Paul Pope’s Total THB Vol. 1 is the first of three volumes collecting Pope’s influential and playful sci-fi epic, a work that imagines the colonization of Mars and the life of a precocious teenage girl coming of age in a robot-driven extraterrestrial economy. Originally self-published in the 1990s, THB is the story of HR Watson, daughter of the mysterious inventor of THB, an innovative and powerful shape-shifting robot companion—an invention that has made her and her father’s company the focus of a repressive Martian colonial government.
In this 10-page excerpt, HR is attacked by a state-issued robot-piano until her household robot Augustus activates THB from its latent state-–it reverts into a small pill that can be activated by adding water—and saves them both from the intruder. Total THB Vol. 1 by Paul Pope is out now from 23rd Street Books.
