While I enjoyed Spider Robinson’s By Any Other Name, his collection USER FRIENDLY was a disappointment. For starters we have the title story of alien bodysnatchers in which one character declares that being raped multiple times is nowhere near as horrific, in fact it was enjoyable by comparison — Spider, Spider, you really shouldn’t have gone there. There are also a couple of shorts that rely far too heavily on SF fan in-jokes and a couple of stories written rap style (not the best choice). Below Robinson’s average.
(Plushie has nothing to do with the books but doesn’t he look cute?)
After ordering THE ANNOTATED GILBERT AND SULLIVAN VOL. 1 edited by Ian Bradley, so that I can read up on The Gondoliers, I naturally read the rest of it. Bradley does a great job detailing the genesis of the plays (though surprisingly he omits that Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore are both parodying popular seagoing stage genres of the day)., obscure terms, dropped songs, deletions, additions and changes (The Mikado song “I’ve Got a Little List” has been updated repeatedly over the years) and subjects of parody (in its original run, Iolanthe sent up Wagnerian opera). As a G&S fan, well worth the reading.
CRIMSON STREETS: Amnesty is another collection from the web magazine, the high point being “Omphalos,” in which a dismayed occultist learns the extremely funny truth behind all those Lovecraftian legends and cryptic texts of the Great Old Ones. Good fun.
#SFWApro.
