Customer Reviews

Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book started out amazingly well. I found myself really getting pulled into an intriguing plot that was left ambiguous enough to willingly drag me along as a reader. Pat Murphy set up a situation on a cruise line involving two single women, a crusty old science fiction writer and members of the crew. The interactions at first between these protagonists were so craftily done that I found myself feeling like I was not only getting to know them, but also wishing that these were my own friends.

However, then Murphy takes a very childish turn about 80% of they way through the book and instead of remaining sophisticated starts getting just plain goofy. I think that this was the point of the story, and I understood why she did what she did, but I felt all of a sudden like I was reading a book written for 7th graders and not a fitting ending to a great start. In fact it was a pretty lazy ending. Also, the characters that I was enjoying reading so much fell apart as well and became cardboard imitations of them selves.

If you have not read Connie Willis before, I would recommend that you start with her before Pat Murphy. I was even thinking at the back of my mind that Murphy might have been an alias for Willis before it started falling apart. `To Say Nothing of the Dog' might be the best science fiction book written in the last two decades and would be a much more satisfying read I promise you.

If you have read both Willis and Pat Murphy and are looking for similar authors, I would recommend that you branch out into mysteries and try `Break Up' by Dana Stabenow or `Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet' by MC Beaton. One other author of note similar to what Pat Murphy is attempting here would be `Practical Magic' by Alice Hoffman.

Pat Murphy concludes her light-hearted metafictional trilogy with _Adventures and Time and Space with Max Merriwell_. Max Merriwell is an SF writer who also writes fantasy as Mary Maxwell, and hard-boiled mysteries as Weldon Merrimax. Murphy's previous two novels were _Wild Angels_, ostensibly by Max Merriwell writing as "Mary Maxwell", and _There and Back Again by Max Merriwell_, a retelling of _The Hobbit_ as SF.

The previous books were quite light in tone, and this new book is also fairly frothy, and it's also quite fun. The main character is Susan Galina, a recently divorced librarian from San Francisco, who has won a free cruise to London. She has invited her friend Pat Murphy, a graduate student in Physics, who doesn't seem to resemble the author externally -- at any rate, I don't think the real Pat Murphy has spiked blue hair. Also on the cruise is Max Merriwell, who has agreed to give a writers' workshop in exchange for his ticket. The other main character is the ship's security director, Tom Clayton, with whom Pat immediately tries to set Susan up, abetted by Tom's friend Ian, a computer expert who handles the ship's new electronic ticketing system among other things.

The ship is to pass through the Bermuda Triangle on its way across the ocean. This is the trigger for a series of mysterious events -- the appearance of both of Max's pseudonyms as real, drinks-buying (and inventing) people; the appearance of characters from _Wild Angel_, including more versions of Pat Murphy; an apparent murder; and a crisis involving radical physics concepts as explained by the character Pat Murphy, such as the affect of consciousness on quantum states, and different possible interpretations of uncertainty and the Many Worlds theory.

Alongside this metafictional skullduggery there is the not very suspenseful but nicely portrayed developing romance between Tom and Susan, and the simple story of the cruise across the Atlantic, with pleasant landscapes described in Bermuda and the Azores. There are also interludes discussing the physics (in the Pat Murphy persona) and writing (as Max Merriwell describes the process). All is brought to a satisfying, if slightly convenient, conclusion. An enjoyable read, nothing Earth-shaking, but quite fun.

Adventures finds Pat Murphy in the final stretch of her three book exploration of the nature of fiction and identity, a journey which began with a tribute to Tolkien's The Hobbit (1999's There and Back Again) and continued with an equally intriguing Burroughs homage (2000's Wild Angel). As with many journeys, however, the trip home is somewhat of an anti-climax. This is surprising, considering that Murphy revisits so many of the themes and motifs that made the first two parts of this trilogy so enjoyable.

Adventures is the story of Susan Galina, who, seeking to heal wounds inflicted by her recent divorce, agrees to join her friend Pat Murphy on a trip aboard the luxury cruise vessel Odyssey. Free spirit Pat plans to continue work on her doctoral thesis on quantum physics while on board, while shy and retiring Susan, an avid science fiction/fantasy fan, hopes to catch up on her reading. To that end, she has brought two novels, entitled There and Back Again and Wild Angel, with her.

As a bonus, Max Merriwell, the author of both these books, is also aboard, scheduled to teach a creative writing class. Merriwell (whose name invokes that of prolific dime novelist Frank Merriwell) has gained notoriety by writing science fiction (like There and Back Again) under his own name, fantasy (like Wild Angel) under the name Mary Maxwell, and best selling detective novels under the name Weldon Merrimax.

The cruise proceeds smoothly until the ship enters the Bermuda Triangle. Merriwell receives a threatening note signed by, of all people, Weldon Merrimax. Later, several passengers witness a man claiming to be Merrimax apparently killing a male passenger named Pat Murphy who is either a stowaway or a figment of someone's imagination. Susan has an encounter with Merrimax, and also with a woman named Mary Maxwell, both of whom characteristically disappear soon thereafter. Events also occur onboard which echo those chronicled in the Merriwell novels she's been reading, events which suggest that different realities are bleeding over into each other, causing no small amount of chaos on board the cruise ship.

While the first two installments in this trilogy were enjoyable celebrations of story, Adventures has a less lively, more clinical feel, as Murphy reiterates points which were already clearly made in those novels. Against a backdrop of a quantum reality where infinite possibilities overlap, Murphy again makes her point that reality is what we make of it, that life is journey upon which we can endlessly reinvent ourselves. She endlessly chews on these notions, even going so far as to provide a scientific explanation of events in excerpts from fictional Pat Murphy's "Bad Grrlz's Guide to Physics", portions of which alternate with the regular text. For those who haven't gotten the message yet, Murphy clarifies the point in her Afterward, stating:

"We are all fiction writers: we are all liars. Without knowing it, we make up stories about the world. And then we believe that are stories are true and ignore our own roles in creating the version of the world in which we live."

