Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Maureen Birnbaum Barbarian Swordsperson (1993)by George A Effinger
Work InformationMaureen Birnbaum: Barbarian Swordsperson: The Complete Stories by George Alec Effinger (1993)
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. It's funny. It's a romping frolic through the bastions of science fiction, from Mars to under the earth to Robin Hood to Chthulu. It's also got the ongoing storyline of Muffy (Maureen Birnbaum the said title character) bursting into the life of her prep school friend, Bitsy Spiegelman, at the most inopportune times. Bitsy's life seems to go on and follow the familiar pattern of growing up, while Muffy stays an eternal 18 year old woman who kicks some serious butt. Effinger does have Muffy confront old style sexism: what makes you think I as a woman can't kick some serious butt? Do you see my sword and what I can do with it?? I kept being turned off by the eternal chainmail bra and skimpy metallic G-string as Muffy's outfit, though. At some point early on the metallic G-string part is going to cause serious damage, not to mention the lack of defensive armor that a warrior woman should wear. But that's Effinger's Boris Valleje thing, not mine. The originality of this set of short stories is great fun and will be most interesting to those with a background in real classic sci-fi stories from Amazing Stories and that time period. Trite but cute series of short stories in which valley girl turned barbarian swordsperson, Maureen Birnbaum, invades the worlds of other established authors in search of her true love, Prince Van. Parodied stories include [Nightfall] by [[Isaac Asimov]] and [At the Earth's Core] by [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]] among others. no reviews | add a review
Contains
No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.0876208Literature English (North America) American fiction By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Speculative fiction Science fiction CollectionsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
I must admit, the schtick gets a little old after a while. I can't imagine, though, how the author was able to keep up that style of writing for as long as he did. There's only so much inhabiting the mind of a materialistic 17 year old girl that you can do before you become infected. ( )