Time Salvager – needs to be salvaged

4 of 5 Sucky-Ass-Future Stars – Time Salvager by Wesley Chu.

This book is absolutely fascinating. The world and technology that the author created for this book is fucking mind-boggling. Such a staggering imagination. And yet, it’s really just a short story dragged out for four-hundred goddamn pages. I would have much rather read a condensed version of this story. Maybe a hundred or so pages. It would have been much better that way.

But no. We can’t have that, now can we? It’s got to be a full length book, or nothing at all, right? Fucking publishers. At least i have to assume it’s the publisher’s fault. I have to think that Mr. Chu wrote this amazing novella, and the publishers said, “Oh, hell no. You gotta fatten this fucker up, Chu. We aren’t gonna publish some bullshit novella. The days of Phillip K. Dick are over, mister. Get with the program.”

So Mr. Chu went ahead and skull-fucked his perfectly fine story. Fattened it up to satisfy the asshole publishers. Or something like that. I mean, it’s still a great story, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I read the whole thing. But really, the story seemed to be over after about four chapters. Everything was pretty much done. All that was left was for the bad guys to find the good guy, and put a fucking bullet in his head.

But, even that didn’t happen, dammit. No, we’ve got to have the fucking Hollywood ending, so they can make this fucking thing into a goddamn movie. What the fuck, Chu? Write what you want, man. If Hollywood wants to skull-fuck the story, fine. But don’t skull-fuck it yourself for Christ sake. Damn.

This story is about time travel. It’s about James, a time traveling salvager. He jumps back in time to find artifacts that are worth a shit ton of cash to his current time. Of course this doesn’t make any fucking sense, because come on, man. I mean, James lives thousands of years in the future. Why the fuck is he going back thousands of years to get old-ass technology? What the bloody fuck? Don’t you think that the tech would be better in the future? Apparently not. Because this salvage operation is huge business in this particular future. Why? Nobody knows. It’s all bullshit, really.

And soon, something goes awry in one of his salvage missions. He gets the tech that he came for, and for some reason he brings along some hot scientist chick. He saves her from a huge explosion, and she ends up tagging along with James back to the future. And this is a big deal. Because that is like Time Law #1, man. You don’t bring hot bitches back to the future. That’s just not cool, man.

Why? Well, it’s because some other scientist bitch that invented time travel came up with some bullshit laws while she was drunk one night. Seriously. She was fucking drunk, and just pulled some Time Laws out of her fucking ass. Like nobody would actually take these laws seriously, right? No way. So there’s all these Time Laws that these future time travelers have to obsessively follow, for no reason whatsoever. It’s so fucking stupid.

But that’s beside the point. The point is that James is now in deep fucking shit. He can’t go back to his buddies back at Time Base Central, or whatever. Because now he’s a goddamn fugitive. He brought back an anomaly. A very hot, naughty anomaly. And now the whole future world is out to get him and his hot scientist chick.

And then James gets caught, and the anomaly gets sent back to her real-time, right? That’s what should happen, right? The end? Nope. Then there’s the whole plot thing. You see, the would in their time is falling apart. Like seriously falling apart. The ocean is just a black sludge pit. The ozone… Don’t even get me started on the goddamn ozone. It’s just fucked, okay? And this hot scientist chick has the answers to solve this global meltdown. Apparently.

What? Seriously? Some fucking scientist bitch from a thousand years ago knows how to fix the future Earth? Nobody in a thousand years has come close to solving this problem, and all the sudden some bitch from a thousand years ago knows all the answers? Fucking seriously? Come on, man. That makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

So yeah, James and the scientist bitch set up shop with some indian folk. Seriously, they’re like Native Americans, or something. They talk funny. But apparently they have the best place to hide for fugitives, because they are like totally low tech, or something. Okay, cool. So James and his girly friend set up shop there, and try to save the planet. And james does some time jumping to get supplies for the village, and science supplies for the girly. And all is happy happy joy joy horseshit. Just waiting for the bad guys to swoop in at any second and fuck up all this happy shit. Please, for the love of god, bad guys, please swoop in and fuck this shit up. Because seriously, I can’t take this shit anymore.

Then, for no apparent reason, James goes and kidnaps the scientist bitch who invented time travel. You know, because he can, or something. And that bitch goes on to tell James just how drunk and stoned out of her mind she was when she came up with the so-called Time Laws. And James is like, “What…?” And the bitch is all like, “Totally, man.”

After about two hundred or so bullshit pages of filler, the bad guys finally do catch a goddamn clue, and come raid the Native American village, where James and his two scientist bitches are hiding. And I just have to wonder, just how the fuck does it take these guys so long to find someone? I mean, it’s thousands of years in the future, man. What, they don’t have Google? They’ve got to have something nine billion times better than Google, for fuck’s sake. I mean, if the author didn’t have to come up with so much goddamn filler, to satisfy his fucking publishers, I guarantee you the bad guys would catch up with James in like twenty-four hours, max.

A huge battle ensues, of course. But all the key people live for some bullshit Hollywood reason. I mean, seriously, everyone lives happily ever after. It’s such total bullshit, it makes me sick. That bitch who actually invented time travel comes out from behind a curtain at the end of the battle and says, “Oh, hey guys. Yes, it’s me. I know, I know, you think I’m some kind of god or something because I fucking invented time travel. But come on, man. Chill. Have a beer, or something. Let’s stop fighting and just have a big orgy.”

Well, that’s more or less how it went. You know, I really make this book sound pretty stupid. And I guess a lot of it is pretty stupid. But it was still an awesome book. I loved it, believe it or not. It could have been better. It should have been better. But even as it is, it’s still a damn fine book. I’d highly recommend it.