When You’re Strange

Bimbos of the Death Sun

By Sharyn McCrumb

26 Jul, 2022

**Big Hair, Big Guns!**

15 comments

Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 26 Jul, 2022

**Big Hair, Big Guns!**

15 comments

1987’s Bimbos of the Death Sun is the first of two Jay Omega mysteries by Sharyn McCrumb.

Engineering professor Dr. James “Jay Omega” Mega turned his research into a novel. Fellow academic Dr. Marion Farley transformed Jay’s novel into a readable novel and Jay himself into a boyfriend. Jay’s publisher renamed the hard SF novel Bimbos of the Death Sun, slapped a lurid cover on it, and sent it out to bookstores. Now comes the most grueling part of writing SF: publicity. Specifically, interacting with fans at Rubicon, a science fiction convention.

Rather oddly for an SF author, Jay is almost entirely ignorant of science fiction and of the cultures surrounding it. Marion, on the other hand, teaches courses on SF and is personally familiar with its many subcultures, having partaken eagerly before she learned to pass for a normal adult. She is Jay’s guide to Rubicon.

The conrunners are friendly enough, if only because authors who are cooperative and not deranged are a useful resource. The fans are a rich assortment of often poorly socialized weirdos, but with one notable exception, they are mostly harmless.

Star attraction Appin Dungannon is trapped by his own success. He loathes writing the Tralyn Runewind fantasy series. Fans love the books and the income has thus far been too good to walk away from. Miserable, Appin copes by being as unpleasant as possible to everyone that he interacts with.

Guess who is murdered.

Lt. Thomas Ayhan arrives at Rubicon delighted that it is an SF con and not, say, a gathering of the Mystery Writers of America. Mystery authors tend to be inconveniently well informed about police procedure and are all too likely to know how to carry out a murder without getting caught. SF fans seem unlikely to have the same expertise; catching Appin’s murderer should be a matter of a few hours work.

Jay is no more a detective than he is an SF fan. However, he is observant. It does not take him long to work out who the killer must be. However, knowing and proving are two different things. Jay has just the gambit needed to make the killer reveal themselves … one Jay may not survive.

~oOo~

It’s weird how this was a modern mystery when I first read it, but now it’s a period piece filled with little details that hint at the year it is set. It’s before Star Trek: New Generation, for one thing. Computers are everywhere, but novel enough that cops might not know better than to reinsert a floppy disk after dusting it for prints. A certain brand of computer is a MacIntosh, not an Apple.

One major negative thing first: as a whodunit, this is terrible. I guessed the killer before the murder happened. Jay isn’t being particularly insightful to finger the killer. What he does do is show how easy it would be for an amateur detective who has seen too many drawing room scenes to get themselves killed after the big reveal. After all, the person one is putting on the spot has killed at least once before. Jay manages to survive, but it could easily have gone another way.

Another major negative thing: this is not a book where being unconventional in any way is celebrated. A lot of this book is poking fun at the freaks, not always sympathetically.

It isn’t clear how exactly someone as studiously ignorant of SF as Jay could set out to write an SF novel but I am sure it happens. It’s pretty clear that Marion should get co-writer credit on Jay’s book and also pretty clear that Jay will never think of giving it to her.

“It’s a good book. For hard science fiction, that is. It’s scientifically sound; it isn’t pretentious; and I made damn sure it isn’t demeaning to women. That’s saying a lot for this genre.”

Jay is in many ways oblivious to the world around him. Luckily for him, Marion sees potential and is willing to put in the time to bring Jay up to code¹. Although I don’t know if the author intended it, there are parallels between Marion and minor character Brenda Lindenfeld, a morbidly obese woman who has discovered male fans are a desperate but often well-paid lot. Thus, Brenda’s current avocation of trading feigned interest and a few minutes of inept sex for financial support from various desperate tedious losers like Richard Faber.

Thank God he knew so much about tactical warfare and diplomacy, Richard Faber was thinking. His explanation of the Battle of Leningrad had really fascinated this intelligent creature.

This could really happen! But in this case, it has not.

As I recall, reaction to Bimbos within SFdom was divided between fans who were pleased to be recognized at all and fans who were profoundly offended by the author’s portrayal of SF, SF fans, and SF fandom. It’s clear the author did a lot of research for the book, but also clear that she disapproved of a lot of what she found.

“They seem happy enough,” said Jay Omega, wishing somebody would laugh or applaud to prove his point.

“Sure, they’ve moved their egos into fictional bodies on the paperback rack so that they can ignore the rejection in real life. I teach science fiction, Jay! I know these people.”

McCrumb seems deeply ambivalent about anyone who deviates from the norm without a sensible, fiscally responsible reason for doing so. It is OK for Marion to know so much about SF, because she transformed her body of knowledge into a career and herself into a respectable woman indistinguishable to the untrained eye from a real person². The young woman who uses her costuming skills for free, on the other hand, is presented as a baffling anomaly. Sure, the woman is skilled but why waste her talents on something that will never make any money³? Even if there wasn’t the issue of Geek Social Fallacies at play at Rubicon, fandom by its unpaid nature would not appeal to McCrumb’s profit-oriented mindset⁴.

