Picnic on Paradise

I had previously read this as a stand alone novel, and recently reread it in the context of The Adventures of Alyx collection. I would recommend it more as a genre bending exercise in character development than as an adventure story.

Our protagonist Alyx, a time displaced thief from a Leiberesque past, is pressed into service as guide for a bunch of spoiled future tourists who find themselves tech trinketless in the middle of a flash war on a sparsely populated planet. The group initially expects a short journey through a beautiful landscape, but events leave them with no choice but to undertake a much longer trek through hostile and frigid territory.

Alyx is tough and resilient, makes mistakes, and is in no way defined by anyone else's show more expectations or judgment. Her evolving relationships with those around her, especially the young man known as Machine, drive much of the story.

The tone alternates between playful and brutal. Russ often makes you work to figure out what is happening in the story. The style is very reminiscent of contemporaneous novels of Samuel Delany, which I love. show less

I really liked this small sci-fi novel about a woman who is accidentally plucked from the past, and ends up with a job as a survival expert. Alyx is a great character, one of the butchiest women I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in fiction. (She is straight, however.) The other characters are vivid, too, but the examination of cultural assumptions is the most fascinating thing about this book. It has loads of action, and the writing is tight and pithy.

Swift, stylized, fun. All the world building is done via dialogue. I was never quite sure what to expect. Look forward to reading more Russ.

Definitely "of a time" (which happens to be the time that I was immersing myself in science fiction). It was experimental, provocative, clunky, hurried...interesting. I'll read more Russ.

I picked it up because of the author. I recognized the name, but haven't read anything by her. Unfortunately, this is probably not the book to start with. I didn't like any of the characters - the people of the future were whiny idiots, Alyx, thief from ancient Greece, was inconsistent. I just didn't get her - she seemed to accepting of her situation. There is only one scene that made any sense - when the nuns gave Iris the drugs to make her happy - Alyx's reaction was perfectly understandable.

This book is really just an excuse to stick a barbarian stranger in a group of "civilized" people. I suspect that its a book that works for the time it was written.

Russ's first, and mine of her. Odd little novella for one raised on more straitforward sf like Heinlein and Asimov's Robot stories. But lots of potential, and I will read at least some of the other by her that I had accumulated from used book stores. It might be appreciated more by fans of Robert Silverberg as it gets elliptical and inner-psyche at times.

Highly stylized concept: a female street-fighter is saved from death in ancient Crete to lead a party of effete picnickers in the far future through a minor war on an ideal Terra-formed planet. Most of the loose-ends are kind of tied up at the end, but the story is still a bit strange for its minimal plot background.

I give Russ credit for choosing an intriguingly complicated plot line for her first novel.