THE HERACIAN AFFAIR by Liv Olteano

Reviewed by Rhonda C

ISBN-13: 978-1-62380-435-0
Pages: 131
Cover Artist: Brooke Albrecht

Here is a real 1950s/60s high-camp SciFi romp -- a good-natured spoof of the genre that also has some solid world-building on the side, and characters that are surprisingly “deep” when you consider this is a story with a lot of the tongue-in-cheek features of good ol’ Buck Rogers! 

I’ve read more Science Fiction than you can shake a stick at, so am always keen to look at new titles in the domain of m/m, stories that look like they might offer the real McCoy with a thread of same-sex romance. The Heracian Affair is built on solid, time-honored Sci-Fi foundations; it’s the way the tale is handled that rockets it squarely into the realm of a full-throttle, campy romp.

Here’s the blub, right from Dreamspinner Press:

Even years after Rizzo Berg’s lover and Dom died in combat, the memories torment him. Following a particularly disappointing date, Rizzo goes to sleep in his apartment only to wake up on a spaceship with tall, gorgeous, alien Captain Conrad D’Ollet of Heracia, a man so deliciously dominant Rizzo’s knees turn to jelly.

Apparently the Heracians need help, and Rizzo is a humanitarian through and through. Spending more time around Conrad is totally not one of the reasons he wants to lend a hand.

Soon Rizzo finds himself completely conquered and blissfully owned. But neither he nor Conrad is willing to risk his heart, let go of the past, and dare to believe in a future that won’t end in catastrophe.

It’s a good premise, and author Liv Olteano could have gone either way -- fully develop it into a real, genuine SciFi novel, or camp it up for fun. She chose to camp it up -- and why not? It is a lot of fun watching smart-mouthed Rizzo sass the aliens who’ve beamed him up out of his dull human existence into a scenario where two worlds are at war. (Yes, I hear you saying, “all the old cliches!” But wait, bear with the book awhile … it’s actually pretty clever here and there, as well as been a high-camp hoot most of the time.)

The Heracians are a race that have modified themselves from pure biological entity to part-AI. They now have a big cybernetic component … and it’s gradually killing them, because they’re losing the ability to breed viable kids. Neat premise, as I said!

Their foes in the war are the all-robot race, the Zax (shades of Facelift!). The robots want rid of the emotional “carbon units” … probably because we often don’t make a lot of sense (which is all too true) so the war is on. As the story takes off, there’s a flimsy peace, with a treaty the robots are always violating, and meanwhile, Heracia is sending ships to earth, looking for prime candidates of genetic superiority to abduct and tap for their ability to breed viable kids.

This is where the camp side of The Heracian Affair gets into overdrive. You need to totally forget the facts … green-blooded semi-cybernetic aliens would have DNA so vastly different from us pink moneys, no way in Hades could we ever interbreed. And any civilization that can fly faster than light would have developed bio-technology more than equal to the task of rewriting their own genes, and producing healthy kids, right? Right -- but if you don’t forget all that, you’ll miss the fun.

So Rizzo is beamed up to make a contribution to the survival of this drop-dead gorgeous alien race, and his smart mouth and cockiness get him into escalating amounts of trouble. He just doesn’t know when to shut up, play it smart, much less be polite to aliens who could flush him out of the nearest airlock at whim! Yep -- go, Flash, go!

At the same time, the author invests a good bit of time in backstorying the characters, giving them real depth and a reason for being what they are, and how they are. You don’t expect this in a high-camp romp, and it works well to pull you in, make you really interested in Rizzo and Conrad, see where they’re going.

I have a few reservations about the story -- one is personal, the others are objective. The sex goes way beyond rough, right to violent … the first time between Rizzo and Conrad would have been agony; the second time, just hours later, would have been beyond excruciating … but Rizzo, during the story, is revealed to be a masochist as well as a smart-mouthed sub, and pain is what he wants … and Conrad doesn’t hesitate to dish it out. I’m not being judgmental about someone’s preference for painful sex, am just saying it’s a turn-off for me -- specially the third time, where Rizzo went into it with busted ribs (has anyone out there ever HAD busted ribs?? Eeeeeeek!). So I spent a lot of time going “turn page, turn page,” to get off the sex and back to the story…

And, story-wise, here’s an odd thing. After very, very violent sex was described in huge amounts of detail, just when the camp-style drama kicked into top gear, the author decided to stop, skip two lines, and not write what -- at least to me -- should have been the important part, where Rizzo and Conrad come face to face with the enemy in a captor/captive, life-’n-death situation. Two blank lines; we come back, and they’re all beat up, broken bones, the works. It’s a “tell, don’t show” incident that didn’t work for me, especially after Rizzo’s been pounded to pieces, big time, in the bedroom. Twice.

I really wished the Zax were properly described. They only description is “humanoid looking robots,” and that could mean anything from lime green Jawas to Jake Sully's 10-foot avatar. They're both "humanoid." So I substituted the real genuine 1980 model Cylons, and made them “chirp” like R2D2 to get in line with the story here. Is this vision anywhere near right? A bit more writing here would have helped, but Rizzo was too busy being sassy to be objective!

If the story hadn’t been high-camp hijinx, I’d have said Rizzo adapted to being in the alien environment way too easily and too fast … he goes from thinking it’s a dream to knowing it’s a real alien abduction, to accepting everything and smart-mouthing everybody in sight without a hiccup. (Go, Flash, go!) The spoofy nature of the book makes this okay, and a lot of the foul-mouthed sass is actually very funny.

The best parts, for me, are where where Liv Olteano stopped being funny and actually built a terrific world, Heracia. She hints at the tech, history and biology of a fantastic alien race. Part of me wishes she’d written the book “straight,” meaning not-camp. But I also see the big fun of doing it Buck Rogers fashion -- like a romp right out of the 1950s, with a whole lot of sex added in.

Readers who enjoy bdsm will be giving this four stars (too much plot for them to give it five!), and readers who were in it specifically for the SciFi will be giving it three, if they found the sex off-putting and don’t like camp -- or four, if they do like camp! Recommended for either group … just keep your finger poised over the “turn page” key to get back to what you want.