"Nuklear Age" according to me
 

First of all I'd like to say that Nuklear Age is the best book I've ever read. I'd just like to clarify that before I begin.

Don't yell at me, but, frankly, I didn't understand the final "joke". What's a joke if it's not funny? I've never considered Q/As such as "Why did the chicken, etc." because they aren't, they're riddles. A joke is a something like "A Priest and a Rabbi, etc.". Am I right? To me, the end of Nuklear Age, can never be compared to "Why did the chicken, etc." besides the fact that niether of them were ever or ever will be even remotely funny. Don't get me wrong, Nuklear Age had funny jokes, but I'm afraid the end wasn't one of them. To conclude this paragraph of my review, I'd like to quote Fighter to enforce my statement: "Non-sequiturs are not automatically hilarious, you know."

As for the rumors about Nuklear Age being better than 8-Bit, my first reaction (before I read NA) was: "Ha ha, yeah right, better than 8-Bit? I seriously doubt that", but after reading Nuklear Age in its entirety I realize that I enjoyed Nuklear Age more than 8-Bit. 8BT has a more of a childish, yet surprisingly clever humor to it. Nuklear Age's humor is more witty and seems better thought out. I became more attached to the characters in Nuklear Age than 8-Bit, because the 8BT characters seem to be labelled as humor being their only purpose, but the Nuklear Age characters seemed to have more personality to them. You can almost sympathize with Angus when people make fun of him for being short.

I'd like to conclude my review with a quote from Atomik Lad: "From this height, everything looks so small."


This isn't part of my review but I didn't want to double post. I'd like to whine that I can't get any of my friends to read Nuklear Age becase whenever they ask me how long it is, and I answer, they're like "OMFG, THAS LIKE SIX BAMILLION PAGES YOU MUST BE A NERD!!!!1", fugging bastards...

It's not a non-sequitur if it's hinted at as early as the first chapter.

As I've explained, the end "joke" is only a joke in the mechanical sense. It is not meant to be the kind of funny that makes you laugh. It's the kind of gut wrenching horror and emotional agony that is so horrible, your only recourse is to laugh.

I don't think I'm really the type that laughs at that sort of thing...

Kurosen, do you think Atomik Age will be longer, shorter, or about the same length as Nuklear Age, or do you have no idea?

As the author (Kurosen) explained to me in MY thread which asked this same question, it wasn't supposed to be funny, per se.

I'm getting mixed messages here. Brian said it's not supposed to be funny, but he also said you're supposed to laugh at it? The way I see it, the only two circumstances where one laughs is when one is told something funny, or one is tickled.

I disagree, you haven't lived until you've been in a situation that was so mindbendingly horrible that it could only have been contrived specifically for you to experience pain and suffering. I sometimes laugh then, and after the first time I read the book, and then cursed and hated it for leaving that empty feeling inside of me that only more of the same would fill, I read it again. That time I laughed. That might be what he was getting at.

Yeah, it probably was supposed to be one of those "Oh crap, that's horrible.... HEEEHEEHEE!"

Pratchett and Adams have lots of instances like that.

I think its a "whoa, things are getting hardcore!" feeling of climax as its punchline. It's not funny because its tragic; it's funny because we bathed in a dream of absurdity and suddenly we find ourselves catapulted into the cold air of realism. We were supposedly laughing at our own biased nature. In a way, Nuklear Man was the reflection of humanity in God's image, and Nuke's behavior as is the reflection of what's going on in our own minds as we read the book.

No offense to Clevinger, but Pratchett and Adams do it a little bit better...

I think you're still missing the point a little. Pratchett and Adams never did anything like the last third of Nuklear Age. Not that I'm aware, anyway. If one of them has, I'd love to know so I could take a gander.

I don't know how old you are, but I have noticed that some younger readers just don't have the life experience to really "get" the concept that something can be so painful and awful and horrible that the only way to get through it is to see how funny it is that it's so terrible.