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The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

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Overview

Hamza and Yehat are The Coyote Kings-best friends, one a disgruntled dishwasher and the other a video store clerk, but each brilliant in his own right. Yehat builds prototypes of space-age inventions in his spare time, while Hamza, a former English honors student who was kicked out of the university, writes lush, lyrical poems when he's not blocked-which, these days, is nearly always.When the gorgeous, mysterious Sherem shows up in E-Town decked out in desert finery, Hamza's creative spark is ignited. Who is this sophisticated woman that speaks arcane African tongues, quotes from obscure comics and Star Wars movies, yet seems somehow too ethereal for the world Hamza inhabits And what is the lost artifact that she and a cast of coiffed collectors and criminal cultists so desperately seek As Hamza falls blindly in love with Sherem, little does he know that he and Yehat play the biggest part of all in the recovery of the ancient relic-and in the future of all living beings. . . .

Editorial Reviews

Black Canadian media personality Faust blends pop culture, Egyptology, SF and gaming in his clever and often amusing gonzo debut. Hamza and Yehat, slackers, roommates and soul brothers (aka the Coyote Kings), work respectively as a dishwasher and a video-store clerk, but Hamza also writes poetry and Ye invents things. When Hamza meets the beautiful, mysterious Sherem, even love can't blind him to her oddness. She, along with Hamza and Ye's old pals Kev and Heinz, is searching for a jar with inexplicable properties. The Coyote Kings find themselves on the side of the ancient House of the Jackal, charged with keeping the artifact safe, or at least out of the hands of Kev and Heinz. Hamza has a skill the bad guys want to literally eat his brain to get, and only he may have what it takes to find the artifact. The dense writing, the ponderings on the nature of reality and a complex plot that all comes together at the end (if thanks to long inserts that finally provide background and context) will remind some readers of Neal Stephenson. If Faust isn't yet Stephenson's equal as a stylist, he nonetheless represents a sharp-edged new voice in the genre. Agent, Marie Brown. (Aug. 3) Forecast: Blurbs from Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due, Sheree R. Thomas and Steven Barnes will alert African-American fans of SF. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Minister Faust

Joe Eszterhas was born in Hungary, spent his first six years in Austrian refugee camps, and came to the United States in 1950. He lives in Point Dume, California, with his wife Naomi and their three children. He has two grown children from his first marriage.He has been awarded the Emanuel Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award for work dedicated to the memory of the holocaust in Hungary. He has also won awards for attending every one of his son's Little League games and for writing Showgirls (the Hollywood Women's Press Association's Sour Apple Award).

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Additional Info

Imprint

Ballantine Books

Filesize

2.56 MB

Number of Pages

544

eBook ISBN

9780345478627

Awards

  • Philip K. Dick Award

Excerpt from: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust

Chapter 1

I Wash Dishes for Scumbags

You will never find a more wretched

hive of scum and villainy.

-B. Kenobi, failed tour guide

Cue theme music: "Fe Fe Naa Efe" by Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Badass Nigerian horns and Afrobeat drumming funk-James Brown's Jurassic DNA blasted balls first into the future. That's my song, damnit, and I pity the fool who forgets it.

It's Wednesday night again, which it always is after Wednesday afternoon, which it always is after Wednesday morning.

Wenzzday.

This is what my life has become as I stand in front of this stinking sink in the colostomy zone of the Brightest-Lil-Preppy-Joint-in-Town?, called ShabbadabbaDoo's. Can you believe that name? Temple of freaking jerks. Here's a haiku for you:

ShabbadabbaDoo's:

Frolicking fashion fascists

Wealthy swines dining

Yes, while mentally composing happy poems just to keep my soul from falling into the deep fryer, I get both to scrape AND wash the crud off of the shingles they slide in front of a bunch of rich kids' maws night after succulent night in this Tex-Mex-Cali-cocktail cesspit, before, during, and after they drain pitcher after pitcher of Can't Believe It's Not Urine!

Why pick on Wednesday? Wednesday is the day that says it all. See, in Norse mythology that'd've been Woden's Day, or Odin's Day. Odin was the supreme god, kind of like Zeus but with one eye and icicles hanging off his ass (the eye wasn't hanging off his ass-I mean he had only one eye, which you knew what I meant anyway).

And what day gets named after him? The middle of the freaking week. As in, week's not young enough for freshness and vitality, and week's not old enough for the hopeful release of the weekend.

I work Mondays to Fridays here at Castle Scumulus, way down in the kitchen, the lower intestine, if you will, scraping and swearing and stacking and dreaming of leaving for Star Fleet Academy, and the day that gets me worst is always Wednesday.