Hacking My Way Into The Book Was Better

So I’ve just come back from possibly one of the most fun and strangely surreal experiences of my life, and in not the usual surreal way. It started just over a month ago and I’ve been eagerly waiting for this event to happen, and it might be way I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and I’ve been vaguely hinting about it for a short while. Today I finally got to be a guest on one of my favourite podcasts, The Book Was Better Podcast! Whilst the episode won’t be out til next week, I’m so excited that I can’t wait to talk about it!

But first it’s time for some backstory. As a kid I used to buy and occasionally read novelizations of my favourite movies¹, although I do remember being very disappointed by some of them. Cut to a couple of months ago and I saw a status by an incredibly funny comedian (whom I somewhat kinda sorta barely know IRL) John Robertson², and he was talking about a podcast he has appeared on talking about the novelization of Star Trek: Generations. Thinking this would be a riot I downloaded and listened to it. I think proceeded to the BWB website and went systematically through the back catalogue whilst I was prop building and was completely hooked.

Cut to just over a month or so ago, I was at my local library and they had some cheap books on sale and I thought “Hmm I wonder if there is any shitty novelizations I could donate to The Book Was Better” and I found one that I thought would be perfect... Hackers. By this stage I had been posting somewhat regularly on the Facebook page and started chatting with host Luke Milton, but it was a chance meeting at Nexus when we finally met in person and started talking about possibly appearing on the show (yes my inner fanboy was trying not to giggle like a school girl at this point), with Hackers being the book we review. Now just for clarification, Hackers isn’t a great film but it’s an okay film to watch if you don’t take it too seriously, and I thought the book was... well we’ll get to that.

So I got to reading the book shortly afterwards, when I finally was able to steal enough time away to do so, and afterwards I sent it on to Luke. About a couple of weeks ago after I started making some ridiculous photoshop fan art based on random comments on the show³, and it’s about roughly that time we finally made arrangements to record. It’s been an incredibly busy last couple of weeks, but I finally got time to sit down and review the movie as well... and it really hasn’t aged that well. Either way, not saying too much more as you’ll have to wait for the episode next week. HOWEVER go check out their archives and especially check out episodes 39 and 44 starring my fellow WA Ghostbuster and PAC member Courtney Coulson (including the Ghostbuster 2 podcast which I'm so totally not jealous of god dammit!!!!).

1 – I’ve just recently found a load of my old books so I can pass them on if required for the show.
2 – Go to youtube and search for “The Dark Room”.
3 – That randomness led to...

and

... and I just realised context is EVERYTHING... oh well just listen to New York Minute and Judge Dredd.