Books I've Been Reading - Meet The Raygun Goth Kid

[bloodyrosemccoy]

The Book: Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal

The Basics: Portrait of a teenage pregnancy. With skillful application of nonlinear narrative, Leicht and Neal take us through sixteen-year-old Elvie's story, using flashbacks--in which she deals with a vanishing baby daddy, her best friend's overly concerned pregnancy research, bullies, the lack of a mother of her own, breaking the news to her dad, figuring out what to DO with the kid, and tranferring to Hanover School for Expecting Teen Mothers--interspersed with the present narrative, three weeks before her due date, when two factions of warring space aliens charge in to destroy each other with ray guns and end up blasting Hanover out of its low-orbit and right into the path of total disaster.

Wait, What?: Did I mention this book is set in the year 2074, the Hanover School is a space station, both sets of aliens have nefarious designs on the unborn babies, and there are ray guns? Yeah, there's that.

New Rule: Okay, can we all agree that we gave first-person present-tense a good try as applied to action-adventure stories and that it JUST DOESN'T WORK? I don't care how awesome your story is; if it's written in that style I will deduct points. That being said ...

There Are Two Ways To Analyze This Book: If I were feeling scholarly, I could probably get one hell of a thesis out of it. It wouldn't be a stretch to analyze how some of the implications of the world--which range from vaguely creepy to downright horrifying--form a cuttingly clever satire on the current political climate in which men plot and scheme and argue and shoot each other over uteruses without really paying attention to the girls who happen to surround them. I could definitely do that.

Or I could just tell you that this book was ASTONISHINGLY FUN TO READ. It was a silly, happy-go-lucky, action-packed chunk of WHEE SCI-FI, like some glorious form of TV Tropes Mad Lib. And a lot of these tropes manage to piss me right the hell off most of the time,* but somehow they managed to come together to make the most wonderful triple-layer frosted cake with sprinkles of a story. And for all the authors' slightly forced attempt at Teen Voice Narration, Elvie is actually a pretty cool character, with solid goals (she's going to go to a top university for space engineering to get in on a Mars colonization project), an actual sense of humor, and confidence, flexibility, and competence in a crisis. She can change her mind while still making sure it's her mind. (Bonus points for when she tells someone, "It would really help the running narrative in my head if I actually knew what to call you." I'm a sucker for metahumor.)

It could work as a stand-alone book, but I'm glad it's the first in a planned series. I am seriously looking forward to more ray gun adventures in the future.

Discussion Question WITH SPOILERS!: Why is it these Mars Needs Women type alien species never just fucking ASK? "Hey, we can't reproduce on our own, what with our being a parasitic species and all. Are there any human ladies out there who might be willing to carry an alien fetus in a pregnancy that will sterilize her, in the name of saving our species of hot dudes?" Hell, I'd do it, as long as "sterilize" in this sense didn't mean "burst out of the mother's chest and eat her." Could be fun, and it'd be good FOR SCIENCE! But no, they always go straight to the force or the subterfuge. At that point, I say let their damn species die.

Furthermore, the "good" aliens' Code of Honor is INTENSELY creepy,** yes, what with the way it seems to be all about seducing and impregnating unwitting teenage girls, but it's also highly impractical. No wonder they keep destroying their host species. Why not pick some altruistic twenty- or thirtysomethings who've already had some human babies? The rules don't say anything about the mothers having to be first-timers.


*The one about how the only reason humans have civilization is because of the intellectually advanced aliens among us moving our dumb asses along, for example. That one annoys me --particularly if a defining factor of the aliens in question is that they are all male. That right there is the Unfortunate Implications trope in a nutshell.

**Fortunately, the authors seem to know that, and so does Elvie.

Comments

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

...this is intriguing. Must look it up this Saturday!

[westrider.livejournal.com]

This just made me think: I should have mentioned in my quick review of Eat Your Heart Out that the main drawback was first person present narration. First person past works, someone's telling us this story, first person present doesn't, unless it's a diary, or someone reporting back by radio as they do something, or something along those lines.

On topic, this sounds fun, but since I'm currently stuck in the middle of a frustrating number of unfinished trilogies/series, I think I'm going to have to hold off on it until more comes out.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Diaries are okay for me, largely because they do tend to go back to past tense ("so this morning I went to the zoo, and ..."), just with a more immediate narrative. (Though it does crack me up that narrators in diary-style novels seem to be amazing writers--they take fifteen minutes at the end of the day and manage to jot down 45 pages of well-edited, well-crafted prose before going to bed.)

My sister and I were agreeing that it really depends on the medium, the genre, and the mood you're going for. The problem is that authors assume that something that works in one context must work in another. Not always true.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tried to keep a diary for a while on a couple of occasions, and it never really worked out like that ;) A couple of paragraphs on LJ is usually about the best I can manage to cover my day.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* Yeah, diaries as narrative devices aren't even CLOSE to resembling real diaries. I kept one from fourth grade until--well, till I started this blog, really--and it was pretty broken up, nonlinear, repetitive, and boring. There are a few things that came out great, but there was a lot of junk, too.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... Also, 1p past works just fine for me, too. It's mostly the present tense that doesn't work--but fortunately there aren't a whole lot of 3rd-person present tense novels out there. The only one I can think of is Starfish.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

It's definitely the present tense part that causes the problem. Starfish was great, but because I didn't really notice that it was third person present, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was great despite that rather than because of it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I vaguely recall that it was written in present tense when they were down in the Rift, and past tense above, for some obscure reason. But he managed to make it work somehow.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

A good enough writer can make just about anything work. That doesn't mean it's a good idea for anyone else to try, tho ;)

Applies to just about anything, really. I see it all the time on my Gaming forums: People who are excellent players but poor analysts recommending tactics and choices without understanding that they're winning despite these choices rather than because of them.

[barefoottomboy.livejournal.com]

This sounds amazing, I am deliberately avoiding the spoilers & comments till I can read this (though it's not in my library, WOE)!

[chairman-wow.livejournal.com]

I skipped the spoilery parts of the post, because I am definitely adding this to my to read list! I was thinking as I read the description that it could be either terrible or hilariously good, & if you say ot falls on the good side, well!

I don't think I've actually ever read a book in 1st person present before though. Sounds... odd. Definitely difficult to pull off I'd think.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

There's been this trend of genre fiction, especially YA genre fiction, written in 1p-present lately, and it is ANNOYING. It works better with the contemporary, introspective YA--Laurie halse Anderson's Speak does it beautifully, since it's all about the character's internal struggle anyway--but it really doesn't work for crazy space adventures or fantasy quests.