Wicked - Gregory Maguire

1995; 519 pages. Full Title : Wicked - The Life & Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Genre : Revisionist fiction. Overall Rating : B.

  .In The Wizard of Oz, the nasty old Wicked Witch of the West is done in by Dorothy and water. Maguire postulates that L. Frank Baum's story is a slanted account; Wicked tells the story from Elphaba, the WWofW's point of view.

What's To Like...
    Maguire creates a wonderful fantasy world of Oz. There are munchkins, dwarves and elves; and rumors even of dragons. There are various competing religions - unionists (with their Unnamed God), pleasure faithists (with their Clock of the Time Dragon) and Lurlinists (waiting for the Fairy Queen Lurline to return) being the most interesting. There are some great political, spiritual, and philosophical ponderings in the book, the main one being how the world determines what is wicked and what isn't.
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    Kewl stuff, but as a story, Wicked leaves something to be desired. Most notable are the annoying gaps in the tale. First we are introduced to Elphaba as a toddler. Then "poof", it's years later and she's heading off to college. "Poof" again, and it's years later, and Elphaba's now a revolutionary. "Poof" once more and she's leaving a nunnery after seven years to become a recluse in a castle in Vinkus. The final "poof" jumps us years ahead again to the fateful encounter with Dorothy.
.Also, the issues Maguire presents (such as Animal/animal rights) are provocative, but never answered. Ditto for the plot details. We never really know why Elphaba came out green; who killed Porfessor Dillamond (he's a Goat, not a goat); whether Fiyiero is really dead; and what happened to Sarima and her sisters.

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    Moreover, while we're introduced to some well-developed and fascinating secondary characters (such as Elphaba's mom Melena, Boq, Glinda, and the flaming twosome of Crope and Tibbett), it's best not to get too attached to them, because most of them don't make the jump across the gaps.
.Finally the sex scenes and cuss words felt ill-fitting and unnecessary. I don't mind such things when they enhance the story (they certainly fit well in anything written by Bukowski), but here they detract. TMI.

.An excerpt...
"You're not wicked," said Boq.
"How do you know. It's been so long," said the Witch, but she smiled at him.
Boq returned the smile, warmly. "Glinda used her glitter beads, and you used your exotic looks and background, but weren't you just doing the same thing, trying to maximize what you had in order to get what you wanted? People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us." He sighed. "It's people who claim that they're good , or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of." (pg. 457)
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We're off to see that no-good Wizard...
    Wicked had the potential to be either a superb fantasy story or a superb philosophical treatise. But by trying to be both, it failed to be great at either. It dragged at times, especially the first half. Yet it's still a good book, and there's no denying it's well-written. Perhaps some of the unanswered questions and plot details are addressed in the sequels. Ditto for the engaging, but short-lived characters. So we'll give it a "B", plus kudos to whoever managed to turn this into a highly-successful musical.

Hominids - Robert Sawyer

2002; 413 pages. Genres : Mostly sci-fi (parallel universes), but it drifts a bit. Awards : 2003 Hugo Award. First book in the "Neanderthal Parallax" trilogy. Books 2 and 3 are titled "Humans" and "Hybrids". Overall rating : C.

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Physicist Ponter Boddit's quantum computer project goes awry, transporting him into a parallel universe where incredibly, the slow-witted and long-extinct gliksins still exist. They seem equally amazed to see him, since he's a Neanderthal. And the primitive gliksins are ...well... us.

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What's To Like...

Hominids examines what would've happened if we Cro-Magnons had died out, and the Neanderthals became the dominant species of man. He's the first author to portray them as evolving into a race every bit as intelligent and advanced as us. Previous novels, such as Auel's Clan Of The Cave Bear and Crichton's Eaters Of The Dead, invariably present them as brutes. Gifted brutes, perhaps. But brutes nonetheless.

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Sawyer does a nice job of fleshing out the modern Neanderthal world. Homes have mossy floors; woolly mammoths still roam the countryside, and the Neanderthals haven't discovered the splitting of the atom. Their world isn't utopian - they have a flawed judicial system, and believe that the best deterrent to crime is to monitor every person 24/7. They have pet wolves, and the hominid population size is kept in check by unwavering adherence to the rhythm method that would bring tears to the Pope's eyes.

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OTOH...

The book really drags when Sawyer steers it away from sci-fi. There is a tepid romance thread that runs throughout the book, as "our" Mary Vaughan interacts with Ponter. The romance is still in the "wishful" stage at the end of the book, but it isn't hard to see where its going, given the title of the third book in this series.

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Even worse is Sawyer's "preachiness". The lectures about the Big Bang Theory, the existence of God, our faux pas of allowing all sorts of animals to become extinct, etc. are frankly boring and ill-fitting.

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Worst of all is Sawyer's pre-occupation, bordering on obsession, with anything to do with reproductive organs. There is a graphic and gratuitous step-by-step rape at the beginning which is unnecessary and without any redeeming value. Crime in Neanderthal-land is punishable by family castration. Time is measured by a synchronized, world-wide menstrual cycle. I cringe to think of what similar surprises await the reader in the next two books.

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I go, Hugo, we all go for Hominids...

For all its minuses, I still enjoyed the story. I just kinda tuned the philosophical blather out, and tiptoed through the gratuitous scenes as quickly as possible. The Alt-Universe portions of the book are excellent. But reviews of the two sequels to this indicate Sawyer isn't finished telling me his opinions on everything in life, so I doubt I'll read the rest of the trilogy We'll give Hominids a "C", and wistfully muse on how good it could've been if the author had taken a cold shower and put his philosophy discourses in a different book .

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P.S. Note to Robert Sawyer. On page 353, one of the characters wants to stink-out a building. You rightfully have her reject Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) because it might kill everyone. Unfortunately, you therefore have her choose Ammonium Sulfide (ASD). Very, very bad move. ASD is nearly as toxic as H2S. I should know. My company produces ASD. Substituting ASD for H2S is about the same as getting shot by a 18-man firing squad instead of a 20-man one. In spite of the decrease in lethality, you're still gonna end up quite dead.