Moon People, Part I: An Action Pact Battle in Obit around Earth (Also, There's a Star Wars)

Hey, this isn't what you normally blog about!

Yep, you're right!  This post was originally going to be about either Pestilence (which I've, uh, been teasing for about a year now but I keep getting distracted) or The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (which is very good), but sometimes you stumble across something so unbelievably wonderful that you have to share it with as many people as possible.

Holy shit, this book makes me so immeasurably happy.  I'm so excited to talk about it.

Enter Moon People.

When my sister visited a little over a month ago, we ended up pulling up this list of the worst books ever written.  Now, I'm no stranger to reading bad books for fun.  Hell, that's what the primary purpose of this blog is.  I've read The Eye of Argon.  I've read Atlanta Nights.  If I haven't personally read it, I've usually at least heard of it.  But I'd never heard of Moon People.  I'd never seen it mentioned online anywhere, and a quick Google search turns up a single HuffPost article and the Amazon listings for the series.

And, well, as soon as my sister and I read that HuffPost article, we knew we had something special on our hands.  So I instantly bought an ebook copy of Moon People 1: The Age of Aquarius, and we proceeded to spend the next several hours doing a dramatic reading and laughing ourselves silly.

The sheer magnitude of the awfulness of Moon People boggles the mind.  I'm honestly not sure how it'll even translate into this review because, and this is not an exaggeration, every single sentence of this book is hysterically funny because it is wrong in such a way that I didn't even know was possible.  The author, Dale M. Courtney, remains a complete mystery (believe me, I've searched around), so all we have to work on to figure out how this man's brain works are his books themselves.

 It's very strange because when reading it, you can see the shape of the story Courtney was trying to tell.  But the story is obstructed almost entirely by ineptitude on an unprecedented magnitude.  I've never seen a novel version of Plato's allegory of the cave before.

Help, Dale M. Courtney locked me in this cave!

I'm a different person after having read this book.  Let's begin.

The Cover: Photoshop is Hard

So, here's the cover of Moon People 1: The Age of Aquarius.  It doesn't say "Moon People 1" on the cover, but that's how the author refers to it at all times, so that's what I'm going to call it.

First, the title.  This book is supposed to be hard sci-fi (I think--it's a bit hard to tell).  But the title references an astrological event, known also as the Age of Aquarius.  It's kind of a hippy thing entirely related to astrological signs.  Although it can represent a period of change (as in, the dawning of the new age) and could therefore work as a title for a sci-fi story in a metaphorical sense, we'll see that the author doesn't seem to know that there's a difference between astronomy and astrology.  Which is kind of a huge problem if you're writing a hard science fiction story.

Next: the beautiful, beautiful cover artwork.  We see an image of the sun rising over the surface of the Earth, so we can assume that the story takes place in space, likely orbiting around the planet.  Crudely photoshopped in above this image are random spaceships, with no care given to composition or scale.  Also, I'm reasonably certain that some, if not all of those are, um.  Not used legally.

This picture:

Whee!

Is just cropped from this picture from the "Astronaut" Wikipedia page:

Bruce McCandless outside of the Challenger.

Granted, this photograph is public domain, so that one's legal.  But, uh.

That's the fucking Death Star.  You can see the trench.

Something tells me Courtney didn't get a license from Lucasfilm to use that on the cover of his book.

I haven't been able to find what the cylindrical ship is, but given the fact that the DEATH STAR is on the cover of this book, I'll just say that I have some doubts that it's legally allowed to be on there.

Below this textbook example of copyright infringement, we have our author's name: Dale M. Courtney.  This man is a complete mystery, and his brain must be an interesting place.

Below that, the cover proclaims proudly, "Amazon Rated Moon People with 5 Stars" in smaller type.  This is literally the first time I've seen a five-star Amazon rating baked into the front cover of a book, simply because Amazon ratings are dynamic and can change at any time.  Especially since its current rating as of March 5, 2020 is a solid four stars.

This is normally where quotes from positive reviews or other authors would be put, but no one has read Moon People.  The only people who have read Moon People are people like me who like to read bad books for fun.  And a quick peek at the Amazon reviews show that all of the good reviews are unashamedly ironic, a few of which mimic Courtney's, um, unique writing style.

Interestingly, there's a cover variant!  The ebook version is the one I described above, but the paperback version has a slightly different cover.  It has exactly the same problems:

Other than lacking the Amazon rating, there's no Death Star.  But, uh.

It's the ship from 2001: A Space Odyssey

So, there's still some copyright issues there.

The Title Page: False Information

Holy shit, this is great.

