Happy spring from the Red Planet. In many ancient cultures spring marked the return of the maiden goddesses connected to fertility. The Christian festival of Easter is a relic of Old World paganism, with the festival of Ostara/Eostre honoring the goddess of Easter changed to celebrating the resurrection of Christ. Such a goddess is Persephone, who rises from her underworld abode in spring to reign over nature. Throughout winter she would lie asleep in the underworld, only to come forth in spring—a pretty obvious symbol of nature's rebirth. I am convinced she is an antecedent to the fairy tale, “Sleeping Beauty.” Wouldn’t it make sense?

     My review has to do with a wonderful SF novel known as FOREIGNER (Tor Books), written by Robert J. Sawyer. The novel was in the book bin at Borders for almost nothing. With my Borders Card I spent around $1.50. What a lovely surprise it was to find such an imaginative novel for such a low price. It seems that FOREIGNER was the last book of the Quintaglio Trilogy in which a massive space ark had seeded the last remnants of the dinosaurs on a massive earthlike moon. A group of them evolve intelligence and start a vast civilization on this moon. When one of the space arks crashed there, its sauroid scientists began excavating it, only to find it to be the reason they are on such an exotic world. Their moon is about to disintegrate, and they must build a similar ship to migrate to another world, possibly earth. At the same time, war breaks out with another race of intelligent dinosaurs. The only hope for it to end lies with a female dinosaur psychologist, who believes that a Herod-like infanticide of baby dinosaurs may have led to their violent nature. Only a few were allowed to survive.

     Since I had not read the first two books of the Quintaglio series, I can't say much about them. But, by crackie, I’m going to order the other two as soon as I can. I realize most sci-fi enthusiasts will point out that the concept of intelligent dinosaurs is a fairly old idea, going back to a Tarzan adventure, where he discovers a Lost World with evolved feathered dinosaurs, intelligent archaeopteryxes—pretty smart for Victorian Era fiction. Anyway, this was still a really amusing, easy read...honest!...and unusual enough for the most hardcore, jaded sc-fi fans. It would make a great pixar-style, animated feature, but not for kids, since these dinosaurs are clearly evolved from flesh eaters and kind of savage…but a helluva lot of fun.

     On the horror front I have noticed a complete revival of zombie films/books/ games and the like. My guess is that this is a byproduct of 9/11, with a fear of terrorists who have almost a zombie-like lack of fear or remorse. Again, I have always felt horror reflects culture, and not the other way around. What I mean is that horror doesn’t influence culture, as many fundamentalist Christians suggest. Often, the horror film is a very clear reflection of what's up with society. A few years back there were some  horror films of young people running into Texas Chainsaw-type trouble in other countries. But, once again, it's become zombies, zombies, and more zombies. For those uninitiated into zombie film/fiction, the classic, I Am Legend, was the seed concept novel for the cult film, Night of the Living Dead, although Living Dead was clearly the creation of Pittsburgh genius, George Romero. 

Love them zombies…and happy, happy, joyful spring!