Subject: SIDESHOW by Sheri S. Tepper

From: [email-masked]
Date: 18 Jun 93 00:43:40 GMT

SIDESHOW by Sheri S. Tepper
                     A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		      Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper

     SIDESHOW is set in the same universe as Tepper's GRASS and RAISING THE
STONES, but thought it contains references to events in those books, it is
not necessary for you to have read them to read SIDESHOW.  (For example, I
have read GRASS, but not RAISING THE STONES.)  SIDESHOW is set on a far-
future Elsewhere, a planet dedicated to diversity.  Each society on
Elsewhere is free to chart its own path and make its own rules, so long as
it does not interfere with any of its neighbors.  This is similar to the
arrangement in Mike Resnick's "Kirinyaga" stories, but with one major
difference--no one can change to another society.  If you are born in a
society which has child sacrifice or which keeps women as slaves, you're
stuck there.  I found the various societies a bit too obvious for my tastes:
Molock has child sacrifice, Haifah keeps women as slaves, Enarae was
established by Guntoter and concentrates on weapons and a rigid caste system
with its own version of yuppies, and so on.  All this is overseen by the
city of Tolerance and its Enforcers, who "Attend to the Situation" when
necessary.

     All this is prefaced, in a manner of speaking, by a sequence on near-
future Earth in which a pair of joined twins are born whose destiny is to
save humanity.  They eventually end up on Elsewhere, where the inhabitants-
-who are all that remains of humanity after the rest were taken over by the
Hobbs Land Gods--are being threatened by an unknown adversary.  However, I
found their story during their time on Earth more interesting than that of
the threat to humanity and the digs at various groups on the near-future
Earth more convincing than those directed at the societies on Elsewhere.
When one sets up a fictional society for the purpose of satire, it's too
easy to leave the reader feeling the deck has been stacked.

     For me, SIDESHOW suffers from this and from the same flaw I saw in GATE
TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY AND GRASS: a tendency to preach.  I can't say this is a
bad book, but I can't recommend it either.

%T      Sideshow
%A      Sheri S. Tepper
%C      New York
%D      March 1993
%I      Bantam Spectra
%O      paperback, US$5.99 [1992]
%G      ISBN 0-553-56098-0
%P      482pp

Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked] / [email-masked]