Parodies Lost

Fanzine at http://www.blakes-7.com/ Reviewed by Kathryn A on 2001-03-24

A Blake's 7 parody zine by Chris Blenkarn

Parodies Lost is a zine full of "stories, poems and much else in the style of different writers and writing genres". I normally don't like parodies, since all they seem to do is horrible charicatures with awful plots that you're supposed to laugh at or be considered not to have a sense of humour. The collection here, however, is not of that kind at all. There are parodies in-the-style-of, which means one can simply admire how well the author has captured both the style she is imitating, and casting it into the setting of Blake's 7. I must admit I got more fun out of the ones that imitated authors I was familiar with -- Flanders & Swann (bet nobody's filked them before!), Georgette Heyer, Enid Blyton, Jane Austen, Shakespeare and so on, than those with whom I was not familiar, such as Dorothy Parker, William McGonagall or Roger McGough. Among my favourites are "The Infamous Alpha by Georgette Heyer", "Yippe-I-oh! Blake's 7: The Westerns", "Five Go Off In A Huff by Enid Blyton" and "Mission To Destiny - competition winners". This is a zine to be dipped into, not gulped (unless you're very fond of lots of parodies one after another...)