A Robot Named Clunk
Description
Strap in for the ride of your life! Witty, fast, funny and moving. What more could you ask for?
Clunk's grateful when his boss sends him for a refit, because old robots are usually junked. Being old and wise, he knows there's a catch, but at first it doesn't seem too bad.
The workshop performing the refit is located on a nearby planet, and Clunk's boss wants him to carry out a trivial task while he's there: help a freelancer pick up some cargo.
It's a simple job, straight in and out ... but don't be late.
How can Clunk refuse? He's a certified co-pilot, so landing in a deserted field under cover of darkness, avoiding customs ships, orbital lasers and trigger-happy warships along the way, is not a problem. Plus Clunk's a robot, so he has no choice but to obey.
Unfortunately the freelance pilot is a much bigger challenge, because Hal Spacejock is obstinate, cocky, over-confident, and woefully under-skilled, and yet he refuses to cede control of his ship to a mere robot.
Worse, Hal's only got 24 hours to pay off his debts, or he'll lose his ship ... and his life.
Can the two of them sort out their differences and deliver the cargo, or will they still be wrestling over the controls when both deadlines expire?
A Robot Named Clunk is one part buddy movie, two parts laughter and three parts madcap adventure.
More details
Person
Simon Haynes lives in Western Australia, where he divides his time between herding deadly spiders, dodging drop bears, and making up wildly inaccurate sentences like this one.
By day he's an author. By night he's also an author.
He loves wry, dry humour, and his hobbies include daringly inserting the letter U into words where -- in some parts of the world at least -- this simply isn't the done thing.
As for his genre-spanning novels, they include epic fantasy (with robots), scifi comedy (also with robots), middle grade humour (featuring robots AND the wanton use of the letter U), as well as a series of historical mystery novels set in 1870's London. (No, of course there aren't robots in those. He's not completely out of his mind.)
When he's not writing Simon is usually renovating his house, sim-racing online, using twitter (@spacejock), gardening, tweaking his book covers, pondering the meaning of the universe and reading, and if you think it's easy doing all that at the same time you should see what he can do with a mug of coffee, a banana and a large bag of salt.
When he's not making outlandish claims he likes to count how many novels he's written, and how many genres he's written them in. (Lots and too many.)
Finally, if you want to hear Simon reading one of his award-winning stories, you'll find an enticement to join his newsletter here: spacejock.com.au/ML.html
