Charisma

A sexist science fiction story that was written in the 70s. As another reviewer commented, I think the author meant "Chimera," instead of Charisma.

This author never thought that women would like to not be treated like sex objects in the future, I guess. This takes place in a town on the coast of England, near Cornwall, where a scientist in a science institute had discovered a way to access parallel worlds. The protagonist is a hotel manager who sells house yachts on the side. He treats every woman like they exist for his personal pleasure or displeasure, depending on their looks. The protagonist instantly falls in love with a "girl" (as the author calls young women who are good-looking) from a parallel Earth. She, naturally, instantly show more falls in love with him, too, on her meeting up with him when she visits his Earth. They immediately consummate their friendship before she is killed by lightning on her way back to her world. The rest of the book is spent with him chasing the live version of her on different worlds.

This is the second book I've read by this author and they've both been sexist, so I'm starting to get disappointed. show less

While this blend of mystery and science fiction starts quickly enough, the science fiction aspect feels tagged on for the longest time. In the near future, there's a murder and other skullduggery, and then there's this lab doing experiments in travel to parallel dimensions. For quite a while, that travel seems like a minor device introduced to give the main character a tragic loss. That surprised me, given Coney's many SF books. Also off-putting to me was that travel to other dimensions was presented in what I call "lack of wonder." One character describes what's going on to another in a few paragraphs, and then it's back to life as usual. I thought that had died out in the 1950's.

But hang in there. The central idea that you can only show more travel to a dimension where your counterpart has died, starts becoming more and more central to the plot. While this is no comedy of errors -- it's typical British dour and gray -- it does end up being a fun read all in all. show less