Shatnerquake...

Some ideas are so simple and yet so brilliantly insane that it's hard to believe they haven't been acted upon before now.

Shatnerquake, by Jeff Burk, is one such gem.

A tongue-in-cheek homage to one of the great characters of our age, the novella pits William Shatner (as the star - and only - guest at the world's first ShatnerCon) against blood-thirsty, ghoulish incarnations of his various television and cinematic personnas after a reality-warping bomb is set off by zealous, one-handed followers of Bruce Campbell (who, in a Monty Pythonesque twist, are all called Bruce).

Shatner, aided by his number one fan, Bob (who has been surgically altered to look and sound like his idol), has to fight his way through the crowded convention centre and survive a confrontation with a blood-crazed Captain Kirk armed with a working lightsaber.

Burk exhibits a deft brevity in his writing of this mind-bendingly surreal comedy, which occasionally descends into gloriously graphic Grand Guignol, and a very visual style that suggests Shatnerquake would make one hell of a mental movie (probably requiring, sadly, a prohibitive amount of expensive CGI to realise the multiversal incarnations of Shatner who would have to share screen time).

There are few other actors (except maybe Bruce Campbell, of course) worthy of this kind of treatment, but Burk has gone for the Big Kahuna and nailed his target perfectly, while simultaneously establishing a slightly skewed sci-fi metaverse for his characters to exist in.

He also manages to squash in a tidal wave of in-jokes and references to Shatner's broad portfolio of work, the insanity of convention life, fandom and science-fiction in general. All in about 70 pages.