The colony's characterized both by sexual licentiousness and spotless scientific efficiency. Is this a geek paradise, or what? There ought to be plenty to keep a horny genetics prodigy busy through artificial night and day.
At the start, Erno's crammed into a smoke-filled bar listening as a comedian rants about his sex organ and derides women. Not exactly strong stuff by Earth standards, but it gets the place raided by police, including Erno's unsmiling, law-and-order mom, Pamela. Through Erno's restless, irritable adolescent gaze we can see Pamela struggling to obey her society's maxim to "keep your sons close" even as Erno wriggles beyond her reach. And we can spot the emotional freight train bearing down on Erno as he's drawn into his hero's subversions and begins to mistake potentially lethal misogyny for manliness. As with most truly memorable coming-of-age stories, tragedy and self-realization strike at once and are inextricably linked.
Though all Kessel's characters are vividly drawn and inhabit three-dimensional space -- no cardboard cutouts or villains from central casting here -- misunderstood teenage geeks like Erno are his masterpieces.
Even when a story fails, as in the melodramatic "The Snake Girl," Kessel manages to draw a believably angst-ridden college junior attempting to make his own version of First Contact with the female of the species. Inexplicably set in the '60s, its hero, Ben, struggles with the aftermath of his first sexual experience. The story is heavy on snake symbolism and low on plot (and allusions to Milton's "Paradise Lost" feel embarrassingly overdone).
There are many paradises lost in "The Baum Plan" but none will be mourned more utterly than the idyllic Pemberly from Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." And that's a compliment. Kessel barges in on Lizzie and Darcy's happily ever after to spend time with Mary, the plain, moralizing middle Bennett sister whose marriage sell-by date is clearly up. And then Victor Frankenstein shows up. Ah, that would change everything, wouldn't it?
With typical finesse, Kessel has Mary confront both her inner monsters and the real thing at once. Spinster Mary sitting down with the bachelor creature is probably one of the more chilling near-misses in the romance genre. But this is of course no romance, and it's charmingly pulled off with tongue-in-cheek aplomb as Kessel mimics Austen's writing, reminding readers of "Pride's" famous opening and its assertions about truths universally acknowledged.
There is at least one universal truth running through this collection. Rejection, unlike love, is a sure thing. Its contours can be measured, its gravity weighed. In that, Kessel's losers surely aren't alone in stumbling off the path to paradise.
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Anne Boles Levy is a critic and co-founder of the Cybils literary awards at dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils.
