Sharyn McCrumb - Zombies of the Gene Pool

The second book in the Bimbos of the Death Sun series, 1992

Jay Omega decided to wait until the shouting stopped before he knocked. Against his better judgment he had left the happy anarchy of the Electrical Engineering building and ventured into the English department to see if Marion wanted to go to dinner, but the sounds coming from her office indicated that Dr. Marion Farley was otherwise engaged. The typed index card on the door announced that she had office hours from 4 to 5 p.m., so Jay assumed that she was in conference with a student. He had put his ear to her office door to see if she was nearly finished and had heard the following exchange.

"This is a world literature class, not a science fiction class!"

"But-"

"And I can't believe that you actually wrote a paper comparing Joseph Conrad to Robert Silverberg!"

"But, Dr. Farley, when I read Heart of Darkness, I recognized Downward to the Earth almost exac-"

"And you accused Joseph Conrad of plagiarism!"

Jay Omega sighed and walked away. Marion was going to be a while. He wondered how late their dinner date was likely to be. Jay Omega and Marion Farley had little in common besides the fact that they were both carbon-based life forms, but despite the differences in temperament, interests, and income, they had been a couple for two years now. The relationship began when Jay ventured into the English department with the manuscript of his first book, and Marion asked if he had a note from his adviser. He still looked young for a Ph.D., and his jeans from the tenth grade did still fit, though Marion had made him throw them away. He supposed he had changed for the better since then. Marion had once seen his high school yearbook photo and said, "You looked like a mosquito." Now he had contact lenses instead of Coke-bottle glasses, and his brown hair was cut in a longer, more flattering style. They had both blossomed after adolescence. Marion had endured high school as a fat and friendless intellectual; now she was a slender, dark-haired Ph.D. who ran in the local marathons and sparred with the women's fencing team. It was no coincidence that the poster above her desk featured The Avengers' Emma Peel, Marion's role model in adolescence.

Jay looked down at his khaki work pants and plaid shirt. He still didn't dress like the dapper young professors in English, but Marion had given up on him in that department. He didn't wear power ties, but he kept her decrepit car running, which more than made up for it. Jay and Marion were in a romantic holding pattern, waiting to see if they would both get tenure so that neither would have to leave the university and start over elsewhere.

Jay ventured back to the office door. She was still at it. He sighed. If things dragged on for too long, he could always go in search of a snack machine, but since most of the English professors seemed to be on a health and fitness kick, he wasn't even sure that they had a snack machine, and if they did, it might offer such arcane items as wheat germ and carob candy bars. Long ago

he decided that the English department was about as alien as anything Robert Silverberg could come up with. Even after several years' association with one of their assistant professors, he didn't understand their tribal customs. Or their bulletin boards. Every now and then he would come in and read the notices while he was waiting for Marion, just to see if any literary culture had worn off on him. Apparently, it hadn't.

"warren writes better than anne."

Now what did that mean? Jay Omega turned to a pink-haired young woman in overalls who was pinning a Literary Lions notice over the campus newspaper clipping announcing that Professor Byron Snipes had just been published in the avant-garde (which Marion said was pronounced "mimeographed") literary magazine, The Maggots Digest.

Jay knew about the Literary Lions. They were a group of English instructors and other town writers who gave readings every Sunday afternoon in the New Age Cafe. Marion had dragged him there once when her office mate Toni Richardson was reading from her stream-of-consciousness novel about a Labrador retriever who thought it was Virginia Woolf. Every time the dog had to go into the water to retrieve a duck, there would be pages and pages of inner dialogue over whether or not it would get back out. Jay didn't understand it at all, but everyone else had told Toni that it was very experimental and definitely not accessible. (Marion said that "experimental" meant writing in the present tense, and "not accessible" meant that they didn't understand it either.)

Jay Omega's opinion was not solicited. He was the only nationally published author in town, but since he had written a science fiction novel called Bimbos of the Death Sun, he was not invited to read with the mineral water and tofu crowd at the New Age Cafe. Not even for their four-dollar beans and rice fund raisers in support of El Salvador. (Or was it against support in El Salvador?) Anyway, Jay didn't remember any Literary Lions called Warren or Anne. So what was that about?

"Excuse me," he said, pointing to the hand-lettered graffiti. "Could you tell me what that means?"

The pink lady glanced at the sign. "Warren Writes Better Than Anne." She nodded, with a frosty smile. "Beatty, of course. Only they spell it differently." Seeing that he still looked blank, she explained kindly, "Warren Beatty is Shirley MacLaine's little brother."

Before he could explain that it was Anne he had never heard of, she had walked away with her sheaf of notices, and another student was tugging at his sleeve. "Dr. Mega, I'm glad I ran into you!"

The tall red-headed guy with a Starfleet patch on his jacket looked familiar. What was that kid's name? Second row, first seat in engineering fundamentals. Jay managed a feeble grin, hoping he wasn't about to be asked for a reference.

The young man set his books on top of the covered trash can and chattered on, happily unaware of his anonymity. "When I was home on spring break, I tried to buy a copy of your book for my high school physics teacher, but our local bookstore said it wasn't on their order list."

Dr. James Owens Mega-aka science fiction author Jay Omega -heaved a mighty sigh of resignation. "Did you look under G?"

"No. Is that a new one? I wanted your first book-Bimbos ofthe Death Sun."

"I know. It's listed under G. For Galactic Wonders #2: Bimbosof the Death Sun. The first part is the series title. Alien Books lists all their titles that way. The first one in the series is GalacticWonders #1: Betrayal at Byzantium by Susan Shwartz." She's not happy about it either, he finished silently.

Several months earlier, when they found out about this nationwide blunder, Marion had remarked, "This is the only book in history that requires a password in order to purchase it!"

The student was looking at him as if he were crazy. "Under G," he repeated carefully. "Uhh-I've taken some marketing courses, Dr. Mega, and I have to tell you, that doesn't sound like a good idea."

Jay Omega nodded sadly. "So my royalty statements would indicate."

It seemed to Jay Omega that he had the worst of both worlds-another reason that the English department made him uneasy. The way he figured it, an author could either go for respect in the literary world-critical reviews in prestigious journals, scholarly articles on one's works, small print runs at respected university presses-or he could write popular fiction and receive fan mail and big bucks. The lurid bikini-clad girl on the cover of Jay Omega's paperback original left no doubt in the English department as to which category