The title page itself does some weird things:

Courtney includes a snapshot of the cover as what I can only describe as a profile picture, which is not something that belongs in a title page.

The book also claims that it is "Best Sci-Fi in 2009," which is demonstrably false.  I mean, it might be the best sci-fi [something] in 2009 to someone, because there is no attribution to who picked Moon People as the best sci-fi [something] in 2009.  It doesn't quite rise to Robert Stanek levels of falsely claiming bestseller status, but it's still very weird.

The book again says that "Amazon gave Moon People 5 Stars" [sic], which is interesting again because Amazon didn't rate the book.  People who bought the book rated the book on Amazon.  Amazon has no opinion of the quality of the book.  And, like I said before, this isn't even true anymore.

Also, it says "Copyright O 2009" which makes me think Courtney couldn't figure out how to make the © symbol.

Now, I've been blaming Courtney himself for all of this.  Why not the publisher?  Well, this book was self-published through a vanity press.  So, uh, everything in it is the brainchild of Courtney.

The Introduction: A Glimpse into Madness

The following is, word-for-word, the introduction of this novel.  I will not be marking typos with [sic] because if I did, it would be every other word.  This is what convinced me to buy the whole book because the introduction is available as a preview.  I've also broken it up a bit because it's all in one massive paragraph, which is hard to read.

MoonPeople

Yes, the first word of the book has a mistake--there's a space missing in the title of the book.

This story focuses on one man by the name of David Braymer and his adventures as 1st Science Officer on the Lunar Base 1 mobile base station.  One of three base stations in obit around Earth.

Hee hee.  "Obit."

This book is based on the turning point for Earth into a new era of space travel and the beginning of the "Age of Aquarius".

This doesn't translate because of the font I'm using, but the second quotation mark around "Age of Aquarius" is backwards.

David also has a romance with one of the locals in New Smyrna Beach, Fla.  Her name is Cheral Baskel a local restaurant owner.  Now during David's experiences he encounters some alien life forms, some friendly, some not so friendly throughout the universe.

The entirety of the plot takes place in obit around Earth.

David also experiences Earths first space battle and he ends up saving Earth and our new friends.

Jeez, spoilers.

We start our story in the year 2048 when Earth has an aggressive space program.  They have just completed two large mobile base stations called Lunar Base 1, 2, and are almost finished with the third base station called Lunar Base 3.  They are an eighth of a mile long and about a sixteenth of a mile in diameter.  They also have one very big surprise.

Which Courtney proceeds to spoil in the introduction to the story.

All three ships split into three independent working sections.  In addition, all three sections have lasers and rockets and their own engine.  They also have shields that are a liquid that turns into a solid mass as hard as 4 inches of steel, when exposed to the cold of space.  They have a couple of lounges where everyone goes for fun.

HAHAHAHA "THEY HAVE A COUPLE OF LOUNGES WHERE EVERYONE GOES FOR FUN"

Now on their missions they encounter some new friends called the Powleens.  They are very friendly and eventually they join Earth and save Earth together.  The Powleens are very tall, about seven feet to eight feet on average their legs and arms and torso are elongated also their neck.

I just

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.  I'm so happy right now.

However, they are humanoid and angels from heaven to Earth.  When the Powleens arch enemy the Arcons find them, it is not to good for Earth because Earth is caught in the middle.  Well one thing leads to another and before you know it, it is a all out space battle for our existence.  I hope you will enjoy my book Moon People because its action pact from the beginning to the end.  Also, keep an eye out for its sequel called Moon People 2, "Mars Reborn".

Sincerely

Dale M. Courtney

HOO BOY

It's a bold move to spoil the entirety of your novel in the introduction.  Let's see if it pays off.

Well, it clearly did.  After reading this, I had to purchase the full book.  And then I bought the sequels.  I'm part of the problem.

Is it sad to say that this introduction is written more coherently than the rest of the book?

Then we have the "Table of Content."  Yes, one content, singular.  I love this book.

Normally, in an ebook, chapters contain internal links to the page number where that chapter starts.  Some of these links are either missing or broken, so good luck if you want to jump to "The Beginning of the End" or "Happy Holloween [sic]."

So, yeah.  The introduction gives us an idea of what to expect, not only because it tells us the entire plot, but because it's almost unreadable.  I honestly think I wrote with better grammar when I was in elementary school, and I certainly spelled better.  Also, Courtney doesn't seem to know how paragraphs work, since the entire thing is one single paragraph.  Reading the introduction feels like a fever dream.

Next time, in Part II, we'll be introduced to our protagonist David Braymer and if you thought the dialogue in Tiger's Curse was bad, I have some bad news for you.