The Fresco [Hardcover]

If you know Tepper, you know the drill: well-drawn aliens smugly shaking their heads at human foibles, put-upon heroines faced with a brick wall of male intransigence, the environment in peril...

And that, I think, is the point. This isn't merely formulaic Tepper; it's Tepper poking fun at her own formula. Yes, really.

There are still serious points being made here: about self-abuse and the harm it does to others, about humankind's obsessive pursuit of short-term gratification over long-term prudence, about the place of women in a world still dominated by male concerns. But it's all wrapped up in a delicious, and deliciously silly, tale of first contact.

The covering story is pure, paper-thin froth, and apparently intended so: benevolent aliens with a penchant for social engineering hook up with a virtuous working mother (fleeing, of course, an abusive alcoholic husband), and together they set about Making The World A Better Place. Ranged against them are the usual motley collection of pro-life senators, conservative religious figures, and nasty hunter aliens.

The aliens' approach to improving human society reads like the Hobb's Land gods of Tepper's earlier novel _Raising the Stones_ run through the Hollywood anti-subtlety machine: harmful anti-social behaviour is simply prevented at source with what is effectively a wave of a magic wand (well, nanobots. Allegedly). There's no libertarian messing about here: castration for rapists is high on the agenda. Possibly Tepper is growing impatient with the world's problems; either way, solutions are achieved in record time, once everyone starts being 'sensible'...

Haven chosen to go with this light-hearted exaggeration, though, Tepper has immense fun with her scenario, and in doing so she subverts all expectations. The kidnapping of Jerusalem is priceless ("When you can all get along, you can have it back"); the impregnation of the pro-lifers with alien spawn is genius, and laugh-out-loud funny. Even the swipes at organised religions are amusing rather than stridently critical.

And if I'm not mistaken, the final few pages are a hilarious send-up of _Grass_...

This is rather less science fiction and more wish-fulfilment fantasy from Tepper, but is no less satisfying for that. Written prior to 9/11 it has a wistful Arthur C Clarke optimism in that the religious idiocy of fundamentalism can be dealt with, and dealt with in a humorous and compellingly satisfactory way.
Benita Alvarez, mother of two, is trapped in a loveless and abusive marriage to her violent and alcoholic husband, a man who planned to be an artist but never made it. One day, Benita is out picking wild mushrooms and is approached by two aliens, representatives of a galactic federation, who wish Earth to become part of a wider civilisation, and who offer Benita the chance to become the intermediary between humanity and galactic civilisation.
However, before Earth can become a member, humans will have to clean their act up, and the aliens are not prepared to wait for us to think about it.
Nanobots are scattered around the world, and various societies soon discover that they will have to change their ways. In Afghanistan, the men find that their women have become hideous which, the aliens reason, gives the males no more reason to lock their women away or force them to cover their faces when in public.
Jerusalem disappears overnight, and the aliens, in the manner of frustrated parents, tell the earth that it will be returned when we stop fighting over it and learn to play nicely.
Meanwhile, it is discovered that other, more predatory members of galactic society have also come to Earth, and have made secret deals with US politicians in order to use Earth as a hunting ground since Humanity has grossly overpopulated the planet and needs weeding out. Later, when another group of alien `peace-keepers' arrives to deal with the predators, it transpires that they are insectile forms who lay their eggs in living flesh, and having been called out at the wrong time, need hosts in which to place their larvae. Who better, the aliens reason, than those Pro-Life male politicians who pontificate endlessly about the evil of abortion. Thus, the politicians are given a lesson in what it is like to be pregnant and, more importantly, to experience the pain of childbirth, since when the larvae is removed at the time of hatching, no anaesthetic is allowed in case it interferes with the hatchling.

The third strand of the plot refers to The Fresco itself, an ancient series of paintings, sacred to Benita's aliens and central to their philanthropic values, whose patina is so stained with the candle smoke of centuries that no details can now be seen.
Many readers will no doubt sympathise with Tepper's clear and rational view of a world plagued with delusion and stupidity, and her common sense approach to the problems of the world. One has to ask, however, whether Tepper's view is that we can only be saved by abandoning control of our fates to others. If so, I am beginning to move toward her point of view.
Despite a somewhat Americocentric emphasis, this is a marvellous feel-good novel, and one finishes the novel wishing, on some level, that the aliens would come and sort us out. We could certainly do with it.

I always expect a vividly written and gripping novel from Sheri Tepper with a fairly radical feminist viewpoint, and this book is no exception. I was slightly disappointed that the plot has fewer strands than in some of her previous works, but nevertheless I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who likes her recent work. In this book, one of the issues explored is the relationship between factual historical events, and later interpretations of them, and the implications this has for religions based on interpretations of events that have happened many centuries previously. In this book Tepper suggests many radical and, in a fantastical world, 'pragmatic' solutions to various world problems, but does not concentrate in detail upon the work individual humans undergo in arriving there. A lot of the book is about humans and extra-terrestrial races acting as groups, rather than individuals.