Maureen Birnbaum: Barbarian Swordsperson: The Complete Stories

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 show more 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. show less

This is a collection of stories about Maureen "Muffy" Birnbaum as told to her long-suffering high school best friend, Bitsy Spiegelman, then retold to the author for publication. Muffy has an innate ability to transport herself into the worlds designed and brought to life by other authors. In this volume, there are adventures in the worlds of Lovecraft, Asimov, Burroughs, Robin Hood, and King Arthur. In her myriad adventures, Muffy brings a certain valley-girl je ne sais quoi to the genre. She is an impetuous, brash warrior and an unapologetic feminist in worlds in which these qualities are not the norm.

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 show more 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. show less

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.

Amusing spoof for fans of classic fantasy/sci-fi.