The Herb and Gary Trilogy:

A (Thankfully?) Unfinished Saga

I was 18 years old in the summer of 2006, and I worked at a terribly boring data entry job. To try to exorcise this boredom, I published a very silly science-fiction serial on a Blogspot page, adding one chapter at a time to the story, which was read by a very patient, generous, and loyal audience of about a dozen friends.

The serial involved convoluted cloning shenanigans; hungry, gargantuan sea monsters; very bad puns; MacGyver cameo appearances (really); violence and betrayal; and, of course, way too many Star Wars references.

Eventually, the 230-page story became Herb and Gary, my first fiction novel (well, unless we count a 60-page Tolkein/Warcraft ripoff that I wrote when I was 12, but we don’t need to talk about that). I even printed and sold a few copies, and I intended to write two sequels—Universal Rejects and King Zolthon. I had big plans for this saga.

The original story is no longer online or in print, and the sequels were never finished. Though in 2008 I did finish about 14 chapters of Universal Rejects, in which our heroes (a man named Herb, a dog named Gary, and their alien friend Zolthon) discover a mysterious “universal remote control” that can literally control the universe and propel them between multiple realities (a decade later, Rick and Morty used a very similar idea!).

Anyway, if you’re interested in checking out what a very young and immature version of Chris Wei was writing in the summer of 2006 to fight off the crushing weight of office mundanity, reach out to me and I reckon I might be able to dig up a copy.