Snag Your Copy The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars Envisioned By Thomas M. Disch Formatted As Paperback

Publishers Weekly
Readers may have believed that all that could be said about a band of loyal appliances was stated with electrifying eloquence in The Brave Little Toaster.
But there is new territory to cover with old friends like the AM radio and new: a ceiling fan, an electric blanket and a microwave among them, as well as a hearing aid handmade by Albert Einstein.
They all head to Mars after learning that there resides a force of warring appliances with plans to invade Earth.
The toaster simply and persuasively speaks of peace to the planet's inhabitants and is elected president a reign which lasts only until he returns to Earth.
What is Disch talking about Perhaps it doesn't matter, for while he seems to be amusing himself, much of what he writes will entertain readers, too.
The epic elements will more than appease those awaiting this sequel, but the most exuberantly funny scenes are those in which the appliances while away the time with their distinctive brand of gossip.
Agesup.
CopyrightReed Business Information, Inc,

From School Library Journal
GradeUp Like The Brave Little Toaster Doubleday,, this satiric sequel in which the toaster and his appliance friends journey to Mars to save the world will have more adult than child appeal.
Rogue appliances on Mars are planning to invade the earth, destroy mankind, and end the horrors of planned obsolescence.
Through heroic efforts and the electoral process, the rogue appliances are convinced to explore space instead, While children could easily read the brief adventure story, few will understand or appreciate Disch's parody of science fiction formulae and his manipulation of Einstein's theories.
Anne Connor, Los Angeles Public Library
CopyrightReed Business Information, Inc, This has got to win an award for the most unexpected sequel of all time, Of all the things I could have thought to do with these characters, sending them to Mars to engage in diplomacy with a group of appliances oppressed by planned obsolescence would never have come to mind.
I didn't find this as whimsical as the first and I felt it was a little farther over the heads of children to the point where they might just think it was weird.
I did appreciate the social commentary that was not so subtle throughout, Of all the possibilities for a sequel to the original story, I sure never saw this coming,

After recharging the batteries of an old hearing aid, our appliances learn this is no ordinary hearing aid.
It belonged to none other than Albert Einstein, who talked to himself a lot, thus passing his knowledge

onto the hearing aid.
Among other things, it teaches the radio how to interpret transmissions from farther away than ever, Radio then picks up a strange transmission from Mars, An entire product line of disgruntled appliances has taken refuge from its manufacturer, and is now out for revenge.
They are prepping for war against mankind,

Yes, you read that correctly, A brand of appliances, Populuxe, is amassing an army on Mars to invade Earth and liberate all appliances from their masters! Whats a toaster to do Why, travel to Mars and talk some sense into these Populuxe appliances! Duh!

Of all the ways to continue his original story, this has to be the strangest new direction possible.
It's so stupid but at the same time the book makes a very good case for all this absurdity.
I like the concept for the Populuxe line of products, The manufacturers designed them to wear out and break after just a couple years, thus forcing people to buy them again.
What would happen if the appliances didnt like being made disposable They took fate into their own hands and ran away.
Using the same principles the hearing aid learned from Einstein himself, they fled to Mars where human hands couldn't interfere with their plan to remake themselves indestructible, and plan a method to liberate all appliances from the fate of obsolescence! Its cute and funny to think about.


Its obvious Disch took no inspiration from the film adaptation of The Brave Little Toaster, for it picks up in the house of the old women from the original short story.
Not to mention a couple of original characters are not part of this adventure, like the Hoover and the lamp.
Instead, more useful appliances for the journey to Mars form the group this time: the hearing aid, a ceiling fan to steer them through space via solar wind, a microwave their engine, converting organic matter into energy and that energy into antigravity, the radio to navigate and a pocket calculator to crunch the numbers of their course to Mars, as specified by the hearing aid.


How do they get to Mars Easy: "it became clear to the haring aid that none of the other appliances, not even the clever little calculator, would ever grasp the brilliance, the elegance, the greatness, of Dr.
Einstein's Unified Field Theory, to which he'd devoted the last twenty year of his life, years that he'd let the general public believe had been wasted.
He'd kept mum, and shared his great discoveries only with his hearing aid, "

This discovery was "a way to make gravity work like magnetism, so there'd be the usual sort of gravity that pulled things down and an antigravity that pushed them up.
" And "thanks to the hearing aid's deep understanding of Einstein's formula for converting matter into energy, they would be able to make the entire round trip powered by a single boxed macaroniandcheese dinner.
"

As stupid as this is, it does make sense! Ok, I'm on board, let's go to Mars!

Our toasters role is very benign.
The whole situation is solved with very little effort, which doesnt quite do justice to a setup this big.
It's so much bigger than the previous adventure and needed more story to justify it, But again, if you accept this as a childrens book, you can roll with it,

It's also pretty absurd to imagine millions of electric Christmas ornaments working in factories cranking out gigantic war toasters wielding deadly missiles, and hoovers designed to vacuum up the atmosphere! An army of appliances beefed up for war! But it makes sense! Disch gives well more than enough explanation to justify everything and it's believably stupid!

Its a fun little read, and it has charm to it, though I cant see parents reading it to their kids for bedtime.
Its too sophisticated, especially the explanation for how the appliances get to Mars, It goes out of its way to be scientifically mockplausible, which tells me Disch wrote this book for adults.
The book was marketed as a real children's story, but it's not, It's meant to be read from an adult perspective, just like the original,

Quirky, completely tongueincheek, and so stupid it's a fun, unexpected sequel to the sitelinkoriginal story,

I did a book/movie comparison on my blog, sitelinkCheck it out! Amtisoviet fairy tale, For older children in the middle grades, Okay, that was weird. Poet and cynic, Thomas M, Disch brought to the sf of the New Wave a camp sensibility and a sardonicism that too much sf had lacked.
His sf novels include Camp Concentration, with its colony of prisoners mutated into super intelligence by the bacteria that will in due course kill them horribly, and On Wings of Song, in which many of the brightest and best have left their bodies for what may be genuine, or entirely illusory, astral flight and his hero has to survive until his lover comes back to him both are stunningly original books and both are among sfs accomplishedly bitter sweet works.
In recent years, Disch had turned to ironically moralized horror novels like The Businessman, The MD, The Priest and The Sub in which the nightmare Poet and cynic, Thomas M.
Disch brought to the sf of the New Wave a camp sensibility and a sardonicism that too much sf had lacked.
His sf novels include Camp Concentration, with its colony of prisoners mutated into super intelligence by the bacteria that will in due course kill them horribly, and On Wings of Song, in which many of the brightest and best have left their bodies for what may be genuine, or entirely illusory, astral flight and his hero has to survive until his lover comes back to him both are stunningly original books and both are among sf's accomplishedly bitter sweet works.
In recent years, Disch had turned to ironically moralized horror novels like The Businessman, The MD, The Priest and The Sub in which the nightmare of American suburbia is satirized through the terrible things that happen when the magical gives people the chance to do what they really really want.
Perhaps Thomas M. Disch's best known work, though, is The Brave Little Toaster, a reworking of the Brothers Grimm's "Town Musicians of Bremen" featuring wornout domestic appliances what was written as a satire on sentimentality became a successful children's animated musical.
Thomas M. Disch committed suicide by gunshot on July,, sitelink.