Austin's new superhero saga.

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Product Description

Doctor Impossible—evil genius, diabolical scientist, wannabe world dominator—languishes in a federal detention facility. He's lost his freedom, his girlfriend, and his hidden island fortress.

Over the years he's tried to take over the world in every way imaginable: doomsday devices of all varieties (nuclear, thermonuclear, nanotechnological) and mass mind control. He's traveled backwards in time to change history, forward in time to escape it. He's commanded robot armies, insect armies, and dinosaur armies. Fungus army. Army of fish. Of rodents. Alien invasions. All failures. But not this time. This time it’s going to be different...

Fatale is a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built to be the next generation of warfare. Filling the void left by a slain former member, we watch as Fatale joins a team struggling with a damaged past, having to come together in the face of unthinkable evil.

Soon I Will Be Invincible is a thrilling first novel; a fantastical adventure that gives new meaning to the notions of power, glory, responsibility, and (of course) good and evil.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73835 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-05
• Released on: 2007-06-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The realm of comic book heroes and villains gets a dose of realism in this whimsical debut from game design consultant Grossman. The story shifts between the perspectives of Doctor Impossible, a brilliant scientist turned world's greatest menace, and Fatale, a lonely cyborg and the newest addition to the venerable group of heroes known as the Champions. Though he's been out of commission for a while, Doctor Impossible hatches a scheme to knock the planet out of orbit ("As the Earth grows colder, my power becomes apparent, and the nations submit," he reasons). Meanwhile, Champions leader Corefire goes missing, and Fatale has to learn the ropes of superherodom as the conventional climactic showdown (at Doctor Impossible's secret lair) draws near. However fantastical, the characters (including a "genetic metahuman" and "an elite fairy guard") are thoughtfully portrayed, with Fatale—stuck in a perpetual existential crisis—bemused over the Champions' purpose, and Doctor Impossible wondering "whether the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life." Grossman dabbles in a host of themes—power, greed, fame, the pitfalls of ego—in this engrossing page-turner, broadening the appeal of an already inviting scenario. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Austin Grossman, Berkeley grad student, game designer, and comic-book connoisseur, offers a fresh take on the hidden realm of contemporary superheroes. Critics compare the novel favorably to Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude, the prime-time, sci-fi soap opera Heroes, and the animated big-screen hit The Incredibles. Although the plot and Grossman's sense of humor wear thin for some critics, Soon I Will Be Invincible is certainly a worthwhile diversion, a flight of fancy with heart, and the perfect vehicle for a sequel. Even Impossible's voice has the ring of truth-in a world-weary, villainous sort of way, of course: "Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor." Impossible's aphorism contains as relevant a metaphor for life as a reader is likely to find anywhere these days.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
Riding the current wave of enthusiasm for superpowered mutants in film and fiction, Grossman's first novel peeks intimately inside the psyches of both superheroes and supervillains. Alternating first-person narrators recount the intertwining adventures of computer-enhanced female cyborg Fatale and the most intelligent and possibly the most evil man on Earth, Doctor Impossible. After battling criminals undercover for the CIA, Fatale becomes the newest member of the recently reunited superhero team, the Champions. Their latest mission involves locating their missing colleague, CoreFire. Not surprisingly, when CoreFire's nemesis—Doctor Impossible, of course—escapes imprisonment for the twelfth time, he becomes the likeliest suspect in the superhero's disappearance. Yet not only is the evil doctor clueless as to CoreFire's whereabouts, he is now preoccupied with hatching his latest master plan, intended to overthrow the world by means of four utterly mundane objects. With remarkable ingenuity, Grossman assembles an entire menagerie of superheroes and criminal masterminds completely from scratch. Costumed-crime-fighter mavens naturally attracted to this latest rendition of superheroic derring-do may wind up itching to see it on the big screen. Hays, Carl
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

a delight
I'm amazed by the negative reviews, and glad to see them in the minority. I found this book a delight, and was amazed to see it was a first novel. The book consists of two intertwined stories - one told by a super-villian, the other by a new super-hero. I found the super-villian chapters a total delight, a real joy - the super-hero chapters are interesting, but much less so - that's why i give 4 stars instead of 5. Overall definitely a very good and fun read.

Less depth and character than most comic books
I bought this book based on a strong review, and was quite disappointed. Any reviewer who praises this book's imagination clearly hasn't read a comic book within the last 5-10 years. The settings, characters, and powers all seem to have been lifted wholesale out of Marvel's least inspired 80s B-list comics.

