Review: Out of the Soylent Planet by Robert Kroese
The Galaxy needed a hero. It got Rex Nihilo.
Rex Nihilo, scoundrel and grifter extraordinaire along with his robot Sasha are nearly shot, crushed, and ground into fertilizer as they try to earn a dishonest living in a hostile galaxy.
The story
While it might be a Rex Nihilo adventure the story is actually told from Sasha’s point of view. We meet the nearly sentient robot languishing in a lot being sold along with a bunch of other scrap on a backwater planet. She’s laying there, lamenting her fall from grace as a promising actress when she meets Rex, the self-described greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy. Rex is trying to get to a spaceport to sell a bunch of explosives he just stole when the Malarchy Marines show up, forcing the ne’er-do-well to take extraordinary measures to escape, measures that ultimately fail but gain him his robot companion.
From there things only get worse for pair as Rex keeps managing to land them in ever more dangerous and ridiculous situations, including a massive gambling pyramid, a soylent (don’t worry, it only tastes like people) processing facility, and culminating in an escape that involves 399 murder bots dancing to "Staying Alive." Yes, you read that correctly. Kroese delivers an amazing array of puns and parodies from Star Wars, Dune, and more while keeping the action moving along at a steady pace.
The characters
Imagine if Han Solo were really a scoundrel and had even worse luck. That’s basically Rex Nihilo. He spends his days alternating between trying to get rich quick and trying to stay alive depending on how his latest scam is going. His unshakeable arrogance and confidence are both highly irritating and oddly endearing. Rex is the kind of scoundrel who could be a great leader if he had any sort of moral compass other than his own good. However, he does seem to care for his robot Sasha, though you still wouldn’t know it most of the time. While he doesn’t treat her terribly well, he does make an effort at least bring her along on his escape plans in contrast to the other temporary companions they meet that Rex never hesitates to kick to the nearest curb.
Sasha is a less insufferable version of C3PO, fluent in many forms of communication and not good for much else. Unlike her golden counterpart though, she often knows the language you need at the moment and she can pilot a ship. Unfortunately, she also shuts down every time she has an original thought. Yet, she feels an inexplicable attachment to Rex. Or maybe she’s just literally unable to think for herself thanks to the laws of the Galactic Malarchy that prevent the production of actual sentient machines.
Poor Sasha was meant to be a demo of just how close one could get to sentience but the laws necessitated that she be equipped with a thought arrestor, the device that causes her to reboot. The result was the end of what she hoped would be an illustrious career on the stage. She had been doing well when she rebooted during a production and found herself upstaged by a floor waxer. The not-quite sentient machine still has aspirations for the stage though as she regularly demonstrates her abilities by re-enacting a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire.
The world
Kroese creates a galaxy that is full of a variety of planets, each with its own perils, suckers to be taken advantage of and gangsters to be avoided. Usually, Rex manages to be the sucker, and make the gangsters very angry with him. It would have been easy for Rex and Sasha to simply make their way from one seedy spaceport to the next but the main part of the story takes place on a little backwater planet, Jorfu, ruled by the evil Ubicorp. They’re sent there along with a cargo hold full of creamed corn getting smuggled onto the planet.
From there Kroese draws on other sci-fi properties to get his pun on, especially in this case Soylent Green. He does a good job describing the way Ubicorp controls the food supply on Jorfu as Rex bumbles around, narrowly avoiding certain death any number of times. Perhaps the best example is when the ne’er-do-well stumbles on a covert patch of strawberries and is nearly shot after he eats a handful of them. Or maybe it’s when he sneaks his way into Xanatopia, which is basically a giant casino, and then is sent to work for Ubicorp when he ‘wins’ their lottery.
In short, even though it’s a story focused mainly on getting its readers to laugh, there are a surprising number of solid world-building details that help readers understand the many perils that Rex Nihilo navigates daily.
The politics
There are no explicit politics in this world other than galactic empires are grossly incompetent and massive corporations tend to see everyone in terms of their usefulness to the company.
Content warning
Nothing objectionable, other than some innuendo and semi-intelligent plants that get aroused when people pick their fruit.
Who is it for?
If you enjoy pop culture and grew up with greats like Star Wars, Dune and Soylent Green and the humor of Mel Brooks and the Naked Gun movies then you will definitely enjoy the humor throughout, even as Rex perhaps inadvertently saves the Malarchy by letting a certain garbage-can-like robot get destroyed, one with a message for a princess.
Why read it?
Rex is a lovable jerk, the one you know has massive potential but keeps shooting himself in the foot along the way. Combined with his lovable loser robot Sasha, and the author’s propensity for puns and ability to craft ridiculous situations, this story is just plain fun.