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This page is reserved for YDP artists and authors who just feel the need to vent in a public forum.  These bitches will remain up for one month only, so read quickly!

The following is the opinion of the author or artist who wrote it, not -- necessarily -- the opinion of Yard Dog Press or any of its associates.

A Bitch from Mark W. Tiedemann

've been reviewing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Ostensibly, I'm their "scifi guy." Heaven knows, they needed one. Their handling of it in the past has been lamentable---occasionally amusing, often tragic.

You can find some of my reviews online at STLtoday.com under the Entertainment tab. Anyway, I went downtown last week to gather up an armful of books for my next couple of columns and amid the ones I took was the new Stephenie Meyer novel, The Host.

I was curious. Meyer has become a phenom. She has published three YA vampire novels (how does that work?) which have catapulted her to stardom. The Host, according to a great deal of the publicity, is her first "novel for adults." It is also, presumably, science fiction.

On that last count, it is. Marginally. Not good science fiction, but definitely within the boundaries.

What we have is an alien invasion ala Heinlein's Puppet Masters or Koontz's invaders or the Hive from that awful show Dark Skies. Parasites inserted along the upper spinal column of a human, totally subsuming the original personality.

Actually, they absorb it. They become the people they infest. And, like an inverted version of Jack Finney's body snatchers, resume the lives already being led---with some significant differences. They actually, in many ways, improve upon their hosts lives. Things get magnitudinously peaceful. Things are cleaner. There's the strong implication that the environment is being repaired (though examples are absent on the page).

Occasionally, the host personality survives, struggling to remain, causing all manner of psychic difficulties for the Souls.

Yes, the invaders know themselves as Souls. (Even their physical description has some of the ethereal quality the name implies.) This is something Meyer simply states without going into the philosophical ramifications.

Actually, she doesn't go into any philosophical ramifications of any of the questions this novel raises.

The main character is a Soul called Wanderer who is inserted in a captured rebel human, partly to learn from the latent memories where the rest of the unabsorbed humans are hiding. The host---Melanie---is one of those personalities aggressively unwilling to leave. Hence we see an experienced Soul---one that has lived in the hosts of nine different worlds the Souls have conquered---stuck in a brain with a stridently independent, strong-willed human who won't shut up.

Without going into too much detail, Wanderer ends up finding the enclave of rebel humans. They imprison her, but since the place is "owned" by an idiosyncratic (and very Heinleinian) character named Jeb, Wanderer not only is not killed immediately, but gradually becomes a member of this community. The trajectory of tolerance described---the gradual acceptance by the humans in this group---is probably the best handled aspect of the whole book. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's interesting.

Meyer recognizes that such an event is more likely to succeed in the presence of a powerful leader (Jeb).

The other interesting twist is that Melanie's brother and the man she loves are with this group. Because the process of absorption is what it is, Wanderer has not only taken Melanie's memories, but her total emotional package as well. So she also loves these people. In fact, it is the most pregnant possibility for drama in the book. This is a love triangle like no other---two women, in one body, in love with the same man, and the original host won't let the new owner use "her" body to express an emotion they both share.

Juicy, huh? The possibilities bubble right below the surface.

And that's the problem. They stay beneath the surface. Meyer blinks.There is no sex in this book. There is little violence. Virtually no one dies, at least no one of any consequence to the vicarious elements of the novel. No cussing.

Not only that, but the invasion itself is given only the most cursory of treatments. It's a fait accompli when the book opens, the discussion of how it happened are pat and short.

NOT ONLY THAT, the philosophical potential is absent. There is no mention of the morality of imperialism. No discussion of the 800 lb gorilla lurking off-stage vis-a-vis Missionary Work (Meyer is a Mormon and apparently devout) makes even the most cursory appearance.

And furthermore, I'm still trying to understand how anyone could think this is an adult novel. I cut my teeth on this kind of drivel at age 10.

Any of the predecessors, even those with all the Cold War baggage of the Finney and Heinlein, dealt more plausibly, more "adultly" with the subject.

The enclave is like an kid's daydream of the ideal hideout. The notion that the aliens---who conquered the fucking planet---can't find them is ludicrous (where did all the satellites that can read a license plate from orbit go? Not the alien's, OURS!). The romance? Gimme a break.

Meyer evidently made a point of discussing the lack of on-page sex, but it's a cheat. She set up a situation in which people who are supposedly in love have to cope with not only the mind but the BODY issue and there's not a drop of lubrication anywhere. No tight bellies, anxious groins, deep moans, no real WANTING. I'm sorry, to be this intimate---there's an alien in my brain that can read all my thoughts and feel all my feelings!---and then ignore the central issue of profound and intimate human interaction is a cheat. It's dishonest. It's perversely puritanical.

Worse yet, it makes for dull reading.

I was left wondering what adults this was written for. I suspect it was written for the adults who are trying to find something for their kids to read that eschews what they see as the degeneracy of the current age.

Here we have what ought to be a hair-raising science fiction novel, with the potential to deal with issues ranging from imperialism to mind-body dualism to hormonal chemistry to environmentalism to you name it, but with none of that pesky stuff that makes mommy and daddy uncomfortably when the kids ask them about it. No sex, no violence, no politics, no morality, no...

No guts.

I wrote a much tamer review for the Post. As a friend pointed out, nothing I say will dissuade anyone from buying the book. I wrote the review in order to elucidate why this novel is not what it is purported to be. I wrote an educational review.

Is it totally bad? Well that's the curious thing. No. Meyer doesn't really make any missteps. She just refuses to deal with the material.

Oh, there's some plot logic problems, but that's not where it falls apart. Very good novels often have logic problems. It's what they say about their subject that makes them good.

And the fact is, Meyer doesn't say anything.

Oh, yeah, and at the end? Everyone gets (more or less) what they want.

The irritation---compounded by the promo matter that informs me that the initial print run is 750,000 copies---added to my itch to start writing again. Because I can't help but feel I could do a hundred times better.