Traitor to the Living by Philip José Farmer
My rating: 3/5 cats
oh, sci-fi nerds, i am trying to live amongst you.
lord knows i do not want to offend the great unwashed masses of science fiction fans with their squeezing of themselves into bookstore aisles too narrow for their girth to talk loudly and nasally about every single plot point in every single star trek book and their hushing up every time a girl walks by. i am not looking to offend. with their nose-picking and cavalier approach to hygiene and noise pollution. (oh, the guffaws…) i don’t mean to make fun of the adolescent simplicity of your sexual fantasies, but—man—i just don’t get you.
but i’m keeeeeding! bird brian sent me this book, just like he sent me blood music, because he wants me to suffer! okay, it’s not that bad. but i think that overall, science fiction does not please me as much as it pleases other people. i thought he was sending me this because it was SO bad, that i would have a field day with the review. his review was hidden under a spoiler blanket, so i couldn’t even read it—i was operating in the dark. but as i was reading the book, i was thinking “oh, this isn’t terrible.”
HIGH PRAISE INDEED!
but at the end of it all, i thought the opportunity for this kind of literary invention, a machine that can talk to the freaking dead, was wasted on some small-fry stuff. solving a murder and getting to the bottom of that huge problem facing our world: the inconsistencies of etruscan linguistics??
hmmm…
those who fail to remember the past, indeed.
i think the repercussions of his own literary invention scared him off from too close an examination, which is why all the religious elements were kept as background characters and sideplots. and the true historical benefits were—what—too difficult? probably. instead, this becomes a more personal story—the solving of a murrrrderrr, the getting to the bottom of this wacky machine and what it can do (but small-scale, please—we lack a budget), and the intercourse with our cousin along the way! whaaaat—it’s the future! we are all metric now. and in the metric system, it is okay to have sex with your cousin.
i have nothing useful to say about this book. it suffers from a lot of the salacious-undercurrents as other sci-fi i have experienced from this era (this one is 1973)
salacious?? did someone say “salacious??”
(gotta win those nerds back…)
but there is just this “ick” feeling for me. all the women are “full-breasted” and clothing is optional, and the clothing that does exist, for women, anyway, does not include undergarments, making movement problematic. that’s not sexy to me—that’s an eleven-year-old alone under the covers.
i am not giving up on the genre, though—i am told there are other books i might like.
brian likes dick. he says i should try to get into dick. i told him greg forced dick on me one time and i didn’t like it. brian said that dick is something someone has to discover for themselves. he says he was introduced to dick when he was thirteen and it was a magical summer. i might be too old for dick.
but i will keep trying. maybe someday i will find the sci-fi that is right for me.
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