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Looking at another from my trawl of Red Cross Book Sale sff... Restoree, by Anne McCaffrey.

I first read this when I was a kid -- my parents had a lot of sff, and some stuff just leads on naturally from fairytales and 'kids having adventures' YAs -- and didn't think much about it. But it's been decades, so what do I think of it now?

As I recall, the main plot seems sf-romance (is that the right name for the genre?) Earth woman is abducted by aliens and put through something of a mincer. Her breathing carcase is rescued by the first aliens' long term enemies, who are not from Earth but humanlike enough that when a docter tries to bring her back to health and sanity he doesn't seem to notice anything odd about her physically

The plot point is... attempts to restore the victims have so often been flamboyant failures and fraught with horror, that trying is now a taboo which righteous people do not do. Which is to say, the doctor who saves this girl's life is kind of dubious and has a side hustle in inducing severe illness in people who are inconvenient and 'very kindly' looking after them in his lovely sanitorium. FL is put to work looking after one of these prisoners and, as she slowly comes out of a trauma-induced funk, realises what is happening and helps the guy escape and (if I remember correctly) there are various shenanigans trying to get him back to his allies (while never letting slip that she's actually kinda-sorta a figure from a ghost-story now). There's a sequence on a sailboat? People use pocket slates not paper and I remember liking that bit of worldbuilding as a kid.

Also as I recall, ML is a bit of a bodice-ripper but FL enjoys it so that's okay. ... There is probably a whole academic article in assessing how much of those story beats in McCaffrey novels are the writer's own non-con kink, the standards of the time (slushy romance novels), or the other standards of the time (the sff genre as a whole).

Anyway anyway, as of the first chapter, the plot seems pretty standard -- a short account of how Plucky FL ends up in a foreign place and needs to use her wits to save herself and her patient.

My thoughts: The prose is solid. It sets up the situation quickly and gives an idea of what FL's background is (youngest daughter of a large family, broke tradition to train as a librarian and live her own life, doesn't like the way she looks) in a few words but vividly. Also, it does a good job of conveying the horror of the original abduction and restoration without being so unnerving I had to stop reading.

[Content Warning: body horror, mental distress]

I have one other impresion of that final second before all horror overcame me: of a huge dirigible-shaped form looming lightless. I remember that only because I thought to myself that someone was going to catch hell for flying so low over the city. Then the black bulk of the thing seemed to compress the stinking air through my skull, robbing me of breath and sanity with its aura of alien terror. Of the next long interlude, which I am informed was a period of withdrawal from a reality too disrupting to contemplate, I remember only isolated incoherencies. It is composed of horrifying fragments, do-si-do-ing in a random partnering of all nightmare symbols, tinted with unlikely colors, accompanied by fetid odors, by intense heat and shivering cold and worst of all, nerve-memories of excruciating pain. I remember, and forget as quickly as possible, dismembered pieces of the human body; the pattern of severed blood vessels, sawn bones, the patterns of the fine lines on wrinkled skin. And throat-searing screams. And a voice, dinning into the ears of my mind, repeating with endless, stomach-churning patience, collections of syllables I strained desperately to sort into comprehensible phrases. Red, yellow, blue beads rolled, parabolically, evading a needle and its umbilical string. A spoon dipped into a blue bowl, into a red bowl; a spoon dipped into a red bowl, into a blue bowl, until my body was forced into the mold of a spoon and itself was dipped into the bowl, my greatly enlarged mouth the bowl of that spoon. Plaits of human hair swayed toward oddly shaped sheets of pale white leather. The gentle voice with the iron insistence of the dedicated droned on and on until each repetition seemed to trampoline into the gray matter of my mind. Then, after eons of this inescapable routine, I began to clutch at snatches seen normally and rationally; a face on a sea of white which stretched limitlessly beyond my blinkered perception. I would be aware of bending over this face. I kept trying to make the face resemble someone I knew: one of the junior account men who invaded the source library of the advertising agency where I worked; one of the anonymous faces on the buses I rode from my 48th Street cold-water flat ...

Honestly, I love that she later describes the ML as ugly. (Well, he's not looking his best here.) But bring on the jolie laide!

Questions as I go on:

Will FL, once she's free and active, have any flashbacks to all of the above, or dysphoria from having a new face? Or was this more of a functional transition to get her to Adventure Land. (There must be a word for that -- like a MacGuffin, but an event not an object.)

I really can't remember what happens to the unscrupulous doctor who, well, saved this woman''s life. Does she ever talk to him again? How do his actions good and bad balance each other?

EDIT:

Ha! We have some more exposition! So! New planet, Lothar, used to be, from well before their recorded history, basically the cattle farm/hunting preserve of The Big Bad Aliens, the Mil. Closer to now, they scrambled up enough military puissance to take down one of the Mil's spaceships, then learn how to use and make the tech, and gradually got their shit together enough to push the Mil off their planet. This is, culturally, something akin to 'we're having a war with the old gods, we can do it if we try!' Lothar's tech is an interesting mix of fancy planes + forcefields, and also sailboats basic enough that an offworlder can work them. The population is overcrowded, because they're trying to grow enough military to finish the job, resources are depleted, and there's a bit of edginess from always being on a war footing. The ML, Harlan, is head of the spaceforce and also Regent for the underage planetary leader, his nephew. (So yes, he's a very big deal.)

Also... Harlan recently discovered two nearby arable planets, unbelievably rich in natural resources, and currently inhabited by an extremely gentle hunter-gatherer population. So the central plot shenanigan looks to be Colonialism: there's a lot of pressure to exploit the Tane worlds in some way -- food production, breathing space for the overcrowded population, mining, you name it. Harlan was trying to at least soften the blow for these gentle natives with lovely personalities, and give smallholders and independant businesses a chance to set down roots instead of enormous exploitative estates. The powers that be behind the enormous exploitative estates moved to get him out of the way, hence his predicament with the FL, Sara.

I'm enjoying the mix of deliberate 'here's what you need to know' and incidental details dropped in conversation. It's when Harlan is coming up with a fake background for Sara that we hear about the 'this is my clan, and this is the cave system my clan dwelt in' colour. And we're getting good environmental detail -- the physical particulars of sailing were very vivid. Also, god, Harlan must drive his followers crazy. 'Oh look a boat we can make our get-away can you sail?' And it's only once they're at sea that we realise that he can't, all he can offer is the direction Sara needs to sail and that there aren't reefs nearby. Jaysus. And he's so fucking charming and engaging and irrepressible as he pulls this shit -- I'm half in love with the bastard too.

And oh, I'd misremembered the handsiness on the boat. He does kiss Sara without asking, but tones things down rapidly when he realises she has zero experience with such things (stinking sailboats are not a great place to make a start). I mean, I'm pretty sure Sara/Harlan is endgame, but he's less Romance Model A than I'd remembered.

So far, I'm glad I started rereading.

#anne mccaffrey #restoree #laithly's book club

Restoree, 1970. Unknow artist.

#Restoree