Cover blurb
Forty years ago, the Gather family – James, his daughter Beau, and his son Billy – vanished during a whitewater rafting trip and were presumed dead.
Five years later, Billy reappeared on the far side of the world, telling an impossible tale of a primordial valley populated by dinosaurs, aliens, Neanderthals, and androids. Little Billy became the punchline of so very many jokes, until he finally faded from the public eye.
Now, a group of graduate astronomy students follow their professor, Noah Barnes, up a mountain for what they believe is a simple stargazing trip. But they’re about to travel a lot farther than they planned …
Noah – the now grown Billy Gather – has finally figured out how to get back to the Valley. Accidentally bringing his students along with him, he’s confident he can get everyone back home, safe and sound.
But the Valley is a puzzle – one it turns out Noah hasn’t figured out – and they’ll need to solve it together if there’s any chance of making it out alive.
Pulling from Earth’s past, future, and beyond, Peter Clines has created a complex, dangerous world, navigated by a dynamic ensemble cast, and a story that is thrilling as it is funny and heartfelt.
My thoughts
Mashall, Will, and Holly, on a routine expedition. They met the greatest earthquake ever known…
Land of the Lost was a live-action children’s show that ran for three seasons in the 1970s. The show aired a little before my time, but as a child growing up in the 1980s, I sometimes caught reruns on broadcast and cable TV. It was a weird but clever show, with plots involving mind-bending science fiction concepts such as closed universes, alternate timelines, temporal paradoxes, and the decay of civilization. There were dinosaurs, which were the main draw for most kids. And there were the Sleestaks, which may look laughable today but were nightmare fuel for young viewers of that era.
God’s Junk Drawer is a homage to Land of the Lost, borrowing many concepts from the show but aimed at an adult audience. The novel opens with a series of news reports about a missing American boy, Billy Gaither, who reappears in Thailand with stories about dinosaurs, cavemen, robots, and other wonders. He claims to have spent several years with his father and sister in a strange valley, during which his father was eaten by a T. rex. The authorities don’t believe Billy, and his wild stories turn him into a minor celebrity, causing him to later change his name.
Years later, a group of grad students accompany their professor, Noah Barnes, on a stargazing trip to a remote corner of the U.S. What they don’t know is Noah is actually Billy, and he has found a way to return to the valley, where he hopes to rescue his stranded sister. Because of a misunderstanding, the students end up with Billy in the valley, which has grown larger, stranger and much more deadly during his time away.
Perhaps the greatest strength of God’s Junk Drawer is the source of its inspiration. For a children’s television show, Land of the Lost built up a surprising amount of lore about its setting. Clines borrows freely from that lore to give us a setting that isn’t quite the same as the show but still preserves its mystery and weirdness. There are dinosaurs, of course, but there also are mysterious alien structures, time-displaced people and objects, and the valley’s head-scratching cosmology. The novel works best when the characters are exploring those mysteries. And it helps that the characters are well-rounded with understandable motivations.
Unfortunately, the focus on exploration mostly takes a back seat about a third of the way into the novel. No spoilers, but the characters make a discovery which brings the plot’s momentum to a grinding halt. Suddenly a story about a group of unprepared college students forced to survive in a hostile alien wilderness becomes, well, something a little more conventional. It was not enough to ruin my enjoyment of the novel, but it added a lot of unnecessary padding to what otherwise could have been a tight, sci-fi thriller.
God’s Junk Drawer is a novel I recommend reading, with the qualification that it has a bloated second act that could have used trimming. If you are a fan of Land of the Lost, you will have fun revisiting an adult version of that setting and spotting all the Easter eggs that allude to the show. If you know next to nothing about the original show, you may still enjoy exploring the book’s mysteries and spending time with its well-drawn characters.
Trivia
- Land of the Lost was rebooted in the 1990s as a short-lived Saturday morning series that was significantly dumbed down in terms of plots and writing. It was also adapted into a 2009 Will Ferrell comedy so bad that the producers of the original show later apologized to fans. Reportedly, a second remake of the series is being produced for Netflix.
- The fact that Billy’s father was eaten by a T. rex may be an allusion that the actor who played the father in the show quit after two seasons. The third and final season instead featured Uncle Jack, who looked after Will and Holly after their father (accidentally) returned to our world.
- There are no Sleestak counterparts in God’s Junk Drawer, which is kind of a bummer given their role in the show.
- Peter Clines is the author of several science fiction and horror novels. God’s Junk Drawer contains Easter eggs for some of his other works. His website is PeterClines.com.
Prehistoric Pulp 