Dragon’s Egg
Since I’d read less than half of the top 100 sci-fi books circulating the blogsphere a while back, I put a few of ’em on hold at the library.
The library had to dig Dragon’s Egg up from the storage room. They can put it back now. I just plain could not get through it.
I am just really, really, really tired of the “she’s gorgeous—and she’s got a brain!” routine. So tired that I can’t read books in which it features prominently any more.
I pitched Babel-17 at a wall for this reason. (Well, that and the ludicrously snarled linguistics.) Dragon’s Egg ought to have gotten pitched at a wall, but it was a library book so I didn’t.
Okay, so we start out the book with this nuclear physics grad student. Cool. And she’s female. Cool. So why exactly do we have to mention how cute she is in the second paragraph mentioning her? And why exactly can we not stop mentioning how cute she is after that paragraph? And why exactly do we have to introduce this loser boyfriend character whose main purpose is to marvel at how awesomely cute she is, given that she’s A Brain and all that?
But she only figures in the first hundred pages or so. We move onto her son then, and his love interest. Who only happens to be A Cute Brain too.
Argh. I am just too old for this tripe, and much too old to see people praising it. I can’t suspend my irritation any more.
Yeah, yeah, product of its times. I know that. I still find it hard to believe that science fiction can’t find better exempla than this.