7.8 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 1979 | 3.9/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Genres Science Fiction, Speculative fiction Similar Search for the Sun!, The Dark Mind, The Lost Worlds of Cronus, The Chaos Weapon, The Tyrant of Hades | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Unorthodox Engineers were the subject of a series of science fiction short stories by Colin Kapp. They were a misfit bunch of engineers who solved problems of alien technology/weird planets in the future. The stories had a very large grain-of-salt-type humor.
They were commanded by maverick engineer Fritz van Noon and included, amongst others, a convicted bank robber as quartermaster (on the entirely-sound grounds that he was likely to be the most capable person for the job).
The Unorthodox Engineers originally appeared in various British SF magazines:
Dobson Books published a collection of the stories as The Unorthodox Engineers {ISBN 0-234-72072-7} in November 1979.
The short story "The Pen and the Dark" was adapted into a text-based computer adventure game by Keith Campbell, with text by Colin Kapp. It was published in 1984 by Mosaic Publishing with the packaging for the game including a book copy of the original story.