The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad
by Minister FaustBallantine, 535 pp., $14.95 (paper)
Afro-Canadian political activist, poet, and playwright Minister Faust’s first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, begins at the end. Protagonist Hamza Achmed Qebhsennuf Senesert, a disenfranchised twentysomething living in 1995 Edmonton (E-Town as he calls it), freely admits, “In advance, shut up. I know epilogues go at the end.” The opening is the most conventional piece of this nonlinear novel.
Hamza and his best friend/roommate Yeh (Yehat Bartholomew Gerbles) are the Coyote Kings. Steeped in the world of pop culture, the Coyotes see everything within those terms. Comic books, Star Trek, science fiction movies, Philip K. Dick, and much more obscure references litter the prose.
Faust’s humorous novel is not merely a collection of cultural trivia. He has produced a well-conceived story about redemption, friendship, and the possible end of the world with heaping samples of politics and religion thrown in. For the most part, the characters are divided into amusing protagonists and singular antagonists. The Fanboys, a collection of five geeks, are the extreme revenge for anyone who was ever picked on as a child for being different. Their employer, an ex-jock and successful entrepreneur, devises a plan for metaphysical Armageddon. Hamza’s girlfriend – an enigma who worships Alan Moore, can accurately and appropriately quote Star Wars, and is given to erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior – is the one person who can stop the diabolical scheme.
With an attention to detail and an eye for the absurd, it is as if Faust channeled Mark Twain to write a Neal Stephenson novel. Although flawed – the plot unveils too slowly, and there are too many viewpoints – The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad explodes off the page as an intelligent, fun-filled pop-culture adventure.
This article appears in August 20 • 2004.