Wednesday, November 11, 2015

A Planet Called Desire, by Gwyneth Jones

Old Venus, 2015; ~12,100 words
Rating: 3, Good, ordinary, story

Wealthy John Forrest has himself transported across space and time to primordial Venus, before it lost its oceans and life.

Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)

Pro: This one attempts to fit watery Venus into the real world. Forrest wants an adventure in a cleaner place than Earth. He has his adventure on old Venus, but learns that it has its own problems. He returns to Earth wiser and decides to spend the rest of his life on Venus, choosing their problems over our own.

Con: Once he's on Venus, the story becomes a tale: a sequence of inconclusive adventures. But for the framing story, it wouldn't be a story at all. Of course this is faithful to a model that was popular 70 years ago (the great white explorer), but there's a reason that went out of style.

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