Obverse Books The Gulf The Periodic Adventures of Senor 105

Written by	Cody-Quijano Schell
Published	2012

Synopsis: Senor 105 is a Mexican wrestler who fights crime.

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 20/10/13

This is the first of the Periodic Adventures of Senor 105, available in epub and Kindle formats from the appropriately titled Manleigh Books. I'd previously met him in Elementary, My Dear Sheila in Miss Wildthyme and Friends Investigate, but this novella doesn't appear to be crossing over with Iris or anything else. It's pure Senor 105.

(Sorry about the missing accents, by the way. There should be a wiggle above the "n" in Senor, for instance.)

To make sure we're all on the same page, Senor 105 is a Mexican wrestler. He wears a mask at all times and he fights bad guys. He's the protagonist of his stories, unsurprisingly, but their real hero is the strangeness of his universe. Personally I get the impression that Cody isn't just writing these stories for the sake of conventional plot or characterisation, but rather from a love of anything and everything that might turn your head inside-out. Here's a list of possible inspirations, resonances and/or unconnected random neuron-sparkings I experienced while reading this:

1. Sapphire and Steel. "I wear masks that represent the elements of the Periodic Table." Senor 105's companion is a sentient isotope of helium, who's described as being from a "Noble Family".
2. Astrology, which manages to connect what might on the face of it seem like straightforward SF (the solar system's planets) with the Sapphire and Steel-ness, via the alchemical symbols for the planets.
3. The extinction of the dinosaurs (I think ignoring Earthshock) and a bunch of bad guys whose whose leader says "I will be like the Tyrannosaurus Rex" and whose name (the Terrible Kings) is an approximate translation of two-thirds of the Greek and Latin in that dinosaur's name. I think they're human, but it's sometimes hard to tell in the Senor 105 universe.
4. A refreshingly feminine viewpoint. You might think that Mexican wrestling would be a macho genre, but this novella has almost no fighting and its protagonists are all female except for Senor 105 himself. Furthermore, he thinks like a scientist, not a muscleman. There's a female Mexican wrestler who was Senor 105's mentor, a helium balloon that self-identifies as female (how? why?) and a woman who dresses up as a Canadian mounted policeman and wants to be one even though it's not allowed. I also found an interesting misreading of the line "just as young as he was the day I met him as a little girl", only realising afterwards that the "little girl" would have been the narrator.

Admittedly a lot of this was first introduced in Elementary, My Dear Sheila, but that doesn't invalidate it or anything.

A couple of possible typos, incidentally. I'd prefer the last sentence on p14 with a semi-colon, not a second comma, and there's a "it's" for "its" on page 23 ("on it's edge"). There's also an odd-looking bit at the bottom of p4, which at the very least is a missed joke opportunity. "He fell to the ground, screaming. 'What is wrong with him? He is in pain!'" Um, didn't Senor 105 just hit him?

The story also isn't as dynamic as you might expect. As with Elementary, My Dear Sheila, you'll go away impressed with Cody's fecundity of imagination and worldbuilding, but after a while you might have trouble remembering the plot. I remember the train crash. That was good. Apart from that, though, it's basically a jam session of characters and ideas... but this is only a 41-page novella and so Cody gets away with it.

Overall, likeable. There's stuff here I'm rather fond of, such as Luna, or the use of nationalities (Mexico, France). It's good to step beyond the English-speaking world. I think there's room to explore further the relationship between this magical universe and Senor 105's scientific mindset, but that's not a bash at this story. Potential is good. This universe is looking likely to evolve somewhere fascinating...

"My horse can shoot a gun."