Stuart's Reviews > Venus Plus X

Painfully Dated, Tedious Lectures Without Even Pretense of a Real Plot
This book was also selected by David Pringle in his Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels : An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984, so I had some degree of expectations.

That being said, I've revisited the list recently and ticking off some of the remaining ones via audiobook and know his list is extremely hit-or-miss, which is hardly a surprise as it is 1) extremely eclectic, including many books that are borderline SF, lean towards literary style with mainstream authors making forays into SFF, and 2) covers some very dated books from the 1950s that were seminal but don't hold up well at all.

Still, I liked More Than Human and The Dreaming Jewels, and have recently read some very good stuff by Angela Carter that explores gender fluidity in incredible ways such as The Passion of New Eve (1977), and also time travel to a very dull utopian society used as a vehicle for the author to explore their ideas about ideal social/political systems, and also critique the social mores of their day, such as Robert Graves' Watch the North Wind Rise (1949). Both of those books were really interesting, had a lot to say, and said it with style. The latter in particular has an almost identical conceit as Venus Plus X - a man from the contemporary world is mysteriously transported through time to a distant future utopia that is totally alien to him, and both sides are baffled by each other's ways.

But my god this was one of the weakest excuses for a story I've read in ages - the plot is so flimsy it makes balsa wood seem like granite, McDonalds taste like filet mignon, and reality TV feel like great art. I've never encountered any author that made less effort to clothe his info-dumps and ideas on gender and social utopias with even the barest of narrative tension or character drama. At least the main character in Robert Graves' book fell in love with two women and had a sense of British middle-class irony. This book started out dull, and proceeded straight to highly annoying before ending with an extended college lecture on gender and society that would put anyone to sleep. What a disaster - it clearly must have been more impressive back in 1960, but it's fatally flawed for a modern reader. Candidate for biggest disappointment of 2022 so far!