking and let’s slip his human gait and starts walking up on his phalanges and looking like a speedwalking T-Rex.When Tubesteak is in the backseat at the Drive-In with his date and she asks him why he’s called Tubesteak as she snuggles up to him and he says, “Because I love me some tubesteak.” No explanation. She’s disappointed. And the reader is left to wonder if Tubesteak just came out of the closet, is bi, or if tubesteak in this mutant world is some odd form of mutant worm or cattle snake. ...I doubt the last one.Pacing:The pacing was good. But after wandering through the plot, the climax seemed rushed.Hmm Moments:Not so much a hmm moment as a yuck moment, J!m has a brainstorm with lightning and cracking thunder causing him to momentarily lose consciousness. And as he regains himself, Dr. Rand puts his finger on the area where the lightning was visible on J!m’s megacephalic brain. Then, as J!m walks away the Doc sniffs the jellylike stuff from the surface of J!m’s brain...and, then, sucks it off his finger. Yuck!!!. Doc Rand hanging out at the strip club where J!m’s mother works while he is supposed to be out trying to find a “fresh” body for his wife’s head. Very Reanimator.The government didn’t control the Plex. “They had learned, as Stalin had not, that the truth could not be destroyed, but could be lost among lies.” Great line and social commentary on modern America.Why isn’t there a screenplay?Too much to the story. Couldn’t do it justice in a 3 hour movie. Too many references to other copyrighted materials. Would never fly on the big screen.______________________________________________________________________________Last Page Sound:That was weird.Author Assessment:This is very Grant Morrison-y. Depending on the payoff of this story, I will give more stuff by this author a look.Knee Jerk Reaction:really good bookDisposition of Book:Half Price BooksWould recommend to:genre fans____________________________________________________________________________Errata: The Thing being mentioned as being at the Pole and in opposition with the Army is a cool shout out to a great classic movie. In the same paragraph, the Army is mentioned as being active in the Ozarks and in Brazil. I wonder what is going on in those two places.
    • 5/5
      Update: I've finished reading and this was an extremely witty, highly entertaining book. The references to B-rated horror movies and 50s & 60s pop culture are endless, some of which I expected and some I didn't. J!m is the epitome of the teenaged outsider...an alien. Most of his friends are atomic mutants with parents out of black and white monster flicks.
      It's hard to believe no one has already written this book, but I doubt anyone could have done it better than Doyle. My only complaint? I need more! Sequel, anyone?

      I've won a copy of Go, Mutants! on First Reads and am very excited about reading it.
    • 4/5
      "Grease" collides with "Mars Attacks", and a bit of "Rebel Without a Cause" creeps in as well.Teenage alienation and, well, aliens. Plus a lot of mutants. Coming of age, genetic inheritance, and the cute girl he's afraid to ask out; motorcycles, drive-ins, and succubi cocktail waitresses.The characters are surprisingly sympathetic - the author, while being gleefully silly, manages to make the reader care about the protagonist.
