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BOOK REVIEW: 'SPACE BANG' by Daniel L'Orange.

A man farts into a pint glass and the ramifications are huge in this mind-bending, at times ludicrous novel. Penned by entitled visionary poet Daniel L’Orange, SPACE BANG confronts every single issue facing humanity with such devilish artistry I threw the book over a fence. Three times. The winner was not me as this necessitated leaning over said fence, which was in my garden and having a seriously dull conversation with my neighbour about the physiotherapy he’s having on his back.

SPACE BANG begins in the year 2149 where science enthusiast Derek Badger is waiting for it to be 2150 because the robot he’s built and programmed to slide a finger into his anus will be activated then. As the clock strikes midnight on New Years Eve, Badger is bent over a table, fully lubed, when the windows explode and his plan is foiled by American tech billionaire Chair Rectangle who steals the robot and escapes over the A3 in Guildford by jetpack.

Abruptly the action jumps to 1990’s France where the actor Mr T arrives at a villa to apologise to a re-animated Hannibal Smith for being such a prick when they worked on The A Team together. Hannibal throws another burger on the barbecue and says he doesn’t care because he recently re-married and his new wife has a great big plastic arse and the type of surgically implanted body that could silence a narcissist. To prove his point, Hannibal points to a 200 strong line of narcissists, standing around his swimming pool – all staring at his wife, all rendered completely unable to start talking about themselves. Mr T tells Hannibal a man with an insanely detailed knowledge of computers has just landed at Warsaw Chopin airport with malign intent. Hannibal says he’s got two tickets for The Ashes test at Headingley and just doesn’t care that much about it and anyway he’s got bigger problems – he’s freaked to the point of his hair falling out because his wife’s contemplating even more surgery and her tits don’t move and she has so much plastic in her arse he recently dislocated three fingers when she asked him to playfully slap it during sex.

From there we fist-bump to a Frat House at a futuristic Oxford University where a Conservative Government has sold everything to the Americans, including a British Monarchy now 'brought to you by Wisconsin Bacon Powder' and you have to order your own hair and book your heart surgery on Amazon. The narrative boomerangs back and forth through space and time to a small market town pub in Lincolnshire where affluent seventy-something grandmother Helen Dead-Husband remarks to her bald headed companion that whichever superficial incompetent the Conservatives have installed as Prime Minister seems ‘charming enough’ whereupon she stares out of the window as the entire pub is suddenly rocketed through the Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere, Ionosphere and Exosphere into the vast, unexplored Universe and refuses to change any of her blinkered views whatsoever. A tour de force. Andrew Tedious

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