{"id":4357,"date":"2013-07-28T21:12:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T01:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.urbin.net\/blog\/?p=4357"},"modified":"2013-07-28T21:12:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T01:12:58","slug":"sunday-sci-fi-the-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/science-fiction\/sunday-sci-fi-the-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Sci-Fi: The Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Office is a small branch of the Environmental Protection Agency that deals with Mad Scientists and other Evildoers that want to harm the environment, and\/or large chunks of the human beings in said Environment.<\/p>\n

The Office is another “Men in Black” group that likes dark suits, sunglasses and large black American made sedans. \u00a0They deal with the government bureaucracy, mad scientists, and wacko cultists.<\/p>\n

You can read about the Office in two (so far), short stories by Leslie Bates. \u00a0The first is\u00a0Weekend<\/a>, followed by Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Weekend<\/a>, you meet an agent of the Office who’s most common alias is John Flanders. \u00a0 Agent Flanders spends his weekend dealing with some not so nice people wanting to ‘immanentize the eschaton.’ \u00a0Oh, and he fills out all the relevant paperwork. \u00a0The Office is part of the EPA after all.<\/p>\n

The second Office short story, takes place on a Tuesday<\/a>. \u00a0The Office has a new politically appointed head, who has been placed there as a punishment detail for annoying the President. \u00a0This does put her in better standing with the non-politically appointed Office Staff. \u00a0The action once again takes place in what many people politically to the Left of Agent Flanders refer to as one of the “flyover states.” \u00a0This time is a cult founded by a hack writer of pulp fiction. \u00a0Ya, it’s a thinly disguised version of that cult. \u00a0Once again, Agent Flanders deals with Evil, and fills out the paperwork, in this case a lot of paperwork. \u00a0There are events the EPA frowns upon. \u00a0Agent Flanders doesn’t manage to stop the event, but he does save the damsel in distress and his boss.<\/p>\n

The Office stories are short bits of fun filled with movie and SciFi tropes, 80’s and 90’s pop culture and some not so thinly veiled political commentary. \u00a0Oh, and Mr. Bates is not above Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/a> references, so be warned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Office is a small branch of the Environmental Protection Agency that deals with Mad Scientists and other Evildoers that want to harm the environment, and\/or large chunks of the human beings in said Environment. The Office is another “Men in Black” group that likes dark suits, sunglasses and large black American made sedans. \u00a0They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,27],"tags":[485,696,697,739],"class_list":["post-4357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","category-sunday-scifi","tag-leslie-bates","tag-science-fiction","tag-scifi","tag-sunday-scifi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pab4zg-18h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}