Time Pimp

Garrett Cook’s Time Pimp (2013) is a satirical novel in the bizarro fiction genre. Bizarro is a maximalist style that combines absurdist, grotesque, parodic, and hyperbolic elements to tweak the fantasy and science fiction genres into mind-bending, sometimes intentionally off-putting, places. The intention is subversion, an upending of expectations, and highly controlled chaos. As author Jeff Burk describes Time Cop, in this case, the result is “One part Doctor Who, one part Hustler Magazine, and the most fun you'll have reading cosmic smut.”

Time Pimp is a collection of four connected novellas that advance a single plot. The novel’s main character is Time Pimp, whose name is an apt description of his job: He travels through time seeing to the often strange sexual needs (always very explicitly described in the text) of important figures from history with his stable of hos that hail from every time period and planet—for the right price, of course. Time Pimp’s aesthetic is important, based on 1970s flamboyance: He drives a huge interstellar purple Cadillac, knows enough alchemy to turn water into cognac, wears outrageous clothes, carries a rabbit-headed cane that is the source of his power, and walks around on platform shoes with clear aquarium heels. Inside those heels, there are sentient octopi that give Time Pimp advice but might have a more sinister agenda of their own.

When the novel opens, Time Pimp has successfully catered to the sexual preferences of figures such as Caligula, Teddy Roosevelt, Edgar Allen Poe, Gandhi, and Ayn Rand from his home base, the land of Netzach: As Time Pimp puts it, “Dante Alighieri is gonna get hisself laid and I am gonna get myself paid.” These efforts keep the universe healthy and on track. Now, he is staging an enormous orgy in Netzach, with more than just his income and reputation on the line. If the event doesn’t go off with perfect freakiness, Time Pimp is in danger of losing his player card.



The problem isn’t just one of logistics, however. Time Pimp has a nemesis that is out to get rid of him for good—his brother, Death Pimp. Unlike Time Pimp, whose purpose is life-affirming, sex-positive, and joyful, Death Pimp heads up The Morality Front, a force fueled by prudery and naysaying. The Morality Front is desperate to impose its strict values on the galaxy, shutting down the easy access to Free Love that Time Pimp provides. Death Pimp’s goal, however, is to cement solo rule over all the timestreams. Once he has done that, he and his evil henchmen—a panda scientist named Professor Panda and Sister Cecilia, a nun in full dominatrix leather—will use The Morality Front to bring the dead back to zombie un-life and pimp them out to clients as a way of discouraging sexual freedom.

Death Pimp disrupts Time Pimp’s orgy, causing the deaths of many of the attendees. As a result, The Council finds Time Pimp guilty of malfeasance and condemns him to a terrible punishment: the loss of his pimpitude and a lifetime as a ho. With the help of Sherlock Holmes and Van Helsing, who chafe at having to work side by side, Time Pimp must figure out a way to clear his name and reinstate himself into his former status, while also trying to patch things up with his true love, Sylvia Plath. In the meantime, Death Pimp rallies his legions of Haters to fully come into his newfound power.

As Time Pimp tries to right Death Pimp’s wrongs, the novel explores the surprisingly complex backstory and psychological dynamic between the two brothers. We learn about Time Pimp’s presumption and over-confidence—flaws which have in many ways been as destructive in his life as his brother’s activities. In the course of solving the mystery of what went wrong at the orgy, Time Pimp learns and grows as a character, accepting and understanding himself and his shortcomings. Readers praise the subtle and surprising way that Cook takes the raunchy silliness that opens the novel to a touching and thought-provoking place. What begins as a sex romp without boundaries of taste ends as a sweet celebration of individual freedom and an argument for taking responsibility for one’s behavior.



Of course, because this is a novel named Time Pimp, the sweet resolution is quickly followed by a new, better, even more explicit orgy, featuring incongruous couplings between historical figures such as the marathon of sexual positions enjoyed by Ayn Rand and Genghis Khan.