A fun, quick little read. Carol bought me this book after reading an interview with author John Swartzwelder, who also wrote (as you can see from the cover) 59 episodes of The Simpsons. It's part detective story, part sci-fi, and all sprinkled with his particular style of offbeat humor.

The story follows Frank Burly, who is perhaps the world's dumbest private eye, as he bumbles his way through a case that takes him back and forth between the 40s and the present day, with a few other temporal stops along the way. And just in case you're worried that the title is a spoiler... the time machine DIDN'T do it, but it definitely helped. =)

Really funny time travel detective novel by one of the greatest Simpsons writers. At times I got a little tired of Burley just doing the first thing that came into his mind with no foresight into the consequences. But the story went cool places.

I’m going to check out more in the series. I really wish the author would put the ebooks on the kobo store, and not only the kindle store.

I found this little book in a used book store and saw it was written by a writer from The Simpsons so I bought it. It's exactly what I was expecting, a humorous book using cheap jokes to elicit a laugh and not meant to be fine literature but just entertaining. It's about a bumbling private detective who is constantly being beaten up and is trying to solve a case when he discovers a time machine being used by criminals. A short but entertaining read.

Debut 'novel' by one of the most prolific Simpsons writers, the term novel is used somewhat advisedly as while the story has a beginning, middle and end, a lot of the structure along the way is more of a holding place for various non-sequiturs and comical asides. John will drop an idea into a sentence or a piece of dialogue for a joke, even if it contradicts something else or doesn't quite fit, though arguably that's an additional part of the humour.

These gags are amazing (Simpsons fans will recognise some of the insanity and wit), but like I said before, does tend to shake up the idea of a traditional novel. Personally I'm fine with this but if you aren't here to hear some Swartzwelder one liners and mad ideas, knock at least one star off my rating.

An absolutely hilarious novel. I laughed out loud numerous times. A very quick, joyful read.

The Time Machine Did It is really, really, really funny. I decided to read it after someone posted the first page as "the funniest first page of any book."

It is extremely silly, with a dope of a detective explaining a case he barely understands, generally stumbling on important clues several times before he notices them. A typical bit is the detective handing someone a card and saying, "I had cards printed up saying I'm a private eye, so I guess until someone prints up some cards saying I'm not, I am." I find that hilariously weird.

The book is wonderful, but perhaps best read in small doses, as it reads a little like a standup comedy routine. It's got a tremendous number of hilarious jokes, but there is a sameness to the delivery that can be wearying if you read too much at one setting. And the story isn't particularly clever or engaging; this is a book you read entirely because it's laugh out loud funny all the time.

This is the first Swartzwelder book I've read, but definitely won't be the last.

Completely bizarre but often very funny read you'll finish in a day. Author wrote more episodes of The Simpsons (during the years when The Simpsons were still worth watching) and you'll recognize the humor.

This is a sometimes exhausting novella which is double-parody of detective- and science-fiction, written by legendary and secretive ex-Simpsons contributor, John Swartzwelder. The jokes fly thick and fast. Not all hit the mark, and many somewhat interrupt the flow of the story, but at times there are moments of fine comic timing that make it all worth while.

...for example in this early vignette, when the lead character, Detective Burley, drops by a homeless man's home in the local dump and asks about a suspiciously valuable-looking object in his possession:

n  There were fancy paintings on the wall. I looked closer at one of them. It showed an old lady sitting on a chair.
"Did you paint this?" I asked. "Because it's good."
"Yeah, I painted it last night. So what? Get outta here. You ain't invited to as many places as you show up to."
There was a brass plate attached to the frame that said "Whistler's Mother."
"Wait a minute." I said. "This is Whistler's Mother!"
"Used to be, maybe. It's my mother now." [pg 18] n

At other times the style didn't quite work for me, and worked almost as distractions from serious investment in the characters or narrative. Sometimes, for example, scenes of cartoonish action flashed by and were then already gone in the space of a couple of sentences:

n  I called them up, told them where the car was, and jumped out. I was going over sixty at the time, but luckily I didn't hit the ground. There was a cliff there and I just went harmlessly over that. But just when you're sailing along, thinking everything is going to be okay, something unexpected comes along to jar you out of your complacency. For me, in this case, it was the bottom of the cliff. I got bruised up pretty bad - they say I bounced for an hour - but luckily no bones were broken. That's where that protective layer of fat I was telling you about comes in. [pg 37]n

Can you really imagine him bouncing for "an hour"?

