Dr. Identity

Dr. Identity by D. Harlan Wilson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Plaquedemic and professor at Corndog University Dr. Blah Blah Blah sends his doppelganger, Dr. Identity, to teach a class for him, ending in disaster as Dr. Identity kills a prominent student. As Blah tries to figure out what to do, Identity takes the first steps toward a holocaust of epic proportions. Can the Dystopian Duo evade the scores of bounty hunters, the Law, and the Papanazi on their trail and continue their holocaustic ways?

Dr. Identity is forty-seven kinds of f*cked up and thirty-one flavors of awesome. You know how people describe something as something on steroids in order to denote magnitude? I hate when they do that. Dr. Identity is Snow Crash with a jetpack on its back, absurdism turned up to 111, crack igniting its bloodstream, and a stream of severed and mangled limbs trailing in its wake.

D. Harlan Wilson protrays a dystopian world of useless academics, trends that move at light speed, and a mass-media even more brainless they currently are. Dr. Identity acts as the raging Id of Dr. Blah Blah Blah's repressed ego, taking him on an odyssey of ultraviolence.

I can't hope to mention all of the things I loved about this book. I caught references to a lot of favorites, like Neuromancer, Snow Crash, the Hyperion Cantos, and all sorts of comics and movies. I loved that the Bobafett model of jetpack was the best on the market, that Bug Eyed Monsters attacked people who spent two much time shopping in Littleoldladyville, and that Dr. Blah Blah Blah read a Hardy Boys novel while Dr. Identity was murdering one of his student-things. Funny how both of my two most recent Bizarro reads mentioned The Hardy Boys.

That's about all. I'm drawing a blank on what to say next. Suffice to say, Dr. Identity is one hell of a Bizarro thrill ride and should appeal to fans of Philip K. Dick, cyberpunk, and distopia.

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