From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Feb  9 23:45:47 1992
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From: alayne@ve3pak.uucp
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Subject: THE RAGGED WORLD by Judith Moffett
Message-ID: <1992Feb6.194247.1221@raven.alaska.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 92 19:42:47 GMT
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                      The Ragged World
                     by Judith Moffett

              Author's Choice Monthly Issue 19
                     by Judith Moffett

                reviewed by Alayne McGregor
                (alayne@ve3pak.ocunix.on.ca)


The first contacts with an alien species: what would they be
like? Would they be giant media events, with golden
spaceships floating majestically to earth and music blaring?
Or would they be simple meetings, one on one, perhaps
accidental?

In her book, _The Ragged World_, Judith Moffett envisions a
21st century where an alien race, the Hefn, suddenly
appears. But they're not particularly interested in making
contact with the human race; they want to rescue some of
their people who were left on Earth more than 300 years
previously.

_The Ragged World_ is the story of how the abandoned Hefn
lived among mankind, quite separately but occasionally
befriending humans, and how the human race adjusts to living
with the returning Hefn.

Moffett's strength is her characterization. Her Hefn
characters have motives and needs not understandable or
obvious to humans; they're not just humans in fur. And her
portrait of Nancy Sandford, the biologist who appears to be
loosely based on the Nobel-Prize-winning geneticist Barbara
McClintock, is one of the most moving descriptions I have
ever read of how a person can adjust to a living death
sentence. Sandy has AIDS; she lives with it and in spite of
it.

Unfortunately, this book was composed of a number of
previously-written novellas -- and it shows. There are
frustrating plot holes everywhere; the book *demands* a
sequel just to fill some of them in. The fate of Hefn Elphi,
one of the main characters in the book, is mentioned in one
paragraph in passing; I was left feeling cheated. And one of
the main plot elements introduced in the first chapter, that
the Hefn could force humans to adopt an environmentally-
sound way of living, is thereafter almost ignored (is
airplane travel really consistent with a complete ban on
fossil fuels?).  The Hefn environmental prescription itself
has some logical holes.

However, despite these faults, I still immensely enjoyed
this book.  I suspect Moffett is still more skilled in
writing novellas than novels, but her skill at evoking
people and places will make me seek our her work again.

The _Author's Choice Monthly_ series by Pulphouse features a
different author each month, with several stories selected
by him or her.  Moffett's choices were two novellas,
_Surviving_ and _Not Without Honor_.

_Surviving_, which I first read and enjoyed when it appeared
in 1986 (it was anthologized in Gardner's Dozois' Best Of),
is the story of Sally Barnes, a woman raised by chimpanzees
who rejoins the human race, and Jan, the woman psychologist
who had written her doctoral dissertation on Barnes. When
Barnes becomes a professor of biology at the same university
as Jan, Jan wants them to become friends, but it doesn't
quite work out that way.

_Not Without Honor_ is simply a charming story of an alien
race which adopts the Mickey Mouse Club via TV broadcasts
and what happens when they come to Earth to find the
Mouseketeers.  Both stories are well worth reading.

%T      The Ragged World
%A      Judith Moffett
%C      New York
%D      1991
%I      St. Martin's Press
%O      hardcover, US $18.95 CDN $25.95
%G      ISBN 0-312-05499-8
%P      341pp

%T      Author's Choice Monthly Issue 19
%A      Judith Moffett
%C      Eugene, Oregon
%D      1991
%I      Pulphouse Publishing
%O      softcover, US $10
%G      ISBN none
%P      104pp