There and Back Again
by Pat Murphy
from Tor Science Fiction
Pat Murphy, writing as her imaginary friend/alter ego Max Merriwell, presents a view of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit through the lens of space opera.
Bailey Beldon, a norbit who loves a good tale of adventure from the comfort of his asteroid belt home, unexpectedly becomes an unwilling protagonist when adventurer Gitana and a group of powerful Farr clones show up on his doorstep to retrieve a message pod he has scavenged. The message--from another Farr clone--includes a map of previously unknown wormholes and the tantalizing promise of a glorious Snark, the Farr term for alien artifacts left behind by the Old Ones.
Bailey suddenly finds himself light years from home and in the company of an oddball assortment of characters, including a 'pataphysician named Gyro Renacus, who, along with Gitana, appears in Murphy's Wild Angel, and Fluffy, a fighter pilot who is part cat. (Max Merriwell even writes Murphy in as a character.)
Assisted by his tone-deafness, his pragmatism, and a Mobius strip that can slow time to a crawl, Bailey pits himself against Resurrectionists who use the clones as spare parts, trancers who hypnotize with music, pirates, gigantic metal-eating spiders, and the Boojum--the Snark left to guard the treasures the adventurers seek.
Murphy's prose sparkles throughout. Her tone ranges from the dazzlingly descriptive (as in her portrait of the heart of the galaxy) to the crisply active to a fairy-tale tone that brings to mind the soothing voice of Maurice Evans, making There and Back Again a choice novel to cozy up with on a rainy day. --Eddy Avery
The Science Explorer Out and About: Fantastic Science Experiments Your Family Can Do Anywhere! (Science Explorer Bk 2)
by Pat Murphy
from Owl Publishing Company
The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1: Sex, the Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies (The James Tiptree Award Anthology series)
from Tachyon Publications
The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3: Subversive Stories about Sex and Gender (The James Tiptree Award Anthology series)
by Karen Joy Fowler
from Tachyon Publications
The Falling Woman
by Pat Murphy
from Tom Doherty Assoc Llc
Elizabeth Waters, an archeologist who abandoned her husband and daughter years ago to pursue her career, can see the shadows of the past. It's a gift she keeps secret from her colleagues and students, one that often leads her to incredible archeological discoveries and the realization that she might be going mad. Then on a dig in the Yucatan, the shadow of a Mayan priestess speaks to her. Suddenly Elizabeth's daughter Diane arrives, hoping to reconnect with her mother. As mother, daughter and priestess fall into the mysterious world of Mayan magic, it is clear one will be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. The book won the 1988 Nebula Award.
Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell
by Pat Murphy
from Tor Science Fiction
Susan Galina is lost--and that's just the beginning of this thoroughly enjoyable journey. On the cruise ship Odyssey, Susan and her friend Pat meet writer Max Merriwell and are drawn into a series of mysteries fueled by the alarming possibility that Max's pseudonyms are somehow taking on lives of their own. The lines of reality become more blurred every day, forcing Susan to face some private monsters while Pat constructs an elegant quantum physics explanation of the growing chaos.
There's plenty of wackiness and just plain fun--trance-inducing conga music, wolves on the recreation deck, and the Flaming Rum Monkey--but Adventures in Time and Space is more than simply a wild ride through intersecting possibilities: it's also an exploration of personal relativity, the power of individual choice to create any number of potential realities. Readers should be ready to enter into the spirit of the game: as one character says, "Reality is a much more flexible concept than most people think." Murphy's clear prose, sharp wit, and keen observations of the dreams and fears of the human heart make the most of all the possibilities. --Roz Genessee
Award-winning author Pat Murphy takes us aboard a luxury cruise ship and into the strange confluence of time and space known as the Bermuda Triangle, in an engaging science fiction romp that recalls the work of Kate Wilhelm.
Susan Galina and her friend Pat have escaped their normal lives into the elegant, isolated world of the Odyssey, a luxury cruise ship heading from NY to Europe via Bermuda. Pat is working on her doctoral thesis in quantum physics, and Susan is recovering from a recent and unhappy divorce.
