Bimbos of the Death Sun - Sharyn McCrumb

No, it's not what you think - this is actually a novel about science fiction's embarrassing excesses, not an example of them. It's nominally a murder-mystery set at a SF/gaming convention, but this is a comic novel, and its main purpose is to poke affectionate fun at the con-going fraternity. It's a very silly book, and full of cheap jokes, but let's face it, taking the piss out of people in Spock ears never loses its appeal.

Jay Omega is a young engineering professor who knows very little about science fiction; to his chagrin, his first novel, a serious exploration of gender-specific mental illness caused by solar radiation, has just been published as "Bimbos of the Death Sun", and now he has to go to the con to promote it. His fellow guest author is the notoriously unpleasant Appin Dungannon, writer of heavyweight Celtic Fantasy novels, who judges the costume competition based on cleavage, insults his fans and generally acts like an utter bastard; no-one is terribly surprised when he is found murdered in his hotel room. It then falls to local copper Lt Ayhan to find the killer from among the mail-clad roleplayers and the political intrigues of the wargamers... could it be the long-suffering con organisers? The spurned would-be writer clutching his battered manuscript? Elusive über-fan Chip Livingstone? The money-grabbing agent?

We also have:

• the Star Trek wedding
• the obsessive fans who dress as monks, warriors, pixies
• the large female fan who relies on seducing a shy male virgin so she has somewhere to sleep
• the antisocial unwashed wargamer who's a decade too early for his spiritual home on the internet (Bimbos... was published in 1987)

- all the standard SF stereotypes are present, and though the brush-strokes are very broad, the characters are just about human enough to be believable. McCrumb plays fast and loose with viewpoint discipline, so most of the characters get some screen-time, even if it's just a paragraph or two inside someone else's chapter. This is pretty sloppy writing, but it doesn't really matter; this was never intended to be great literature. The one character that does stand out is also the most obvious candidate for Author Self-Insertion - Jay Omega's girlfriend Marion, an English professor with a background in SF, who understands the genre but is still made quite uncomfortable by the fans' obsessions and the ghetto mentality. If this is McCrumb in disguise, it would certainly explain her knowledge of the subject, and provides a viewpoint that most SF readers will be able to relate to.

As mysteries go, it's actually pretty crap - the ending in particular is messy and contrived. However, it works pretty well as a comic novel - though a lot of the jokes are obvious and the targets sitting ducks, it's still very funny. McCrumb obviously knows her stuff, as evinced by the accuracy of some of the jokes, even quite obscure ones about D&D procedure. However, as a "serious" author, she now seems to be ashamed of her geeky past - despite winning an award for Bimbos..., there's barely a mention of it on her website. Not to worry; she did her job, and twenty years later, Chip Livingstone is still going to conventions...

7/10