Hal Spacejock Reviews(These are press reviews ... you can see reader feedback here) "The Hal Spacejock series by Simon Haynes is brilliantly funny ... a laugh out loud book with a laugh on every page experience that will seriously get you chuckling. booksmonthly.co.uk "Things start to go wrong and just keep going that way in this clever novel. A very funny science fiction read." Mary Koenig, CMIS Evaluation, WA Education Department. "The quirkiest genre satire to hit bookshelves since Terry Pratchett's Discworld" The West Australian "Riddled with slapstick humour and glib one-liners" Courier Mail, Brisbane "Deliberately mixing anachronisms with futuristic gadgets, Haynes pokes wicked fun at our own Ipods and cellphone obsessions, while looking more seriously at issues of identity, friendship and freedom." SffWorld "A space opera full of humorously cringe-worthy moments" Dominion Post, New Zealand "Fast, funny, quirky, enthralling comedy adventure; not just a genre parody but a well-made story in its own right, told with a light, deft touch. Hal's battle of wills with the uppity airlock is a special joy." Tom Holt "This book had me roaring. From the first page to the last, Hal Spacejock is a comically lovable idiot -- the dubious hero with a heart of gold buried under a whole cargo load of impatience, underhandedness, laughably questionable habits and an indomitable devil-may-care attitude. His faithful sidekick robot, Clunk — with enough common sense for two and a healthy dose of good guy morality — saves Hal's foolish hide at every turn and steals the show on every glorious page." Mind Unbound "I laughed so hard I was crying" SFF Book Club "Unlike a lot of things I read, it stuck with me a while, becoming funnier in retrospect. [...] a great read for anyone who's still got an inner fifteen year old on the loose." Jay Lake "An underground cult hit . . . just the thing to read when all you want is to forget your troubles for a while and enjoy someone else's engaging and well-crafted world." January Magazine "The dialogue is witty, the pace is fast and the result is hilarious." Galaxy Books "Fast paced, action-packed and amusing, with characters that are believable and that the reader can actually care about [...] I read the book with a smile constantly planted on my face." Bewildering Stories "Plenty of action, twists and turns, and loads of laughs. Fans of the genre will find plenty to like here. Funny stuff." aussiereviews.com "Plenty of laughs and more than enough action to keep you entertained." David Forbes, author of The Amber Wizard "Entertaining and easy to read . . . Hapless and hopeless Spacejock is a likeable character: laid back, easy going and chasing a life less complex than the one he finds himself trapped in . . . The humour gave me a belly laugh at least once per chapter and tickled my ribs just about every page." Scifantastic 3 ". . . a winner for almost anyone who can read. People who hate spec-fic will view it as a send-up and guffaw appropriately; people who love it will see almost every trope of the genre gently subverted and be likewise entertained." Satima Flavell in The Specusphere "A dizzying ride, lurching from planet to planet and crisis to crisis as Hal bumbles his way through meetings with inept assassins, murderous rich guys, gullible officials and a bailiff with a very nasty robot. Blithely oblivious to the havoc he causes, quite astonishingly incompetent, and someone I wouldn't trust to use my toaster without a fire-extinguisher and a team of firemen standing by... [Hal Spacejock] is one of the most memorable figures in sci-fi. It'll never be high literature, and it's unlikely to make the classics list, but who cares when it's this much fun? A book to be enjoyed over and over again." Joules Taylor (SFCrowsnest Reviewer) "Not so much space opera as space vaudeville, Haynes' comic sci-fi tale manages to avoid being Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Red Dwarf or high-tech Pratchett, and instead takes on a Robert Sheckley-inspired life of its own. Funny, comically infectious and inventively casual in its depiction of commercial intrigue versus benign incompetence in space, it foregoes apocalyptic sweep for a sort of futuristic mundanity that is anything but mundane. With its endearing characterisation of both man and machine, it offers a slapstick rush to which your imagination will willingly surrender." Robert Hood |
I'm Simon Haynes, programmer and author. Welcome to my website.
What do I write?
Hal Spacejock
Harriet Walsh
Hal Junior
Dragon & Chips
The Secret War
Mysteries in Metal
Short Stories