    • 5/5
      Earth has survived numerous invasions by aliens and attacks by ancient monsters brought back to life. Some of these aliens are in high school.J!m Anderson is your typical sullen, brooding teenager at Manhattan High School. Well, maybe he's not so typical, because he has a large, megacephalic head, and oily, blue skin which he occasionally sheds like a snake. Along with Johnny, a motorcycle-riding radioactive ape, and Larry, a gelatinous mass playing the role of the "fat kid" (Son of the Blob), J!m really does have a hard time making his way through the world of high school. Maybe people really are out to get him; after all, his father is the one who led the alien invasion of Earth.The Harvest Dance is coming, and J!m is supposed to ask Marie Rand if she would like to go with him. Her father is the school's biology teacher, and one of those people who likes to tinker in his garage. Mrs. Rand is a disembodied head who is constantly nagging Mr. Rand to find a body to which to attach her head. The body she was using is no longer viable, but it's kept in a freezer for posterity. Despite numerous opportunities, J!m never gets around to asking Marie to the dance, so she goes with Russ, J!m's bitter enemy.J!m has a permanent exemption from showering after gym class, for anatomical reasons that are forcefully revealed by the local bullies, led by Russ, at the local drive-in. Later, during another Russ-led attempt to get rid of J!m, once and for all, J!m catches on fire, is severely burned, and dies. But not really, because he recovers in a couple of days, and is now a solar-powered being with skin as hard as diamonds (puberty rears its ugly head).Larry is thrown into an animal cage during a field trip. Approximately a cupful of his mass is retrieved. Mr. Rand is able to do something about that, with help from some jumper cables and a car battery. Later comes the climactic scene, where Russ forces Marie into his atomic-powered car, with J!m in hot pursuit. Just before the car goes over a cliff, Marie is thrown from the car, and severely injured. Does Marie survive? Does J!m learn the truth about his father? Can Larry be resurrected?This is an absolute gem of a book. As a former writer for "The Simpsons," Doyle certainly knows how to do satire. It's got everything a 1950s teen story needs: a sullen, rebellious main character, bullies, a chase scene and a drive-in. This is very highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      So you think it’s tough being a teenager these days? Alienation, oily skin, watching your childhood sweetheart go out with your lifelong enemy; it’s all part of the package. Try putting yourself in the shoes of J!m (no, not a typo), the hero of Larry Doyle’s hilarious send-up of the B-movies and pop culture of the fifties and sixties, “Go Mutants!” (HarperCollins, 2010). J!m is the son of an alien who appeared on earth during Bobby Thomson’s 1951 “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” game-ending home-run to win the National League pennant game for the New York Giants against the Brooklyn Dodgers. J!m’s father came to tell the world that he could offer them scientific and technological advances, if only they agreed to destroy their atomic weapons. This being the Cold War era, the proposal went over like a plutonium balloon. Nuclear war left in its wake a world populated by humans, B-movie monsters, and aliens. J!m’s father soon “disappeared,” but not before mating with a lovely cat-woman and creating J!m, a blue-skinned son whose “forehead was quite high, approximately ten inches, and bulging with brains, but even this evoked the slick upswept hairstyle favored by singers and delinquents, without the hair.” J!m, a James Dean-style rebel, is in love with his childhood sweetheart, Marie, the human daughter of a mad scientist, Dr. Rand, and his wife, a severed head who constantly nags her husband for that new body he’s been promising her for years. Along with Johnny, a half-human radioactive biker ape with strong connections to King Kong, and Larry “Jelly” Sweeny, a gelatinous blob posing as a fat kid, J!m navigates the politics of high school with humans, mutants, and aliens. The book abounds with pop-culture references in this alternate universe. Democratic presidential nominee Jack Kennedy denies that he is having an affair with his running mate, Marilyn Monroe. Elvis performs with his conjoined twin Jesse (a reference to Elvis’s real twin brother who died at birth). Even the construction of the novel is fun. Each chapter title appears in the style of old B-movie taglines: “Your flesh will crawl.” “A SAVAGE LUST…to Kill!” There’s even an intermission. Larry Doyle, the author of “I Love Your, Beth Cooper” (which was made into a movie starring Hayden Panettiere and Paul Rust) and former writer for The Simpsons, has written a hilarious sci-fi romp that’s just lots of fun to read. This review was published in the News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, IL) September 5, 2010.
    • 4/5
      Remember all those Science-fiction B-movies of the 1950's or so, where atomic radiation resulted in giant grasshoppers, or big-brained humans, or giant blobs, or we were always being invaded by evil aliens from Mars, who needed women, or Alpha Centauri? Now imagine a book about a mutant high-school boy with oily blue skin and a convoluted brain case that kind of looks like hair? And he's not the only mutant around, but he is the son of the one blamed for the first alien betrayal and invasion of Earth. Here, mutants are treated probably about the same as blacks, geeks and weak kids with glasses were treated. J!m is smart and sardonic, feels isolated and alienated (literally), with a couple of close friends. His high school career is one torturous day after another of abuse and torment, until the day comes when his own submerged angst and the simmering suspicions of the government against the mutants and aliens among us come to a collision. The writing is sharp, funny, sarcastic, with a strong feel for the ambience of those long-ago movies. It takes a while to get a feel for the world Doyle has created (not exactly our world; a lot of history has changed). But after a while it all sinks in and feels right, and the book really gets moving. Not as crisp and successful as "I Love You, Beth Cooper!" But a fun read nevertheless.