What's really disappointing about the conclusion of this grand experiment is that Murphy virtually ignores the magic she tapped into in the first two books, choosing instead to emphasize her own cleverness over that of the artists who inspired her. Those novels, which updated classic genre stories, felt more like collaborative efforts between Murphy and her literary heroes, true hybrids which transcended their already worthy source material. Based on the tantalizing excerpts of Mary Maxwell's Here Be Dragons, Max Merriwell's The Twisted Band, and Weldon Merrimax's Tell Me No Lies which appear at the head of each chapter, Murphy might have a few more surprises in her bag of tricks. Here's hoping that's the case.

Like all of the novels by Pat Murphy/Max Merriwell/Mary Maxwell, this is a fun book that takes you to odd places inhabited by even odder people. It's a lot of fun, has some interesting insight into how people invent their own lives, and says a few things about Quantum Physics as well. Enjoy!

Before I start let me say that cruise ships are fun, safe, and really worth the money you dish out. So the fact that this story is set on a cruise ship should not, in any way, make you scared to go onto a ship. Not that this story is scary. Oh no. Nor is it really a thriller. No, not really.
It is fun. Good writing, weird science and ideas, great characters, even a cocktail recipe. Frankly, I don't want to explain too much of the plot because it would take a lot of the fun away. Add the Bermuda Triangle to wolves, UFOs, drunk passengers, Bad Grrlz, characters from novels that don't exist and you have a enjoyable time. Just add some rum, sun block and a good deck chair.
I would suggest, after reading this, would be the two books, The Man in the High Castle and Dancing with Werewolves (Delilah Street; Paranormal Investigator).

This is a mind bending romp into quantum mechanics on a cruise ship. It is also a story of how a woman who has always been a good girl decides to reenvent her life. If you like to take the occasional walk on the wild side in science fiction/ fantasy this is a good read for a cold, gray day.

Recently, I had some time to kill before a Boy Scout meeting so I jumped into a used book store and grabbed this off the shelf and it turned out to be a real find. I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Pat Murphy.

In it, Susan, a timid divorcee is taking a cruise with her friend Pat. She meets a writer, Max Merriwel who is giving a writer's seminar during the cruise. Max, who has written under multiple pen names befriends Susan. As the ship moves into the Bermuda Triangle, strange things begin to happen, of course. Susan begins to meet people who appear to be the enbodiments of those Max's pseudonyms. What is going on? Susan discovers that not all of them are friendly and Max may be in danger. And who is the character Pat Murphy? Susan tries to sort all of this out as she finds exciting romance on the cruise.

This book was a lot of fun. It has adventure, comedy, excitement and even a bit of quantum physics. I plan to read Murphy's books that preceded this one, "There And Back Again", and "Wild Angel".

Just remember the phrase "Flaming Rum Monkey" & you'll be okay.
I have to tell you that after being delighted by this book; I went to Emeril's restaurant at CityWalk in Orlando for my birthday & had their best barkeep Susan make this drink for me...AWESOME. But it is only a portion of the book that keeps me coming back & re-reading it over & over again - & learning something new each time.
Pataphysics, Time/Space Continuim, things that I as a math phobe in a million years wouldn't be learning in college...however, as a confirmed sci-fi reader since the early 60's & a profound collector of names like Saberhagen, Sagan & Asimov; have bumped into the use of said ideas.
The writer's workshop onboard ship also fired me to begin writing again. What a GREAT book. Even the use of firing the imagination & watching those things come to life, albeit with extra stimulis & the use of locations like the Bermuda Triangle.
What I would have to say about this book is that it allows you to SCIENTIFICALLY let your hair down & just suspend your mind long enough to enjoy the personal interactions with the characters & fill your mind with the additional more technical subjects like Shroedinger's Cat & become enchanted with science like you've never envisioned it before, certainly not out of any middle or upper level high school or undergrad college course that I ever took.
I loved this book, my mother, the first woman draftswoman engineer graduated in America in the 1940's loved it & I'm sending it now to every engineer type that I know to see what happens to their own personal goals in creating new concepts from seeds of change...
Seeds of change...that's what Pat Murphy's books are...
seeds of change...
Enjoy
[...]

This was a fun little jaunt, using various quantum theories to pull characters and plot twists into the story. This kept things interesting, and the mechanism worked well due to small interspersed chapters from the "Bad Grrl's Guide to Physics", which explained the concepts to those who weren't already familiar with them (which, in all fairness, most people probably were).

A few things bothered me, though. First, the re-use of names, book titles, characters and concepts was very distracting for the first half of the book. As the end drew near, these circular references actually helped the story along, but at the beginning they were simply irritating. I almost put the book down around page 100. However, I stuck to it, and am glad that I did. Overall the book is an easy read and it's worth it.

A last nit-picky criticism would be that Murphy sometimes gets lazy with descriptions, using the same words several times within a few paragraphs, and never really stretching to create any empathy through images. Still, while descriptions are weak, the characters themselves, and their actions, are realistic and colorful.

This book was just a few potentialities away from being a five-star book. It was enjoyable enough to make me grab a copy of Murphy's "There and Back Again".

This book is perfect for sitting on the back porch on a beautiful summer Saturday afternoon. The book is delightfully light without feeing frivilous. You'll finish it with a smile on your face and the feeling of a well spent afternoon. Descriptions of the plot would give away much of the fun ...Buy a copy for yourself, and buy one for a friend. It's well worth the investment.