From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 3 14:24:05 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!olivea!apple!ig!dont-reply-to-paths From: sheol!throopw@dg-rtp.dg.com (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Mirabile, by Janet Kagan Message-ID: <712374696@sheol.UUCP> Date: 29 Jul 92 20:43:54 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 48 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Mirabile, by Janet Kagan What attracted me to this book was the evident sense of fun and wordplay in the titles of the collected stories. "The Loch Moose Monster", "The Return of the Kangaroo Rex", "The Flowering Inferno", and so on. This sense of wry amusement with the world continues throughout the stories, so my expectations weren't crushed. Mirabile is a planet, colonized by an interstellar expedition from Earth, and now isolated (presumably by distance, but something may have happened to Earth also... this is not clearly developed). But to save space on the ship, the animals shipped with the colonists have had the genetic information of other species "piggybacked" onto their own. Thus, when environmental conditions are right, a flower might produce peculiar seeds that hatch into a polinating insect, or a cow might give birth to a deer, or whatever. This setting is used to tell a series of stories, some about the results of the intended piggybacking process going awry and producing interesting blends of earth species, some about interactions with the local pre-existing ecology. Each story involves some puzzle or some mystery (small or large) to figure out. One problem I had was that most all the mysteries were too easy to figure out. With perhaps the exception of the tinkering done to protect bats from a local predator, which I didn't see coming, I was way ahead of the author on most of the stories, which detracted from their fun for me. On the other hand, these stories have some of the flavor of the 1950's Heinlein juveniles, with some of the points people find bad about that vintage of Heinlein strained out. So, the technical gimick seemed weak, the stories seemed a bit oversimple, but they have a nice sense of fun and a good exposure to problem solving behavior (so to speak), and a good eye for detail. On the whole, I had a good time reading. %A Janet Kagan %T Mirabile %I Tor Books %C New York %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-812-50993-5 %P 278 pages -- Wayne Throop ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 3 14:24:09 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!sun-barr!ames!ig!dont-reply-to-paths From: sheol!throopw@dg-rtp.dg.com (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Mirabile, by Janet Kagan [REPOST] Message-ID: <712374696-repost@sheol.UUCP> Date: 31 Jul 92 22:11:51 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 52 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) [I have reposted this because of a news problem at the moderator's site. Apologies if you have seen it previously. -- Moderator] Mirabile, by Janet Kagan What attracted me to this book was the evident sense of fun and wordplay in the titles of the collected stories. "The Loch Moose Monster", "The Return of the Kangaroo Rex", "The Flowering Inferno", and so on. This sense of wry amusement with the world continues throughout the stories, so my expectations weren't crushed. Mirabile is a planet, colonized by an interstellar expedition from Earth, and now isolated (presumably by distance, but something may have happened to Earth also... this is not clearly developed). But to save space on the ship, the animals shipped with the colonists have had the genetic information of other species "piggybacked" onto their own. Thus, when environmental conditions are right, a flower might produce peculiar seeds that hatch into a polinating insect, or a cow might give birth to a deer, or whatever. This setting is used to tell a series of stories, some about the results of the intended piggybacking process going awry and producing interesting blends of earth species, some about interactions with the local pre-existing ecology. Each story involves some puzzle or some mystery (small or large) to figure out. One problem I had was that most all the mysteries were too easy to figure out. With perhaps the exception of the tinkering done to protect bats from a local predator, which I didn't see coming, I was way ahead of the author on most of the stories, which detracted from their fun for me. On the other hand, these stories have some of the flavor of the 1950's Heinlein juveniles, with some of the points people find bad about that vintage of Heinlein strained out. So, the technical gimick seemed weak, the stories seemed a bit oversimple, but they have a nice sense of fun and a good exposure to problem solving behavior (so to speak), and a good eye for detail. On the whole, I had a good time reading. %A Janet Kagan %T Mirabile %I Tor Books %C New York %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-812-50993-5 %P 278 pages -- Wayne Throop ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw