2009 Reading XLIX-L
XLIX: Sue Payer, Second Body
So far I have been unable to find anything out about this author, who seems to have published just the one book, and who has a corporate (publisher) rather than personal copyright. There is something about the language - a uniform being crisp, starched, a woman being spinsterish (and later, strangely attractive when she removes her glasses) - which makes me doubt that it really is written by a woman. At the risk of being rude to romance novels, it's possible the author wrote previous in that genre.
I also recall an Alan Ayckbourn play, Body Language, in which a page three model and a feminist reporter have head transplants. This isn't so extreme - Ayckbourn plays with and undercuts stereotypes - but a pregnant woman undergoes complications in giving birth and needs a body transplant to save her. Apparently it is easier to attach spine, windpipe, oesophagus, arteries and nerves than just a brain. All is fine - although her husband contemplates an affair and the body's original husband drops by. It doesn't quite work - the metaphor of the body being like a house who new owners have moved into doesn't quite convince.
L: Sheila MacLeod, Xanthe and the Robots
In a not-so-utopian-after-all future, a group of research scientists are working on two kinds of robots - pragmatic and philosophical. Xanthe is being observed by Daimon, a new employee in the agency, and feels under attack. Meanwhile, there is a sudden evolution in the robots' personalities, and a revolution ensues. A bit flat in the end, with a twist spottable several chapters ahead, although at least a human didn't turn out to be a robot. Well-written and suggestive of political allegory, although disjointed. There's a brief discussion of robots and gender which I suspect I will end up focusing on if I discuss it in the seventies book.
Fifty up!
So far I have been unable to find anything out about this author, who seems to have published just the one book, and who has a corporate (publisher) rather than personal copyright. There is something about the language - a uniform being crisp, starched, a woman being spinsterish (and later, strangely attractive when she removes her glasses) - which makes me doubt that it really is written by a woman. At the risk of being rude to romance novels, it's possible the author wrote previous in that genre.
I also recall an Alan Ayckbourn play, Body Language, in which a page three model and a feminist reporter have head transplants. This isn't so extreme - Ayckbourn plays with and undercuts stereotypes - but a pregnant woman undergoes complications in giving birth and needs a body transplant to save her. Apparently it is easier to attach spine, windpipe, oesophagus, arteries and nerves than just a brain. All is fine - although her husband contemplates an affair and the body's original husband drops by. It doesn't quite work - the metaphor of the body being like a house who new owners have moved into doesn't quite convince.
L: Sheila MacLeod, Xanthe and the Robots
In a not-so-utopian-after-all future, a group of research scientists are working on two kinds of robots - pragmatic and philosophical. Xanthe is being observed by Daimon, a new employee in the agency, and feels under attack. Meanwhile, there is a sudden evolution in the robots' personalities, and a revolution ensues. A bit flat in the end, with a twist spottable several chapters ahead, although at least a human didn't turn out to be a robot. Well-written and suggestive of political allegory, although disjointed. There's a brief discussion of robots and gender which I suspect I will end up focusing on if I discuss it in the seventies book.
Fifty up!