Customer Reviews

Zombies of the Gene Pool

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a recovering fan. This means I haven't been to a con or a SF club meeting in over 5 years, but I still crave them.

I personally have a hard time viewing this as 'satirical' mystery, because I have known ALL the people in the story. I have been part of a Fen-house, full of hopeful writers and Big Name Fan wanna be's. At one point I was active in 5 different fan groups. I editted the SF club newsletter. I helped plan a moderately sized local convention for 5 years. Of course, I was quite sophisticated and not nearly as silly as all the others I hung around with...

I love the Jay Omega books and I hope Ms McCrumb is forthcoming with more. I have to say that I also enjoyed Bimbos more, but this was a close 2nd.

A word of warning for other recovering fans, reading these two novels and Highland Laddie Gone (about Scottish Recreationists (closely akin to SCA-ers)) made me crave fannish activities intensely. Fortunately, my recovery support group was there for me. If you are still active in fandom, you will probably recognize most of your friends or at least their type.

A 'must read' for anyone with a sense of humor, though those not involved in sf/fantasy fandom may not 'get' all the satire.

This is a sequel to McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun. The former was a dead-on, if somewhat patronizing view of the Fen, but this story combines the science fiction world with a wistful look at the destruction of Appalachian towns to build the dams that power so much of our modern world. I would have suggested doing one or the other - they are not meshed too well. Bimbos was a funny and witty look at science fiction fandom, in this book, too many sad and serious things are going on in this book to work with the same light-hearted style of parody.

The one flaw with Bimbos, and it is much worse in this book, is the extremely judgemental attitude of Marion Farley. Oh, it is fine to poke loving fun at eccentrics and employ stereotypes in this sort of satire. I simply get tired of Marion's huffing and puffing as if these people were somehow impinging on her rights, were personally offensive. She really ought to take her own advice and get a life. If she doesn't like them anymore, she shouldn't go to conventions. If McCrumb meant for us to take Marion as just another passenger on the ship of fools, or an amusing crank in her own way, it didn't come across to me. I thought she was to be taken very seriously as one of the few sane commentators on a crazy world. Jay is rather bemused himself, but he doesn't take the goings on so personally. Donna Andrews has much funnier takes on these sort of things in We'll Always Have Parrots (A Meg Langslow Mystery) and Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (A Meg Langslow Mystery).

I do at least applaud McCrumb for letting us understand the costs of our electricity. I had always naively supposed that wilderness areas were used, not that families were torn from long established homes. One cannot help but wonder just how well they were rewarded for this involuntary sacrifice.

In the 1950's, a group of science fiction fans decided to drive to WorldCon to meet their writer idols (and basically to have a big blast). They didn't make it to WorldCon, but they did make it to Wall Hollow, Tennessee, where all the members each wrote a story and buried it in a time capsule.

30 years later, several of the members of the group have hit it big as SF writers. Their reunion at Wall Hollow becomes a huge media event, with publishers bidding on the rights to the stories buried in the time capsule. But just before the reunion starts, someone is murdered.

`Zombies of the Gene Pool' is an entertaining book which includes well-drawn, quirky characters straight out of the science fiction world. McCrumb's writing and characterization are right on target. The payoff, for me, wasn't as satisfying as the journey, which in itself was quite fun. Fans of science fiction will enjoy this humorous, sometimes bittersweet look at the world of science fiction authors.

This is the sequel to Sharyn McCrumb's earlier novel,*Bimbos of the Death Sun*, which dealt with the foibles of science fiction conventioneers. Here, the writing is a bit more substantial and there are some interesting twists and turns in the plot. As a serious mystery, however, the work falls flat. McCrumb is at her best as a humorist, particularly when she is lampooning particular human stereotypes, such as sci-fi fanatics. But she hasn't really mastered the art of creating a convincing mystery that draws the reader in and then is wrapped up in convincing fashion at book's end.

This is the sequel to Sharyn McCrumb's earlier novel,*Bimbos of the Death Sun*, which dealt with the foibles of science fiction conventioneers. Here, the writing is a bit more substantial and there are some interesting twists and turns in the plot. As a serious mystery, however, the work falls flat. McCrumb is at her best when she is lampooning particular types of people, particularly sci-fi fanatics. But she hasn't really mastered the art of creating a convincing mystery that draws the reader in and then is wrapped up in convincing fashion at book's end.

Well, I agree that this book is not as sharp as "Bimbos of the Death Sun," but McCrumb's humorous slant on fans of SciFi/Fantasy and, to a lesser degree, the on-line community, is still prevelant. And of course, Dr. J. O. Mega and Dr. Marion Farley work well together, lending a comfortable atmosphere to their investigation of the obligatory murder...

Well, this chronicles a bunch of grown-up skiffy attendees. Since it's McCrumb, there is the obligatory murder, and stuff happens. It's pretty amusing. While it's not quite the hysterical level of Bimbos of the Death Sun, it's both silly and ironic. Again, it gives a good skewering of SF mores, something that never gets as much as it deserves.

Zombies of the Gene Pool is a sequel to the author's Bimbos of the Death Sun in that it follows the two leads--Jay and Marion--as they stumble into another murder mystery in and around science-fiction circles.

It's a decent murder-mystery. The reading goes fairly quickly, the characters are sufficiently developed to carry the plot, everything about the book is fine, if not great. Fans of Bimbos might be slightly disappointed in the read as Zombies takes itself much more seriously than did Bimbos. Bimbos was happy to present caricatures in place of people in order to better skewer "the fen"; Zombies, on the other hand, features more rounded, realistic characters and less parody/satire.

