Doom: The Novel

Bad.

Fifteen years ago, for reasons I can only blame on insanity, I picked up and read all four (4) of the Doom novels.

I'm going to share with you my fond memories of these books.

By the end of it I guarantee you'll feel very lucky that you've never read any of this shit.

Didn't everyone call the main character from Doom B.J.? Wasn't that the thing?

Fuck that. The main character in the books is Fly, the space marine.

The other main character is some chick space marine, and together they fight demons from Hell. Sounds awesome, right?

Well guess what? They aren't demons from Hell. They're genetically engineered aliens made only to look like demons.

And why do they look like demons? Because the aliens who made them last visited Earth back in the Dark Ages (And apparently only Europe) and they figured that's the sort of shit that would scare us; so instead of, I don't know, a fucking laser gun-toting death squad, the aliens sent a bunch of stupid demon-imposters to try and kill us.

But why did they only visit hundreds of years ago, Justin? Shouldn't they know better? Shouldn't they have visited sooner?

No, Justin, they couldn't, because in the Doom novels FTL (faster-than-light) travel is impossible.

That's right. It's a sci-fi book where FTL is impossible, and guess what? Space-marine Fly travels all over space in a ship that can't go faster than light.

Here. Want a diagram of how the books pan out? It works like this:

So what I mostly remember from these books is Fly, the chick, and their two aliens buddies doing absolutely nothing while they wait to reach their destination.

Oh sure. There's plenty of filler. There's a scene where they do target practice. One where they play a practical joke or something. There's even a scene where Fly and the chick sleep together, but Fly doesn't whip it out or anything. God no! He admits to the reader that he could have her if he wanted to, but he won't because I'm pretty sure the chick was in love with this Mormon guy, and if you think it sounds bigoted of me to only remember a character by his religion then trust me, it was the only character trait this fucker had, and the chick had this long story about why she wasn't comfortable around Mormons (something about her brother) and I think this is where she described her brother as, "Sticking his hot dog in every donut hole he could find."

Certain lines, if written properly, can scar the brain and never be removed.

The strangest thing, though, and it's probably the strangest thing in all four of these books, are the two aliens that Fly and the chick travel with. They're twins, you see, and they both meet up with the space marines pretty early in the series, and the first thing that the chick does is start laughing and tells Fly that the aliens both look like Magilla Gorilla.

And that's how they're described. As looking like two Magilla Gorillas.

How is that even possible? How could a Hanna Barbara cartoon resemble anything in the real world? Does that make any fucking sense to you?

So we go through all this bullshit of flying around and then we finally get to the evil alien planet and guess what?

It's barren.

No aliens.

No aliens!!!!

Are you fucking kidding me?

The aliens were already dead for reasons I don't fucking remember, but I'm pretty sure it had a lot to do with taking so fucking long to get there that they missed everything.

You'd think in four books about a video game where you're constantly shooting everything that we'd get some action, but I only remember just a little bit from the first book with Fly's zombified marine buddies.

But do you know how it is like the book, though? The architecture.

At random times, for no reason, the author will spend about two-to-three pages describing all the different shapes and angles and balconies and switches in a room, which I guess is supposed to give us a clear idea in our heads of one of the rooms from the Doom game. How exciting, right?

Imagine reading a 2-page description of this room.

So, with nothing to do in space, they spend the rest of the book flying back to Earth and it's all over there, too, of course. The humans had beaten the aliens and we didn't see any of it.

Oh, and the Mormons built a monument celebrating their victory over the aliens. I guess the Mormons were so well prepared for Armageddon that they saved the Earth, or something like that.

The monument was so big it, like, reached into space.

There's also a machine in the last book that can steal your soul.