    • 4/5
      I received Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle as an advanced readers’ copy.Having never read anything by Larry Doyle before, but having heard his name quite often, I was so happy to get Go, Mutants! in the mail. On top of that, it has the theme of B-movies - sci-fi/horror specifically - of which I spent a scary amount of time watching. Yes, I am one of those people who goes to Pathmark and browses through the $1 movie section. Yes, you can find real winners there!A brief summary of the novel: J!m is the son of the alien who made First Contact during the middle of the ‘51 World Series. He goes to Manhattan High School, which is a not-so-integrated mix of mutants and humans. You’ll meet Russ and Rusty Ford; Johnny, the son of King Kong; Jelly Sweeney, gelatinous mass in the shape of the stereotypical fat kid; and Marie Rand, daughter of a mad scientist and the girl who wants to be Class President to make the not-so-integration much more integrated.I found, in my search of the author, that he wrote a lot of TV/Movie scripts including The Simpsons. That humor I can see in every page of this book. I also learned the novel will be filmed, and in my mind’s eye, it would be better animated. There were cameos of characters that came in and out of the story that you could just see as the brief glimpses on a TV show that serves up laughter.My initial reaction was that this is a book perfect for teenaged boys. Especially those in that awkward age of high school. You know what I’m talking about; what every teenager complains their way through (and as someone who is in her early twenties, I can related). It’s a sexed up book, but as we’re in J!m’s POV, what stereotypical teenaged boy isn’t sexed up? It comes with the hormones.This, though, makes the pacing suffer. The beginning of the book was slow because we have to learn about J!m (better known as just Jim because that ! is subsonic) and his past and his feelings. World building a-plenty here, and necessarily as this is an alternate 1962. You will see people you’ve learned about in school, just a bit twisted. The beginning is akin to a mutated version of The Catcher in the Rye but since we’re not in J!m’s first-person POV, we’re distanced a bit. We go to school dances, witness the bullying, and even see how his mother simultaneously gets on his nerves and comforts him. The end of the book, however, speeds through in a high action paced B-movie-like plot. I couldn’t put it down, even in the slow part, but especially after the Intermission. The way things happen is a domino effect into the ending that satisfies everything I wanted to happen to everyone by the end of the novel. The ending is one of those things that make you pause and go, “Wait? Huh?” which is never a bad thing. One thing I liked especially was the use of songs in the novel. You’ll have fun recognizing the original tunes and seeing just where they are now that aliens and mutants have invaded the world. I also enjoyed the vocabulary in the novel. It’s a breath of fresh air to see words fitting of the SATs used in a novel. Too many novels I’ve read use more common words and I think it’s just more educational to read something which makes you crack the spine on the dictionary. Especially if I don’t have to read much fiction from the 18th century to do so. There is one thing I’m a bit torn about. Some teenage matters that could be considered series are brought up, but brushed over with humor or associated with people a teenager would never want to be like in a million years. On one hand, I think addressing these issues with humor could be a good way of saying, “See? These aren’t even conceivable except to laugh at so don’t do it.” On the other hand, some of these things can be serious problems and may end up hurting someone. As this is a humor book, I didn’t let it detract too much from my enjoyment. So after this incredibly long review, I will say that I enjoyed the book. While sometimes I was a bit confused - mainly when it was a lot of world building or in a few spots, when the plot made me blink - I kept reading until the end and was honestly interested in what happened to J!m and his friends. I give this book a 3.5/5.