norm@umcp-cs.UUCP (Norm Glick) (01/13/85)
<<THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE MADE IT TO THE ARPANET SF-LOVERS BULLETIN BOARD, BUT APPARENTLY NOT TO net.sf-lovers, SO HERE GOES AGAIN...>> I showed the SF-LOVERS correspondence about MINDKILLER to my author wife. She felt strongly about the discussion and generated the following response for me to share with you. Norman Glick I am jumping into your discussion of Spider Robinson with both feet! The controversy interested me since I am a professional writer. (Some of my books are kids' adventure science fiction novels, one of which--MINDBENDERS, Scholastic, 1984--is about mind control.) As a teenager, my primary reading interest was SF. I'm not into the field so heavily now, although my teenage daughter is. Several months ago she recommended Spider Robinson to me. But it was the ARPANET correspondence that finally tempted me to buy MINDKILLER. I agree that there is a lot of good stuff in the book. Robinson creates characters that I care about a lot--particularly Joe and Karen. He also has some wonderful imagery--which always adds to my enjoyment of a book. As for the Heinlein comparison, I will go on record as saying that I was a rabid Heinlein fan until he lost his self-discipline--in the middle of THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, I think. After that, there are simply too many words. (No, it's not like AMADEUS where Mozart is accused of having too many musical notes!) I read a recent interview with Heinlein in the "Washington Post" in which he proudly pointed out that his contracts no longer allow any editing of his stuff. He said something like "If I have a comma in the middle of a word, they have to leave it." Unfortunately, he'd probably be better off if he did allow someone to cut through the excess verbiage. One of my basic thoughts about writing is that as soon as you have the freedom to do WHATEVER YOU WANT, you're not producing your best stuff. Robinson has the nice, tight style of the old master. He also writes sex scenes that Heinlein never could. (I have been struck by the fact that maybe only Heinlein could write a boring orgy.) The bondage scene in MINDKILLER is a turn-on--but Robinson takes it a wonderful step farther by exploiting the humor of what happens. However, I found one aspect of MINDKILLER seriously disappointing. (I have a problem in talking about it without spoiling the end of the book for others who may want to read it. So I hope you will pardon me if I become a bit oblique.) Because of the premise Robinson sets up, the plot resolution simply CAN'T be intrinsically satisfying. Think about why the end of THE PUPPET MASTERS is so fulfilling. Robinson has set up a situation where the reader can't get that kind of vicarious kick. For the book to have really worked on that level, I think Joe and Karen would have had to have found the "mindkiller" earlier. With that out of the way, they could have gone on to confront some other substantial threat (integral to the story)--so that the reader could feel satisfied at the end. Robinson apparently had some worries about the ending since he brings in another villain at the last minute--but he's not important enough to the story. (And the threat he represents doesn't occupy enough space.) When I finished the book, I felt let down-- despite the warm fuzzies in the last paragraph. (One more complaint about the satisfaction delivered by the ending-- and I would be curious to know whether this represents a difference between male and female readers. I would have liked to have found out how Joe and Karen worked out their personal relationship--rather than just being left to assume that they did.) I wonder if others had the same reactions. Of course, if Robinson hadn't written an engaging and provocative story, I wouldn't be talking about any of this at all-- because I would have put it down long before I got to the end. Let me add that in the middle of going through this careful analysis of MINDKILLER, I was struck with an interesting irony. ("God is an iron.") In one of my own books, DOOMSTALKER, which is part of Scholastic's MICRO ADVENTURE series of fast-paced kids' adventure stories with computer activities, I think I set myself up with a similar structural predicament, although I do provide a strong alternate set of villains. I hadn't even realized the problem until I thought about MINDKILLER. Ruth Glick