Abduction: 07/20/07

Alas, my run of bad books continues. Unlike The Woman in White, I did manage to finish Abduction but mostly from a morbid curiosity to see just how bad the book could get. I read this book as part of the Medical Mystery Madness challenge but the book only just barely qualifies.

Abduction suffers from some Cook's typical weak one-note characterizations. In this case, it's the two rampant homophobes, the beautiful lady scientist, the nebishy entrepreneur and the nobel chauffer (excuse me, submarine pilot). Then there are the oh-so-perfect ever-so-advanced aliens beneath the surface who live for ever and have evloved beyond the need for sex, work or violence. Oh yeah, and they have space and time travel but have chosen to stay living in the Mohorovicic zone.

Coupled with the cardboard characterization is a nonsensical plot cribbed from a laundry list of much better speculative fiction.The bulk of the book is one long tour of a city in Interterra puncuated with bland attempts at homo-errotic sex scenes. Rather than suffering through Abduction, read these books (and one film) that should have been included in a bibliography:

• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895)
• Voyage to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)
• The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1918)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
• Demolition Man, the 1993 film.

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