I will grant that there is some amusement to be found in Dr. Impossible's story. His wry, matter-of fact viewpoint is often entertaining, and the telling of a comic book tale from the villain's side is at least a bit unusual, if not unheard of (see Astro City: The Tarnished Angel, for one particularly fine example). Unfortunately, Dr. Impossible's side of things only occupies half the book. The rest of it is told from Fatale's perspective, and she's an absolute bore. A cyborg with a lost past, she doesn't seem to be terribly passionate about anything. The most she ever manages is some uninspired teenage-esque angst that her character seems much too old for.

In fact, the Dr. Impossible/Fatale contrast is indicative of a larger problem with the book. Grossman has some fun poking into the psychologies and histories of his villains, people with frightening powers living with the perpetual cognitive dissonance that exists between their world-conquering ambitions and inevitable humiliating defeats. He has no such insight, however, into the minds of his heroes. None of them spend any time pondering why they chose to put on tights and fight crime. Dr. Impossible wonders why he didn't choose to become a hero instead, but none of the heroes ever ponder why they didn't choose to just go rob a bank and retire to a tropical island. None of them appear to get any particular enjoyment from fighting crime, or derive any pleasure from helping others, so why do they do it? This book has no answers, so it does its best to dodge the question. Worse, Grossman attempts to substitute angst and bickering amongst his heroes in place of psychological depth. The New Champions, the super team that Fatale joins, bicker and sulk like a car full of high school students reluctantly dragged on a field trip, rarely displaying a single likable trait between the seven of them.

Worse still, this book reads more like a first draft than a published work. The writing is sloppy and inconsistent, and the whole thing seems to have been untouched by an editor. Descriptions are few and far between; it reads more like a comic book script than a novel, still waiting for an imaginative artist to draw in the undefined settings, faces, and costumes. Characters repeat observations several time throughout the book, each time as if they're new. The book is riddled with inconsistencies and dangling plot threads. Dr. Impossible sometimes talks as if he loathes magic and does his best to avoid it, and sometimes comfortably mentions incorporating it into past and future plans. Fatale observes that a hammer weighs a couple hundred pounds, then, several paragraphs later, picks it up and finds it "surprisingly heavy." Conflicts are set up, but never pay off. Other conflicts seem to appear out of nowhere. A scene in which Fatale accuses a mystical teammate of not being a real fairy comes entirely out of left field; one scene later, the conflict is completely forgotten, and is never mentioned again.

Character voices are also wildly inconsistent. Everyone sounds the same in conversation, and no one sounds particularly interesting. Dr. Impossible, an evil genius, comes the closest to having a unique voice, but even he bounces unpredictably between occasionally inspired bits and inexplicably juvenile lines such as, "Whatever. Just don't think you can stop me." Most dismayingly, the two narrators sound remarkably similar for most of the book, with the only distinct difference being that Fatale's utterly flat sections lack the occasional moments of inspiration that sparingly pepper Dr. Impossible's narrative.

This book is an "adult" take on superheroes only when compared to the simplistic comics of the 30s-50s. The story and dialog ibook don't hold a candle to the clever and insightful works of such modern-day comics writers as Kurt Busiek, Brian Michael Bendis, and Neil Gaiman. The novel format tries to sell this as a more adult and literary take on comic books, but it's ultimately just a pale and surprisingly shallow imitation of the real thing.

Soon I Will Dissolve in My Own Irony
Dr. Impossible is your classic under-achieving super-villain, the kind Terry Pratchett mocked mercilessly with Evil Harry Dread and His Shed of Doom in The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable. Impossible's tried twelve times already to take over the world, and the pesky super heros have defeated him every time. So as he ramps up for the 13th effort, there's not much question what's going to happen this time; only how it's going to happen. You have to be a very good writer to carry suspense in that situation, better than Mr. Grossman, I fear.

The narrative voice shifts back and forth between the villainous Dr. Impossible and newly minted superhero(ine) Fatale, a angst-ridden cyborg. A writer needs to be able to establish and maintain two distinct narrative voices to bring this trick off. As other reviewers have noted, Mr. Grossman's efforts are only spottily successful. Many of the favorable reviews are from the audio version, where the narrator can do the work the author should have done.

Much of the novel is given over to the characters backstories, but between the current superheroes and super-villains, and older, retired or defeated superheroes and villains, you really need the character table at the end of the book to even half way keep track of what's going on.

And you need a strong story. But the actual story here is minimalist.

But the great problem facing Mr. Grossman is that he cannot establish and maintain a consistent narrative tone. One page might read like a satiric pastiche of bad 1950's comic books; the next page threatens to dissolve in its own irony. Even the super bad guy, Dr. Impossible, waffles badly between arrogant James Bond villain and karking, whiny petulance. Sometimes in the same paragraph.

Sure, the author successfully parodies comic books, but that's a pretty easy target. They very nearly do it to themselves. Beyond that, it's pretty disappointing. Save your money, or go to the secondhand bookstore. I love fantasy and science fiction, and grew up on comics, but this is just poorly written.