Bimbos of the Death Sun is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Book Depository), and here (Chapters-Indigo).

1: Marion is aware that she and Jay could be parted by tenure. Specially, if she gets it and Jay does not, she expects his wounded ego will force a split.

2: I cannot find the passage but it’s pretty clear that the crucial skillset that allowed Marion to flourish is what the kids today call “masking.”

3: I have read other McCrumb books and they shared the same bafflement regarding people with unpaid but beloved hobbies.

4: I may be a bit down on McCrumb, but I should point out that she had a lengthy career and won awards too numerous to mention here.

Comments

Well, this sounds offensive.

Joel PolowinKt

I found it offensive. I contrast it with DeWeese and Coulson's Now You See It/Him/Them . BotDS mocks fans and fandom; it's laughing at us, rather than with us as NYSI/H/T does.

James NicollJoel Polowin

Huh. Not Juanita, which was my first guess.

Wiredog

Loved this book when it came out, mainly because I’d been to many cons in the DC area in the early and mid-80’s and recognized all the archetypes. I can’t recall if the prof being at Va Tech or the con being Rubicon (which I vaguely recall being in Richmond one year), but to a Virginian it seemed obvious.

It has not aged at all well.

It has not aged well, but I’m still fond of it.

WiredogWiredog

Hmmm. That needs editing…

I found it an entertaining book, and it did not seem offensive. I think the key point for me was that Marion's disapproval of some fans wasting their talents was presented as her view of the subject; I think Jay calls her out a bit on having "the soul of an old testament prophet" or something to that effect. Sure, it may have been the authors view as well, but it was in character.

Regarding the characters and situations, it seemed pretty accurate (with the exception that fannish interest in folklore seemed perhaps a bit idealized in the book, but perhaps it reflected the local community). I read Bimbos shortly after attending a small convention as a largely-unknown author guest, and, minus murder, the experiences was not dissimilar. Did run into a few unusual types not reflected here, like an avowed satanist and psychic vampire, and another writer who believed her personal aura disrupted electronics, so she could not use a computer.

Jay being ignorant of SF is quite reasonable for a very casual SF reader who wrote a book to dramatize an engineering principle as the book says. It's not that dissimilar to Tolkien (a language professor who creates a setting and story as the home for a made-up language and mythology).

Heather Jones

I read Bimbos back when it first came out, hoping for a gently humorous ribbing of fannish culture combined with an amusing murder mystery. Instead I found it to be nasty and meanspirited and put me off reading anything else that McCrumb ever wrote. It's not that the fannish stereotypes depicted in the book were "wrong", just that the tone came off as sneeringly superior and dismissive.

David GoldfarbHeather Jones

Same for me on both counts.

Simon Bisson

For a more accepting view of fandom in a mystery, I recommend Donna Andrews’ We’ll Always Have Parrots, set at a convention for a loosely disguised Xena TV show… It’s part of Andrews’ long running Meg Lanslow series of bird-titled mysteries that regularly dip into geek culture.

James NicollSimon Bisson

This is the third time in a week that book has come up.

Marcus Rowland

This was the first book I read by this author, and she had certain tropes which unfortunately made her difficult to enjoy - the main one was that most of the characters in her stories had some obsessive interest (such as SF in this one, Scottish culture and genealogy in some of her other books) which she'd mock repeatedly to pad out the plot. As others have said, they did not wear well.

Tina Klein

To borrow the words of Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, HATED this book. It was so mean spirited and awful while being boring, quite a feat. Perhaps it became more interesting as it progressed, I wouldn’t know as I tossed it in the trash.

I enjoyed this book when it came out, but then, I already was familiar with McCrumb from reading her Elizabeth MacPherson series, which I liked (and which held up a bit better over time.) I still reread the one that was a sendup of historical reenactment groups once in a while; Bimbos didn't age well enough to reread.

David Siegel

I enjoyed Bimbos when it first came out, although I could have done with less of the snide mocking of fans, and I thought the author's research into SF fandom must have been rather superficial. But it was fun. Of the Author's three series (Jay Omega, Elizabeth McPherson, Ballads) I liked the "Ballad" series (the one starting with If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-o was the best, and the first two books of that were not as good as the later ones. I did not find the whodunit in Bimos as obvious as you did, but it was not the most compled mystery I ever read, by quite a distance. Actually, I enjoyed the second book in this series, Zombies of the Gene Pool more than this one. But I liked The Rosewood Casket, Songcathcher, Frankie Silver, and The Devil Among the Lawyers much more.

Ejf

I'm in the 'hated it' crowd. Read it when it came out and the pitying, condescending attitude was really annoying. Later I read some of McCrumb's mysteries set in the Appalachians and it was remarkable how different the attitude was. In those the characters were depicted with a sympathy that was missing from BotDS, and with little or none of the condescension.