"Bimbos of the Death Sun" (it's a book title! a book title!)

Still nothing for September yet, eh? And I still haven't done my write up of Fanexpo?!? Er, I suck- but also, pretty tired lately. I fell asleep a good 6 hours before I planned to just now, and can only hope I can get back to sleep because I need.. to stay awake.. at night.. for work.

Sharyn McCrumb's "Bimbos of the Death Sun" was a quick, easy read. It'd been a while since I had one of those, so in that sense the book was quite refreshing. And, good or bad, I could've easily finished it off in a night, so not a whole lot of torture there (as it stands I finished it in a night and some change.... I ended up with stuff to do that kept me from finishing right away)

The book mostly follows this engineering professor who got this idea for a hard science concept, made it into an SF story, then got published with the embarrassing title "Bimbos of the Death Sun". Naturally, this professor would rather his students not know he wrote it... and that seems easily done, since even no one at the science fiction convention (where the book takes place) has really heard of the book.

And that's an example of a detail that comes up that has no bearing on anything. If there were a bunch of students at the convention that he had to dodge, that'd be one thing, as it is there was ONE student there grom his class, and he almost immediately tells him why he's there ("It's a long story.." No, it isn't.) and gets the kid to promise to not tell anyone at school about his book. Zero conflict, a pointless little side note.

A quick little epilogue where he returns to class to find EVERYONE now knows about his book, because the kid spilled the beans, would've been really funny, and justified the set up. This book is touted as humourous, if the critics are to be believed: "Bar none, McCrumb is the funniest woman writing mysteries today." - Kirkus Reviews

"Funniest woman writing mysteries". How much competition is there for that title?

I wasn't pleased with the mystery of the story. The character that was supposed to die and kick things off (as reported by the back of the book) doesn't shed this mortal coil until after a hundred pages in! I was beginning to wonder if there'd been some terrible advertising mistake here! But when there was finally a mystery to be solved, it still didn't feel like there was one, because I honestly didn't care.

I told someone that the real killer was obvious, but now that I think about it, yeah, I just didn't care until the book made it ridiculously clear who the killer was near the end.

To catch the killer, our engineering prof hero runs an unfair D&D game to get the guy to slip up and confess. He DOESN'T tell the police officer chilling out with him this plan, which ended up being insanely dangerous (the cop ends up surprised, with a broken arm AND shot! I'd be super mad at the protagonist for doing that to me, but they play it off as if it's nothing.)

And the second we see the protagonist is now into the D&D thing, it was clear he was pulling the old Hamlet trick... but it isn't until the very end when the english professor girlfriend is like "Ah! The play's the thing! I get it!" Evidence would've also worked.

Augh, the book is all over the place. With an ending like THAT, and since everyone could've safely been "player-killed" in a Dungeons and Dragons game, they should have really pushed the Hamlet connection, but no, it was just a one off line.

This book won an Edgar award, I believe the award for mystery fiction.

Bimbos of the Death Sun was written in 1988, so I was prepared to cut it some slack for its age, until I remembered: What? Did Poe create the genre in 1980? Was 'A Study in Scarlet' written in '82? Did Ronald Reagan feature prominently in 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'?

No? You say the mystery genre has been around longer than that? Even if the science convention stuff seems weirdly archaic ("we already use 'electronic mail' in the engineering department... it'll be a big thing in the future" and the police have no idea how to copy info onto a computer disk) I'm okay with that, that tech world was legitimately new. I'm sure there was a time when the police department thought computers were an impossible nut to crack!

But the craft of the mystery should have been no such novelty to the writer.

She, uh, really doesn't portray science fiction and fantasy fans in a positive light. She's probably more right than wrong about them, especially back in the 80's.

And what was the deal with the scottish folksinger? Were we supposed to think he killed the guy? Sure, the police wouldn't know he was innocent, but we were very aware of his lack of motive. To justify his place in the book, he SHOULD have been guilty.

I don't plan on reading the sequel, "Zombies of the Gene Pool".