Bimbos of the Death Sun

I mentioned that one topic this blog would cover would books - the one's I've read anyway. Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb (originally published in 1987) is the first I've read (actually listened to) since I made this committment (threat?).

I'm actually a little embarassed by my selection of Bimbos. It's bad enough to be the most obscure of bloggers, without writing about books whose titles indicate that the obscurity is richly deserved. I mean, Bimbos of the Death Sun? Really! Wouldn't it have been nice if I could have started by telling the world what I think about Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or something?

My reading tastes actually tend to be all over the map but, even so, Bimbos is a bit of a departure for me. I only read it because I was looking for a short, unabridged, downloadable audiobook that would fit in some empty space on my MP3 player.

I have a long enough commute that I'm always listening to audiobooks in the car, while at the same time reading dead tree books at home. The problem with audiobooks, though, is that the selection tends to be limited. That is also their greatest virtue. Just to get something to listen to, you will listen to something in the car that you would never think to pick up and read at home. At times the results are tedious beyond imagining. Mostly, though, you explore strange territory and find it interesting.

Anyway, now that my excuses are out of the way, what about Bimbos?

It was a very pleasant surprise. The biggest surprise was that it is not a science fiction book. It is supposed to be a mystery but the mystery in the book is only a very transparent fig leaf behind which the author has pretended to hide a thoroughly enjoyable satire.

As such, it has only one obvious problem. The satire started early (on page one, in fact) but the murder that created the mystery only occurred very late in the story. Mostly this was fine but the reader had to go through a remarkably large portion of this title before the murder even happened. The result was that I spent much of Bimbos wondering where this story was going and how long it would take to get there. Still, this "aimless voyage" part of the book was a good deal of fun.

The action in Bimbos takes place over the course of a weekend at a second rate science fiction/fantasy convention held in a second rate hotel. At least I hope it's meant to be a second rate convention. I've been to any number of trade shows in my life and know enough to do some comparing. I would hate to think that this convention is even close to the best that the science fiction/fantasy world can offer.

It may be cruel to laugh and poke fun at our fellow human beings but there is a cruel streak in us humans, isn't there? And who can be easier to poke fun at than a collection of losers and misfits who don't just enjoy science fiction or fantasy but actually seem to think that it is more important than reality (I hope they're not correct) and put their real lives on hold while they focus on perfecting their not-real lives.

So for much of this book the reader is engaged in the cheap thrill of watching the author shoot fish in a barrel. Even a cheap thrill is still a thrill after all - one that most of us are quite willling to live down to if the target of our laughter is appropriately selected.

Done to excess, of course, satire can be little more than a sneering exercise in intellectual sadism and, in becomming so, it can lose a lot of its credibility. Sharyn McCrumb shows the good sense avoid this sort of excess. The fun she pokes at the more extreme convention attendees is made that much more believable by her sympathetic portrayal of a good many other characters - people who can enjoy a game without confusing the game with reality. It is further helped by the author's writing which is always good and, often, sparkles.

As for the murder mystery it's as clever as it needs to be and ties in nicely with the overall satirical theme of the book.

So what about the book? What happened and who did it happen to?

So you noticed that I haven't actually told you anything significant about the characters or goings on in Bimbos, have I? I won't either. Why spoil the fun of discovery? So, for the particulars, you'll have to read Bimbos of the Death Sun, which I would heartily recommend. It's not Proust (who I've never read and probably never will) but it is a fun read.