To Susan's delight, she discovers that her favorite author, Max Merriwell, is also aboard ship, teaching writers' workshop. Susan's life becomes even more interesting when she meets Tom Clayton, the handsome chief of security. This cruise looks very promising indeed.
But the pleasant shipboard vacation turns dark as the Odyssey passes into the Bermuda Triangle. Each year, Max Merriwell writes three novels: a science fiction novel under his own name, a fantasy novel under the pseudonym Mary Maxwell, and a mystery novel under the pseudonym Weldon Merrimax. The trouble begins when Max receives a threatening note that appears to come from Weldon Merrimax, Max's own pseudonym. Susan hears wolves howling in the night, the ship's passengers are seized with a dancing mania, and monsters lurk in the ship's corridors. An eyewitness reports a murder—but the victim of the crime is not on the passenger list and the body is nowhere to be found. While others struggle to understand these strange events, Pat seeks the explanation in quantum theory.
Out of these elements, Murphy builds a suspenseful, funny, fast-paced novel of shifting and intersecting realities that is a joy to read.
Wild Angel
by Pat Murphy
from Tor Fantasy
Though Wild Angel, Pat Murphy's frontier fantasy, deals with both wolves and westward expansion, readers of her lycanthrope novel Nadya should not expect a retread. This playful homage to the Tarzan books and American tall tales travels a lighter, more sparkling road.
Set in the California gold country between 1850 and 1863, the novel follows the adventures of Sarah McKensie, orphaned at age 3 by a stagecoach robber. Sarah is adopted and nursed by the she-wolf Wauna (who has lost her litter of pups to the same brutal man) and is accepted into the wolf pack. As she matures, Sarah learns to assist in the pack's well-being by contributing human tools--a found knife, a bow and arrow, and a lariat stolen from a would-be cowpoke--to the hunt.
With her best friend and pack-sister Beka at her side, Sarah becomes a local legend--the Wild Angel of the Sierras, rescuer of imperiled travelers. Sarah's altruism is motivated less by compassion than by curiosity, bafflement by the settlers' inability to perceive the world around them, and a passion for biscuits.
Surrounding Sarah is a kaleidoscopic cast: an artist with a shady past; a young Indian shaman; a mesmerist-cum-temperance crusader; a circus impresario with a pack of poodles and an elephant named Ruby; a young woman on the lam from her strait-laced aunt; the hilarious fraternal order E Clampus Vitus (or "Clampers"); Samuel Clemens (in a brief and thwarted cameo); and, of course, two hiss-worthy villains--one human, one lupine.
Throughout this tale of coincidence, chance reunions, heroism, villainy, romance, revenge, and adventure, Murphy weaves deft comedic touches--including Sarah's unforgettable improvisation during a staging of "The Drunkard." Even the one continuity blip near the end of the novel reads not as authorial carelessness but as a knowing wink to the plot-and-character-juggling serial writers of the past.
Murphy has written Wild Angel as a novel by alter-ego/imaginary friend Max Merriwell written as Mary Maxwell. The conceit isn't necessary for enjoyment of the novel, but the three explanatory afterwords, by Maxwell, Merriwell, and Murphy, are pure jam.
Before embarking upon this delightful novel, readers would be well advised to check their realism at the door and adopt the motto of the Clampers--Credo Quia Absurdum, "I believe because it is absurd." --Eddy Avery
When she is not writing science fiction, Pat Murphy writes for the Exploratorium, San Francisco's museum of science, art, and human perception. Pat Murphy's second novel, The Falling Woman, won the Nebula for best novel published in 1987. Her most recent previous novel is There and Back Again.
The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2: Sex, the Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies (The James Tiptree Award Anthology series)
from Tachyon Publications
Alien Sex: 19 Tales by the Masters of Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy (Roc Science Fiction)
by Harlan Ellison
from Roc
The City, Not Long After
+++
