DumbFunnery

Recently I finished reading Mayday Orbit by Poul Anderson and No Man’s World by Kenneth Bulmer.

In looking up Poul I was surprised to find he has quite the Wikipedia entry, he was more than just the handful of bad sci-fi books that I had assumed he would be. Of the two I enjoyed Bulmer’s book more.

Both books featured a main character who was an Earth (or Earth-like) male that women (whether Earthling-like or alien) found attractive, that knew how to handle himself with danger, and had a flippant/wait no I’ve planned all this/wait no I haven’t style. Basically, a bunch of less cool Han Solo precursors. Also, both of them dealt largely with civilizations that looked down or up to others as being more advanced for one reason or another (generally military might related).

I’ve included pictures of the cover of both sides of this book as an explanation for why I bought it. I love campy books, especially sci-fi.

Enough chit chat, lets get to the good stuff. Some of these quotes made me laugh out loud – the authors seemed like geeks trying to imagine what a cool guy would say or do to impress a woman. It didn’t give me much of an impression of a guy drawing on personal experience. (I’m not knocking that, I’d grasp clumsily at writing a character who is suave and debonair and end up basing it on some pre-conceived notion that probably would mostly appeal to men.)

Mayday Orbit

Altaian garments were ridiculously short on him, which was bad for morale. He thanked his elegant ohs for antibeard enzyme …

Flandry noticed once again that Bourtai was no simple barbarian. She came from a genuine and fairly sophisticated civilization, even if it was on wheels. It would be an interesting culture to visit … if he survived, which was dubious.

“Holy hopping hexaglexagons,” he mumbled in awe.

No Man’s World

She’d pierced through with her damned womanly intuition and all the denials in the universe wouldn’t alter her opinion now.

So he was being tailed, then.
So he’d have felt naked if he wasn’t.

She was wearing a transparent negligee that showed most of the things a man might want to see. As Caradine had seen them all before, many times, he could ignore them – with a slight struggle – and concentrate on the reason for their flaunting.

“You see, Mr. Carter, young Tommy Gorse was shot with a one millimeter needle-beam. A one millimeter neadle-beam that was almost certainly a Beatty. Just like the one you have under your arm.”