Doug Sharp's Channel Zilch is an offbeat satirical thriller that gleefully collides corporate media, reality television, aerospace engineering and American celebrity culture.

At its centre is an improbable plan to steal a space shuttle, but the novel is less interested in technological spectacle than in the absurd ecosystem of television executives, ratings logic and manufactured personalities that make such a scheme imaginable. Sharp, himself a veteran of the television industry, writes with the insider's eye for bureaucracy, vanity and institutional nonsense.

The novel occupies an interesting space between comic caper, media satire and near-future speculative fiction. Its rapid-fire dialogue and eccentric cast recall the tradition of Carl Hiaasen or Christopher Moore, while its fascination with branding, image management and entertainment-as-politics feel very much contemporary.

Panverse Publishing paperback (2013). Light shelf wear with a clean, tightly bound interior.