Title:
Greenthieves
Author:
Alan Dean Foster
Publisher:
Ace Books, 1994
ISBN
0-441-00104-1

Science Fiction is for me the fast food of literature. I don't go to a five-star restaurant for hamburgers and fries, no more than I expect a literature professor to include science fiction authors in the syllabus.

But, like hamburgers and fries, I gain enjoyment and nourishment from Science Fiction that I don't find in the flights of fancy of Hemingway or Goethe. So, running across truly bad SF by authors whom I have come to know for their strong writing can be as disappointing as a hamburger stand that has no salt for its fries.

I first read Alan Dean Foster when he published Splinter in the Mind's Eye, a Star Wars novel. Maybe it wasn't an earthshaking entry into a world populated by Heinlein, Asimov, and Clark. Maybe it didn't threaten the thrones of Bradbury, Wells, or Verne. But it was fun to read, and later works didn't disappoint. Like Heinlein, he showed he could handle high adventure with novels like Midworld. The Flinx series, and the Spellsinger series, are both testimony to characterization and plot that captivates thousands of readers, leaving them asking for more.

With this in mind, I was not unjustified to pick up Greenthieves (Ace Books, 1994) full of anticipation for a great read. It was a disappointment, instead.

The story is a "whodunnit," according to the jacket blurb. Set several hundred years in the future, it stars a Sean Connerish investigator, complete with a pair of robotic side kicks stolen right off the set of Star Wars. An improbably exotic woman "partner" from off planet provides the mandatory occasions for juvenile double entendre, although the only scene in the book which may be described as a moment of sexual tension terminates in an explosion. Of a toilet. The remaining characters are only loosely played, with poor motivation for their behavior, and little, except stock interactions between each other. For example, the hero of the story and the only other character with any strength, a police officer, pretty much limit their interactions to commiserations about the tenuousness of their respective employment situations.

The mystery is mysterious enough in the beginning. But when the highly paid investigator proceeds to do his work, he does so in such a bumbling manner that I was left to wonder if maybe this was the type of character who keeps most of his theories close to his chest, to spring a grand surprise on the reader at the end, like a futuristic Hercule Poirot. But even when the solution to the plot was obvious to me, this detective is still clueless.

Other kinks in the fabric of the story, including a couple of serious plot holes, make it clear that this is not a mystery crafted by a seasoned mystery writer. But even the Greats can leave a few bugs in the story. I wonder if I am the only one to find the plothole in Christie's Evil under the Sun? In any case, plot holes have never put me off a story by themselves.

The final straw consisted of the large number of passages that were just plain bad. Turns of phrase that seemed out of place, hackneyed, or just plain wrong.

We are all told in creative writing classes the old saw, "If you think you found a particularly well chosen adjective, delete it!" Similar good advice abounds, given to novices to guide our writing. When experienced writers ignore this advice the results enhance the work. In Greenthieves these phrases created such a sense of incredulity in my mind that I was set to wondering what the date of the work's copyright was. I am led to suspect that this story may have come from Foster's slush pile, and was published on the strength of his name, with none of the scrutiny that works by lesser known authors would receive. I couldn't imagine any other explanation...

My investment in the story was a mere $5.50, plus sales tax. Foster's investment was a considerable portion of his career. Any author, in particular an accomplished one like Foster, is allowed a few works that do not meet their usual standards. But I can only hope that whatever follows Greenthieves is less disappointing.