In which there’s a totally half-assed review of a book I’m still reading!

I’m currently reading Alpha Centauri, which came in one of the boxes of books my mom sent.

“From a grossly overpopulated Earth in 2239 A.D., an exploratory colonization mission to Alpha Centauri finds Mies Cochrane carrying an autovirus inside him that, after sexual intercourse, halts conception – the perfect birth control. The explorers discover the remains of an ancient civilization and a way to see what caused their extinction through the eyes of the last, long-dead inhabitant. The authors make a strong statement about overpopulation, solutions to it, and humanity’s purpose for existing. This thought-provoking book, a mix of sexually explicit passages and scientific exposition, is recommended for adult sf collections.”

Mies is not only carrying permanent birth control in his testicles but is a rapidly destabilizing schizophrenic as well. Another character is a voluntary neuter, and a third is a voluntary hermaphrodite. The sex is freakin’ awesome weird, and if there’s anything sci-fi needs it’s more awesome weird sex! I mean, seriously. What could possibly be better?

All the reviewers at Amazon hated Alpha Centauri because, apparently, the sentence fragments and gratuitous sex irritated them. I’d like to reply that not only is the science superfantastic, but the sentence fragments — usually used when we’re sharing a character’s thoughts — are not distracting but impactful, and if a person’s paying attention to the story arc at all the sex isn’t gratuitous. The destabilizing schizo is infecting other characters with permanent infertility when he sleeps with them; they’re an 11-member crew stuck light years away from a dying earth in a system with no habitable planets – the sex is not only part of the human condition but PART OF THE PLOT. The surgical alterations various characters have undergone help us to examine human sexuality in interesting, story-moving ways. When we find out that Doc really believes men are incapable of love and only say the word in order to get laid, we begin to understand why he chose to spend 20 or 30 years as a neuter, free of his sexual imperatives.

Sci-fi isn’t actually supposed to bore one to sleep.

In other news, BabyGirl has her own blog.