Doris Piserchia (1928–2021)

Pretty much as bizarre as I remember. I think another reviewer called Piserchia's work dreamlike, and I'm going to second that description. The kind of dream where everything is extraordinarily complex but it all makes perfect sense at the time and it's only when you try to describe it later that you realize you don't quite know where to start.

I really like the dizzying narrative leaps in time and place. Unlike many first-person narrators, Daryl tells her story like she's standing there in front of you---she skips the parts she considers uninteresting or irrelevant, and you have to infer her (sometimes warped, sometimes unreliable) thought process. Not everything is spelled out! You can return to Spaceling over and over and understand a little more each time.

(5 July 2013) I don't know where I got Spaceling other than that it was during high school, but I recently rediscovered it and remember it as a very weird but very awesome and intricate book.… (mais)

It's more fantasy than SF, although it holds together well, and given the time it was written, has managed to age well. I think I had to read the first chapter or so over, because there was so much going on, but it was just fun from then on. I have at least one other book by this author, and look forward to reading it.

There's a lot going on in the story, and there's another review of the book that expresses some of the more interesting items. I'll probably read it again, at least once, just for the joy of it.… (mais)

Recently I read an ill-informed "article" (clickbait sort of thing) that ridiculed the use of "naked green women" on the covers of science fiction books. I can't say I recall seeing much of that in my long history of being an SF reader, but in this case it is simply a matter of the cover artist being faithful (as Michael Whelan always is) to the story. In fact, I only knew of this novel because the cover art (or a variation thereof, probably reworked after the publisher was done with it) appeared in Whelan's first monograph.

Earthchild is the story of Reee (two syllables), the last human being alive on Earth. Much of the planet has been overrun by an ocean-like parasite called Indigo, and Reee is protected by her own survival skills and by another mysterious, shape-shifting entity called Emeroo. The rest of humanity left for Mars ages ago, but now they are coming back for the legendary last human on Earth. But Reee doesn't want to be rescued.

This is an unusual and sometimes just plain weird fable that provides an interesting examination of what it means to be civilized. Who is the savage, the girl who runs around naked and lives in harmony with nature, or the advanced culture that makes war and tries to kill everything?… (mais)