This is a book about alien sex, and concerns among greater themes, marriage rites and emotions. Perhaps it’s just a basic allegory of
the ill-fated lovers type; but it seems to offer more. I’d hate to
cast general aspersions on the genre as a whole, but Strangers feels far
too sensitive a read to be true science fiction. There is some pretty
predictable ‘colony of earthlings’ stuff, in which regular character
types appear and perform, but the real meat of the book is the extended
theme of alien sex; the emotions, the pros and cons, and the damned
unusual consequences of falling for an alien.
Science fiction usually becomes a bit
boring when the point is too far pressed, or appears close to the
surface, and I don’t think it does here. That is to say that there are
obvious points being made, such as miscommunication between genders as
well as many of the social problems of the 70s, such as interracial
marriage, changing male-female relationships post-feminism, and the
horrible difficulties of people refusing to deal directly with these
issues. Yes, the allegory is there, but it’s never pushed in favour of
the main chance, the story. This is the main balance in most science
fiction, and a hard one to achieve; years of reading has shown me this.
A kind of hopelessness permeates the
book, especially typified by the rather meaningless and unfulfilled life
of the protagonist, an artist. This turns out to be quite addictive,
and I think it was this ‘sad 70s’ tone that got me to the end. Once
you’ve started out with this unfortunate character, and his emotional
adventures with his alien love, it becomes hard, if not impossible to
stop. What it means is that this novel feels like a downward slide, a
downward, downward slide, to a sad ending, as sad as everything that has
come so far.
More ramblings on the genre at Epic Volumes
Nonsense in general at http://peterburnett.info
More ramblings on the genre at Epic Volumes
Nonsense in general at http://peterburnett.info
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