Earth Vs. Everybody

Frank Burly #5

by John Swartzwelder

One of a series of comedy science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

Genres: Fiction, Comedy, Humor, Science Fiction, Novels, Detective

138 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2009

About the author

John Joseph Swartzwelder Jr. is an American comedy writer and novelist, best known for his work on the animated television series The Simpsons. Born in Seattle, Washington, Swartzwelder began his career working in advertising. He was later hired to work on comedy series Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s as a writer. He later contributed to fellow writer George Meyer's short-lived Army Man magazine, which led him to join the original writing team of The Simpsons, beginning in 1989.
He worked on The Simpsons as a writer and producer until 2003, and later contributed to The Simpsons Movie. He wrote the largest number of Simpsons episodes (59 full episodes, with contributions to several others) by a large margin. After his retirement from the show, he began a career as a writer of self-published absurdist novels. He has written more than a dozen novels, the most recent of which, The Spy with No Pants, was published in December 2020.
Swartzwelder is revered among comedy fans and his colleagues. He is known for his reclusiveness, and gave his first-ever interview in 2021, in The New Yorker. Per Mike Sacks, "Swartzwelder’s specialty on The Simpsons was conjuring dark characters from a strange, old America: banjo-playing hobos, cigarette-smoking ventriloquist dummies, nineteenth-century baseball players, rat-tailed carnival children, and pantsless, singing old-timers."

Reviews

[Mike]

Not my favorite of the series but still a pretty good entry, and it ended up better than I thought at first. As long as there are plenty of laughs these are still worth throwing $10 at J.S. I most enjoy his skewering and pastiche of various literary genres within the context of the hardboiled and idiotic detective Frank Burly, and I wasn't quite sure which direction he wanted to go in the beginning, and was even afraid he was (gasp!) recycling ideas already; but by the end I realized I'd enjoyed it quite a lot and was still happy to continue reading them.

[Circa Girl]

I'm very sad to say that this book in the Frank Burly series just doesn't live up to the comedic energy of the previous entries to the series. A lot of the gags seemed recycled and much of the plotting was like filler to distract the reader from the lack of good jokes and ideas. Burly ,as usual, is thrown into a series of fantastical misadventures in the course of his ignorant detective work, but his character just felt tiresome this time around.

I am still a big fan of Swartzwelder, but he seems to have dialed in this one.

[Paxton Holley]

From Kathy Dhotre for my birthday. Odd. Quirky. Entertaining. Not awesome, but good.

[Ryan]

Just the most excessively dumb book I’ve ever read, and I loved it.

[Zachary Finch]

Fucking great stuff. These burly books get better and better.

[John]

A hilarious romp.

This book was fun from start to finish. From the the most celebrated writer of the original Simpsons seasons, this book is a unabashedly entertaining farce. It starts off as a noir detective story, falls into a mobster conspiracy almost immediately and then devolves into a sci-fi action piece.

At no point did I care if the main character lived or died. And at no point did I really care much about the real meat of the plot. It was all just hilarious.

With only 100 particularly small pages of text, this is one of the most densely humor-packed books I've read since the Hitchhiker's Guide.

[Marc]

The 3-star "I liked it" rating basically says it all. It was my second Swartzwelder book and it was just as funny (very) and just as memorable (not really). All in all an enjoyable read that was short enough that it didn't drone one and it stayed entertaining all the way through.

I recently started watching the Simpsons season 3 again, which Swartzwelder headed up as executive producer / main writer and the humour is very similar, so if you like the Simpsons I suggest you read some of Swartzwelder's work, because it's pretty good :)

[Bob]

As explosive as The Exploding Detective, as wonderful as Double Wonderful, as conquering as... well, honestly it was a fun retarded read, not as good as some of swartzwelder's previous releases. But if you need a good LOL novel to clear out the occasional cobweb, this would be a good choice.

[Noah Sturdevant]

A fun book. Not as funny as Dead Men Scare Me Stupid, but still a good read. I'm going to have to go buy the next two of his books now since I've run out, but since he autographs them if you get them on ebay, it is worth it.

[Matt Payne]

Non-stop hilarious bullshit. The plot doesn't even matter... it's just ridiculous enough to keep the action going. John Swartzwelder could talk about breakfast and it would be hilarious.

I recommend this ridiculous story. It made me laugh constantly.

[Steven]

No one delivers a laugh on every page like Swartzwelder. This is absurd comedy at its best.

[Lydia]

Book club pick.

[Allison]

Ha ha. Brains.

[Rob Trump]

Doesn't really have much of a plot but it's hilarious, I laughed out loud a lot.

[Buggz79]

I struggled with this one. It's supposed to be safe and a light.. no... make that weightless read.

But it was terrible. My brain hasn't forgiven me for the cells lost reading this.

[Adam McPhee]

Imagine if someone turned The Simpsons into a brilliant science fiction comedy.

[Finlay]

Frank Burly is at it again... a zany cartoon, nothing more (and I read it in Mexico).

[James Lewis]

This is a borderline 5, the pages are far denser with jokes than some of the other books in the series. The only thing falling short is that it kept me slightly less on my toes