Swartzwelder has a reputation for oddness and anti-social tendencies. Speculating, some passages seemed as if spat out unfettered by some comedy generating machine. If the Simpsons - to its benefit - was often like this in parts, it also had intermittent moments of pathos, even to the point of schmalziness. This book lacks that, and misses it too.

The plot device of the time machine allows Swartzwelder to exploit this knowledge of americana to the full, and showcases a fertile comic instinct, brimming with both affection and subversion for american pop-culture iconography. This book is flawed, but what with it being his first published, I would not say no to reading him again, and I can certainly recommend this one for its better moments.

Funny

An enjoyable read. Lots of great one liners. Also jokes that require more than one line. And some running jokes that require you to remember the jokes from before. If you're like the memento guy, you probably won't get the running jokes, but the one-liners will do you nicely.

The hero of The Time Machine Did It is a stupid overweight detective named Homer Simpson Frank Burly.

It’s easy to confuse Homer with Frank because author John Swartzwelder wrote over 50 episodes of The Simpsons. After he left the show, Swartzwelder, a notorious recluse, started writing absurd comic novels that he has self-published to avoid having to deal with demands of publishers. Apparently you can take the writer out of The Simpsons but you can’t take The Simpsons out of the writer because there’s a streak of outlandish humor featuring the so-dumb-it’s-smart lines that the show excelled at in its prime.

Frank Burly is a lousy detective who gets hired by a penniless bum who claims he was rich just the day before, and he wants Frank to find a figurine that used to be in the mansion he claimed he owned. Slow-witted Frank goes around asking questions and getting beaten up by crooked cops and criminals until he realizes that the thieves have gotten their hands on a time machine and are going to the past and stealing everything they can. Frank manages to get the time machine and takes his own trip to the past where he promptly starts wrecking history by doing things like starting World War II.

The plot, such as it is, is really just an excuse to string together a bunch of jokes about how stupid Frank is. For example:

“He went on and on about how delicate space and time was. I didn’t buy it. I mean, if you think it’s easy to change world events, try it. You don’t need a time machine. You’re already living in somebody’s past and someone else’s future. Just step on a bug or something and see what that gets you. See if now you were never born or suddenly now there’s fifty Hitlers in your bathroom, crapping all over everything. It ain’t going to happen. At least that’s what I figured.”

So there’s some funny stuff here, but with no real characters or plot, it’s really just a bunch of jokes strung together with no real impact after the initial chuckle factor. If you’re in the mood for some absurd humor, it’s quick and good for laughs, but overall it reads like a script for one of Treehouse of Horror scenes from The Simpsons.

In college when I was obsessively re-watching early-mid-90s era Simpsons episodes, I discovered that one of the show's best writers, John Swartzwelder, had committed to two novellas. The other was a Western spoof called Double Wonderful, which I purchased but never read. This seemed like more interested material, and I came to enthusiastically read about half of The Time Machine Did It in late 2005-early 2006 (I believe). When I was packing away books to ship to my new home in Wisconsin just months ago, I decided to include this to finally finish it. Of course I needed a little recapitulation. Unfortunately, reexamining this and completing it nearly six years later wasn't/isn't very nostalgic at all. I found it hard to believe I highly praised this book that reads like the outline of a better, more humorous one. It, understandably, has a t.v. screenplay quality with tons of quips on historical events and repeated 'winking' at the reader (or fourth wall-breaking). If you're familiar with Swartzwelder's humor, you know it translates better to the short story format or something visual. Instead of shelling out $16 for this or any of his other seven novellas, wouldn't it be more interesting if he teamed up with an acclaimed graphic artist? Let's encourage that.

A breezily amusing novella with an incredibly high gag-to-sentence ratio. The closest reference is indeed the gently absurd family-friendly humour of The Simpsons - although in book form you lose the visual gags and voice acting that make it a classic comedy. Thankfully, The Time Machine Did It is short - if much longer, I think the books rapid fire silliness would become grating.