The Mutant Chronicles

By Matt Forbeck

"It will be a dangerous mission. I don't expect that any of us will survive. But it's a chance to save mankind, to save our world. Maybe the last chance." By the end of the twenty-third century, Earth... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345499050
• ISBN13: 9780345499059
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Fun old time pulp super science adventure

Bear with me, I'm going to give you an explanation as to why I'm going to give this novel the rating that it got. Back in the early seventies I went to a local flea market and local used book legend Doug Smith had a small box of pulps for sale for twenty dollars. What a deal, I bought the pulps and at home I really went through them, and they had some real classics there. "Super Science Stories", "Planet Stories", "Marvel Tales", "Startling Stories", "Thrilling Wonder Stories", and even an issue of the only flying saucer pulp in existence "Flying Saucers From Other Worlds". And the authors included Poul Anderson, Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Frank Belknap Long, Jack Vance, Phillip José Farmer, etc. I was able to take some trips to some wonderful planets. There were wonders printed there, even if some of those wonders were borderline horror stories. Unfortunately, the science fiction short form starting in the late sixties and continuing until now has mostly become so full of themselves that a banal pedestrian dullness has ossified them. This may be why one of the reasons why video games and movies/tv shows are so popular. They are still not afraid to take an impossible idea and try to make it work. "Mutant Chronicles" is a novelization of a movie script that was based on a game in which some very impossible, and impractical monsters (mutants) have erupted from someplace in the inner planet, and are now trying to destroy Dark Eden (Earth), not that people ain't doing a bad job of doing this themselves. I've never played the game and can only go with both the movie and its novelization, both of which I liked. Here the novel, as did the movie, starts out in the middle of a corporate battle as Bauhaus Captain Nathan Rooker and his sergeant Mitch Hunter are just trying to keep their soldiers alive in a battle with Capital forces during the Third Corporate War. While watching the movie you get the impression that this is all taking place during an alternate reality World War I, with trenches, and uniforms, but also with some form of airships, spaceships, and tanks. In reality, what is made clear in the book, and not the movie, is that this is the future and mankind's civilization has cyclically collapsed and is now again being rebuilt. Rooker and Hunter are then caught in a vice and find themselves going into a trench and finding the corpses of both Bauhaus and Capitol forces, and both have been horribly torn apart. During this event Rooker and Hunter's forces are attacked by Capitol soldiers, and both sides find themselves, in the novelization as in the movie, being attacked by the mutants who are damn near unstoppable and nearly superhuman. In this new battle, the Bauhaus and the Capitals are separated, and then Rooker is overrun giving cover to Hunter and his men as they make a break for a transport airship. Everything starts going to Hell then, the cities are being overrun, the corporate states are startin

A novelization like no one!

Matt Forbeck know MC's universe like no one, and his love for this universe show through all the pages of this work. If in the movie there are only necromutants, Matt puts in this novel all the creatures that we know from MC's universe, and much more, creating a sort of continuity with the background known by the fans that in the film it misses!

novelization of Mutant Chronicles

I read Mutant Chronicles because I have not been able to see the movie yet. I'm still hoping it will be released in the US. In the mean time, this book was a great, descriptive read, to hold me over until I can see the story on the big screen. My understanding is that there are parts of the book that are taken directly from the RPG, but will not be in the film. That's okay with me. Forbeck does a great job describing scenes and the motivations behind the main characters. I've seen a few captured pics from the film online, and can tell immediately what part of the story they are from. There is a great deal of swearing throughout the book, as well as graphic descriptions of violence. If you're familiar with Mutant Chronicles at all, I'm guessing this does not come as a surprise to you. This is a science fiction/fantasy story in many ways. Not hard science fiction. It's not a story you sit around thinking about as if it could actually happen in reality. It's just a fun ride about a futuristic, steam-powered, military team fighting to save what's left of earth from an alien evil. No deep thoughts here. But the last fifty pages or so, I couldn't put the book down. I had to see it to the end.