The Love Gun: Jammed!
Jun 22nd, 2007 by Lynne
I suspect John, Edie, and Michelle are conspiring to Google-bomb me so that my site will henceforward become known as The Penis Blog. I suppose I’m not helping matters, am I? :-) Well, hey, sometimes you just have to embrace your fate.
Earlier today, I was thinking about Justine Davis‘ The Skypirate, a futuristic romance about a former military officer and — you guessed it — a space pirate. When I first bought the book, I read it several times, but it has been a few years since I last picked it up. I’m almost afraid to, particularly after John roundly snarked it. He reads a lot of hard science fiction, and The Skypirate apparently contains some howlers. But I do have fond memories of the book just the same.
There’s a Love Gun situation in the story. The hero is on a years-long suicide mission to destroy the evil Coalition that wiped out his entire planet, a beautiful utopia known as Trios. As a sky pirate, he has betrayed all the high-minded ideals of his homeland, even though everything he has done has been calculated to save innocents and harm only the evil. He believes he has so badly strayed from the Triotian path that he deserves to die. But in one way he has stayed true to the moral code of his people: although he can have sex with as many women as he likes, he can never have an orgasm.
::sniffle::
Yes, the Love Gun is hopelessly jammed. No matter how diligently he and the heroine polish and reload it, the darn thing just won’t go off. (Now, I guess to be completely true to the “no casual sex” rules of his lost society, he shouldn’t be able to get an erection at all, but this is a Topaz romance from 1995, so that’s not an option.)
The lack of orgasm for the hero isn’t a huge part of the plot, but it’s one of those little to-do items that need to be checked off before the reader will feel like there’s been a happily-ever-after. It’s eventually resolved in a fairly satisfying way. Who knows, maybe it’s even a meaningful way. :-) When the hero discovers that there are some survivors on Trios, after all, and that the king has returned after many years, he decides to go home and submit to whatever punishment is his due. He and the heroine travel back to Trios and are immediately put in the equivalent of the Tower of London to await their presumed execution. The heroine, having served for many years as a Coalition officer, is in even worse trouble than the hero. But when the two of them are alone together in their prison cell on the night before their sentencing, the Love Gun finally goes off.
Now this may sound corny and all, but it actually kinda worked. And if I could find it among all our thousands of books, I might even read it again!
SKYPIRATE wasn’t a bad story—it kept me reading until the end—but it was bad sci-fi. Mercifully, details of its offenses have faded from memory, but I recall nigh-Trekkian cliches and scientific howlers that kept intruding on the experience. It’s hard to enjoy a new car stereo, after all, when there’s a grinding noise coming from under the hood.
Sci-fi romance has been written well. It’s called PROMISED LAND, by the marvelous Connie Willis.
LOL, Lynne. Promise, I’m not. That was just one of the best blogs I’ve read in ages.
And Connie Willis has just gone onto my search for and buy list :) .
Ah, yes. That was a wonderful book. I have yet to read anything by her that I disliked.
Excellent analogy, by the way!
Thank you, Michelle. That’s a high compliment, coming from you. :-)
If you haven’t read Willis’ The Doomsday Book, I’d recommend putting that one at the top of your Willis to-buy list. In my opinion, it’s one of the best time travel novels ever written. I measure all other time travels by that standard.
Thanks, as I’ve written a time travel myself, I’ll most definitely go out and get it.
And you write excellent blogs always, but the Chekhov’s gun one really tickled my funny bone :) .
Well, I should point out that TDB isn’t a romance. There’s love of a somewhat platonic nature in it, but no romantic relationship.
Fun! Another penis blog. lol Sounds like a good book–especially with the penis gun subplot. *g*
I’ve read Connie Willis before. I have one she co-wrote about a water world somewhere in the house, the others I got from the library. I’m sure Michelle will enjoy Willis’s book. She reads less romance than I do.
I just went downstairs and found the Water Witch by Cynthia Felice and Connie Willis. It’s lighter than Willis’s other books.
I may just have to set up a whole new category, Edie. :-P
Yes, WW was a bit lighter than others. I haven’t been able to read Passage yet because I know it will upset me. John LOVED it.
Man, am I curious to read The Skypirate now!
How does TDB compare to Passage? I started reading the latter and just could not get into it. Is the writing style very similar in TDB?
PS I am impressed by the nifty functionality you have for your comments!
Jude! I was thinking about you just the other day when I went with John and two of our friends from Alabama to the Shakespeare Tavern! :-)
I haven’t read Passage, actually. John loves it, but I’m kind of afraid to read it because I know there are parts I won’t like. I think TBD is a very different book, so you might enjoy it more than you did Passage.
Glad you like my new goodies. I first noticed them on DearAuthor and thought they were so cool that I installed ‘em over here.
I re-read The Skypirate a few nights ago. It is WAY melodramatic, much more than I remembered, and I think my tastes have changed considerably in the years since I last read it. That said, there were still things I liked about the story, but it has probably been bumped off my Keepers list.