All in all, I thought it was alright. Honestly, I had hoped for something a little more along the lines of Bimbos in terms of humor, because there are tons of good murder-mysery fic, but what made Bimbos stand out was its absurd fantasy-con parody universe. Jay and Marion don't get developed at all--they're the same from page one to the last and only hang around, seemingly, to solve the mystery in the last fifteen pages. Also, it should be mentioned that, whatever one thinks about the rationale to name the original Bimbos of the Death Sun, this book has almost no justification for its title. It's part of the "parody" of the whole thing, of course, but the prospective reader should know that there are fewer Zombies in this novel than Bimbos in the last.

James Owen Mega alias Jay Omega and Marion Farley - the protagonist of McCrumbs brilliant and hilarious "Bimbos of the Death Sun" - return in this standalone follow-up novel.

It starts out when Marion and Jay discover the secret of one of her colleagues at the English Department: Erik is the man behind a well-known pseudonym, and the author of a classic science fiction novel whose identity has been a mystery for science fiction fans for decades.

30 years ago, Erik used to be a member of a group called the Lanthanides - big name fans, some fledgling authors, some fanzine publishers - who were famous for living together on a farm in Tennessee, and who had, on one special occasion, buried a time capsule on the grounds. Time has gone by, and some of the Lanthanides have become successful, rich and famous; others have dropped out of fandom; some are struggling to get by and a few members are dead by now. Even the farm is gone, drowned by a reservoir lake years ago. But as the dam needs maintenance, the lake is being drained and the grounds are for a short time accessible again. Some of the former Lanthanides have decided to make use of the opportunity, retrieve and open the time capsule, and Erik invites Marion and Jay to come along for the occasion.

The reunion quickly becomes a media event, due to the fame of some Lanthanides. But the party is crashed by one member who has not been invited, quite simply because everyone thought him to be dead - a fact which nobody really regretted. This man is now threatening to reveal some of his former friends' secrets from the past to the public. As every one of the group has some things that they'd rather leave buried in the past, it's no wonder that very soon after his surprise appearance, the man who was not-as-dead-as-everyone-believed is dead again, this time for real.

With media reps everywhere, a scandal is about to erupt. But Marion, who has found the body, has also come across a few strange details about this death, and she and Jay decide to investigate.

The murder happens rather late in the story and is accordingly quickly solved.
But it's not really the whodunit part that makes Sharyn McCrumbs Jay Omega books worth reading anyway, their main appeal is their setting in sci-fi and fantasy fandom. These novels are a bit like a time capsule themselves, a glimpse into fandom twenty-five years ago; the time of mimeographed fanzines, fans writing to each other by snail mail, the very early stages of computer games and internet. If you are familiar with fans of anything, you will recognize things that have changed and things that have stayed essentially the same.

But this is also where the novels have a minor problem, and where "Zombies"' greatest weakness lies.
Reading those novels today, their portrayal of fans seems to consist mainly of cliches and stereotypes.

Most fan characters are unattractive and unsociable in some way: Nerds, geeks, losers at life, sometimes overweight, sometimes spotty, sometimes both, you get the picture. #

This may have been somewhat rooted in reality at the time the novels were written (1988 and 1993), way before geekdom became fashionable of sorts. After all, even today, you do find people coming across like the living stereotype - they just make up nowhere near the majority of fandom (any more?).

So, from a contemporary reader's (and fan's) point of view, I miss the guy and girl next door, those who are no social outcasts, the regular people who happen to enjoy fandom, too. Today, they are plenty. In McCrumb's novels, they don't exist.

Nevertheless, there are people like the ones she describes, even today. Cliches aside, in "Bimbos", the portrayal of fans is done in a way that keeps you laughing throughout, and with Bernard, you get at least one sympathetic character you can identify with.

"Zombies", however, is a bit more cynical, more pensive and not quite as hilarious. I guess it really makes a difference that "Bimbos" describes fandom at a particular moment in time (during the convention), while in "Zombies", written several years later, the plot involves the passing of time, which drags in melancholy musings about life, death, loss, the price of success, the nature of happiness and so on and so forth yada yada. (No - not my favourite kind of read). In "Zombies", the fan characters are either naive dreamers and utopists who found their refuge in fandom because they are incapable of handling real life, or unscrupulous schemers who have no problem stealing from their best friends. And whatever course their life takes, fans - in this novel - always remain what they once were: either losers or a***oles.

The bitter view of fandom (and maybe of life in general) in this book took away quite some enjoyment from reading, although overall "Zombies" still makes a decent read. I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading - it's more that I'd recommend "Bimbos of the Death Sun" over it any day.

I've been devouring McCrumb's books since I discovered her last year. She's become one of my favorites for her wit, her sense of satire, and the fabulous characters she creates. All of these are present in Zombies, but unfortunately the murder mystery itself falls flat. The solution just pops out of nowhere (and not in the good way) and is almost anti-climactic. Given the plot holes required to make it work, it's probably not surprising that it comes off as clunky and awkward. Perhaps if she had a few more pages to develop it. I definitely think that fleshing out the idea of hidden secrets amongst the group of suspects would have helped a lot. The characters make this an interesting read in and of itself, but the main point of a whodunnit is the murder. IN that aspect, the book falls flat.