Customer Reviews

Conscience of the Beagle

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

 

 

Patricia Anthony is science fiction's best kept secret. It's really rather sad because she's probably one of the best contemporary novelist and short story writers around. Her novel Brother Termite managed to subvert a genre that had become little better than cliche. In the process she also managed to satirize politics, our view of aliens and our obssessive/compulsive media.

Essentially, isn't quite what he seems and neither is this richly plotted mystery sf novel. I'm not going to recap the plot here as it's been done quite well in the amazon.com review but suffice to say that Anthony, like Phil Dick, takes science fiction (and other genre)conventions and likes to turn them inside out/upside down. Then she procedes to wrap a characters around the skeleton of the plot and finally top it off by wrapping her novels (and short stories)in a narrative skin that keeps your attention regardless of the length of the story.

I'd also recommend Anthony's Flaunders. It redefines the literary war novel. A pity she hasn't written anything new in some time.

Chapter One. Break out the Likastones.

This book was originally out in hard cover and may still be available from First Books.

Beagle is a nifty police procedural set against an alien backdrop. Holloway is haunted and sad. Beagle - an enigma to all but himself. Who killed Holloway's wife? What force is behind the revolution on Tennyson? The answer is linked in the mind of a dead detective bound to the body of an android. But Beagle may have ghosts of his own to contend with.

One of Anthony's best. Check it out.

I have now read all of Patricia Anthony's novels, griping about the way she apparently can't seem to close a book. I don't know the chronological order of printing but this just happens to be the one I read last. And apparently I saved the best for last. Finally, an earth-shattering climax!

This book contains everything that makes her other novels such compelling material. Interesting, unique characters. Pathos, unique writing style, compelling plot. Everything. This one also has the kind of ending I've been waiting for. Unexpected, leave my mouth hanging to the floor shocking.

Based on her other books I can understand why her books sell for a penny everywhere. My complaint about the endings is a valid one, I think, and may be a huge contributing factor to their lack of popularity.

Still it's a shame that she hasn't written anymore. This book proves that she can do it, and do it big.

Take a pinch of hard-boiled detective fiction and mix it in with some science fiction and throw in a dash of political thriller for good measure. If what you came up with was more than the combination of its parts, then you may be as good a writer as Patricia Anthony.

Describing the plot of this book does not do it justice. Like Dick, Anthony uses science fiction tropes and plot points to engage in a meditation on the nature of being human.

One of the best books, from one of speculative fiction's (or any kind of fiction, actually) unsung writers.

Find a copy if you can and give it a read.

This book came highly recommended to me from an extremely literate friend. It was my first experience with a Patricia Anthony book, but I'm fairly well read in science fiction overall.

If you're looking for some good ol' comfy sci-fi reading with a couple big plot twists to spice up the read, this book is a great place to start - at 240 pages, it's a quick read. Also, like all (well, most) good science fiction, this story rightly focuses on the unfolding human drama (in the context of new technologies) and one of the main devices used to keep you on the edge of your seat is the strongly protagonist-centric view of the world. A tangled weave of interplanetary political intrigue, religion, sexuality, and J. Edgar Hoover style police state paranoia add a lot of texture to the story.

Likes:
- Holloway's (the protagonist) inner tragedy, while overly analytical, rang true from a basic emotional standpoint.
- Anthony's rendition of an emotionally unbalanced man's view of love and sex shows an refreshingly perspicacious view.

Dislikes:
- The book tries to accomplish an awful lot in 240 pages. The reader gets just a brush with the texture alluded to above. For example, the Beagle, an artifically created personality construct, could have been developed more. Compare cf. the constructs in "Nature's End" by Strieber and Kunetka.
- For me, this book was uncomfortably similar to "Caves of Steel" by Asimov. Earth in political turmoil with an advanced off-Earth human colony? A sci-fi detective story? A government dictated artificial economic stratification of society with overpopulation of Earth? Constructs vs. robots?

Takeaway: it keeps you in suspense, it's got some very interesting plot twists, you won't be sorry you read it, but it won't change your life either (rather, it didn't change mine).

Conscience of the Beagle (1993) by Patricia Anthony - 201 pages - rating: 6/10

Four top notch investigators are dispatched from earth to a peaceful colonial world to capture the terrorists responsible for a series of deadly attacks.

The ideas are fresh and the feel is unique. The characters are well developed and the action moves along at a good pace.

The author does have a problem however with sentence/paragraph structure and as a result the prose comes off as jerky and confusing. This problem continues through out the entire book and almost totally ruins what would otherwise have been a compelling story.

An excellent ending and the best sex scene ever in a science fiction novel save Conscience of the Beagle from a dismal 4/10 rating.

Claus Kellermann
2006 Aug 5
Sci_Fi_Researcher@yahoo.com