"The Chip" is one of them, of course!
(It's also available through MyBookOrders.com with which there's a special reduced price promotion right now! Scroll to the bottom of this post for details.)
So "The Chip" is on a very short list of examples of superhero literature. Even more true of superhero prose for young adults. There were probably way less just five or ten years ago. There's two important ones aimed at adults: "Superfolks" by Robert Mayer was the first all the way back in 1977. Much more recently Austin Grossman wrote "Soon I Will Be Invincible" and made people see superhero prose in a new light. But it seems the old-fashioned written word is still resistant to the superhero genre because it was birthed out of the comics medium and comics have been so strongly seen as low-art for so long. It is always a shame when art of any kind is ignored or debased in an effort to save culture. Culture is a growing changing element of life by its nature. To try to save culture is to kill it.
Certainly, adapting the typical set-pieces of the superhero genre from the four-color graphic medium of comics to the descriptive written-word medium of prose is tricky business. George Jack chose to take this unique direction and make it work by combining the dramatic with the commonplace.
Stanley wears jeans with a black t-shirt. When he's not wearing a metal flying suit.
Uncle Jeffrey is a wheelchair-bound paraplegic but he also happens to be the most advanced mind for cybernetics on the planet.
Dr. Ian Powell is a middle-aged man with male-pattern baldness, with cybernetic and surgical expertise. As we've written before, he merely happens to be tremendously insane!
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This touching reunion scene illustrates the balance between the sci-fi/superhero and the everyday aspects of the novel:
[This is one of my personal favorite parts of the novel. ~ your social-media man-at-the-wheel, Jon Gorga]
"... I've been remembering you how you were at thirteen, and here you are, a grown man."
Jeff was crying again. Stanley leaned down and hugged him in his chair, careful not to hold him too tightly. Not just because of his strength, but because his uncle felt so fragile and bony in his arms. Stanley stepped back, his hands on Jeff's shoulders, and took a good look at him. Stanley had grown up, and his uncle had gotten old.
"Where have you been, Stanley? You seem... better, somehow."
Stanley reacted as if he had been doused in the face with ice water. He needed that reality check.
"I have so much to tell you, Uncle Jeff, but first... there's a tracking device in my head. We need to get it out, but it's part of an implant that I can't live without anymore. My condition got worse as I got older, actually, but there's a chip..."
Stanley saw the recognition in his uncle's eyes. "So it's true," he said quietly. "Did you invent this chip that's inside of me, Uncle Jeff? ..."
~ "The Chip" by George Jack; p. 153
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A reduced pricing option is in effect until the end of the Summer! It's our Summer Special!
You can get $7 off the cover price of "The Chip" if you order it through MyBookOrders.com until August 31st!
Just use the PROMO CODE: 1099Take a look!
