Pyramid Scheme (ISBN 0743435923)

A Mythological Romp:
Pyramid Scheme (2001) is the first SF novel in the Book of the Tail series. It is set in the present or maybe in the near future. The Near Earth Space Object Tracking satellite detected an object decelerating as it approached the Earth. An alarm data stream is transmitted to NORAD. The object was setting down in Chicago. Just before the landing, all radio transmissions were jammed. NORAD reported the intrusion through channels. In this novel, Tom Harkness is sent by the National Security Council to the situation briefing. He is informed that two companies from the 101st Airborne have been sent to Chicago. General Brasnos recommends that 82nd Airborne be mobilized, but Harkness refuses. He feels that the whole thing is probably a hoax. At 2:29 AM, a security guard in the Regenstein Library rounds a corner and discovers a bizarre-looking five-sided pyramidal object. Crumpled shelves and shredded books are scattered around the artifact. Turning to flee, a beam of violet light engulfs the guard and he disappears. Lieutenant Solms is the watch officer for the University of Chicago Police. He is monitoring the radio transmissions of two campus cops who have responded to a call from the library. When they fail to report, he walks over to the library and discovers the pyramid. Solms calls the University administration and then the Chicago Police. Soon police are swarming around the library. Professor Miggy Tremelo takes a look at the pyramid and tells Solms to remove his police from the scene. Then he calls in more scientists from the High Energy Physics lab across the street. They begin scanning the object. Jerry Lukacs, PhD, is a visiting professor at the Oriental Institute. He arrives at his office without noticing the police or the physicists wrestling a X-ray machine up the steps of the library. He does notice the emptiness of the building. Liz De Beer is a postdoc fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. She has come to Chicago with her husband, but has left him after he found someone else that he liked better. She is from South Africa and is familiar with the military and macho mindset. Lamont Jackson is a maintenance worker at the university. He is busy in the air handling room of the Oriental Institute with his boom-box playing loudly. Naturally, he is overlooked when the police evacuate the building. In this story, the Krim device expands every time a person vanishes or energy is directed against it. The probe is steadily moving toward the Fermi Memorial. It had missed its target by sixty yards. Still, that is not bad for a voyage of 2740 lightyears through normal space and a wormhole. When Harkness arrives, he uses the obsequious Chicago Police Lieutenant John Salinas to fetch creamer and do other errands. Then Harkness decides to put the scientists in their place. He picks Professor Tremelo to be the first victim. He is greatly surprised by the response. As the professor is reaming out the NSC man, the Krim probe makes Harkness and his party vanish. Major Gervase heads the initial two military companies on the scene. Corporal Jim McKenna escorts Professor Tremelo and Lieutenant Salinas to the Major. Tremelo has a few observations and reports to give the Major, but Salinas only being his usual self. Shortly after that, the missing persons start dropping out of thin air. Some are still alive when they return, but most are dead. The first returnee is the vanished copilot of a Blackhawk helicopter. Despite CPR and other extreme measures, the man dies. He has been stabbed with something sharp. Then an Air Force officer who had disappeared with Harkness also appears out of thin air. This body is soaking wet in saltwater. Moreover, he has fish and squid in his pockets. He is brought around enough to mumble a few things before he dies. His mumbles suggest ancient history. When Colonel Frank McNamara arrives, he sends Lieutenant Salinas out to find a marine biologist to investigate the fish. Corporal McKenna goes with the Lieutenant to the biology departments and they return with Liz De Beer. Later, the Colonel sends Salinas out to find a historian. Sergeant Anibal Cruz, Corporal McKenna and two other soldiers of the 101st Airborne escort Lieutenant Salinas and Liz De Beer when they enter the Oriental Institute. Jerry and Lamont hear their voices and join the group. When Salinas pulls his pistol, everybody piles on him and the whole group disappears. This tale takes the missing persons into a world based on Greek mythology. Since Jerry speaks classical Greek (with a bad accent), he acts as translator for the others. They appear on an ancient-style galley commanded by Odysseus within the strait between Scylla and Charybdis. Two of the soldiers are soon killed by a Greek sailor and the monster Scylla and immediately vanish from the scene. Eventually Jerry learns that the Krim device is reactivating moribund mythologies for its masters. The Krim are parasites who feed on pain and suffering. The somewhat anachronistic world wherein the party is stranded certainly has its share of such and the Krim are manipulating the prukrin threads to increase the suffering. The story illustrates how science fiction can imitate fantasy. Invoke a device that transfers the party into an Ur-mythworld and everything is valid SF. Well, valid speculative fiction. Anyway, it is a fun story. Enjoy! Highly recommended for Flint & Freer fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of alien invasions, other realities, and a touch of romance. -Arthur W. Jordin

Not Pratchett, But Good:
I don't really read much fantasy (excluding humorous like _Discworld_) because I consider it to mostly just be cheap rip off of Tolkien and Lewis. The book begins with an alien artifact crashing into the University of Chicago's library. It abducts several people and begins to grow. Soon the government surrounds the object (a solid black pyramid) and attempts to destroy it. Eventually a large group consisting of a 'mythographer', a maintenance man, marine biologist, four paratroopers, and a (...) policeman are abducted and find themselves on board a black galley under attack from a several headed monstrosity and modern technology isn't working. After losing two paratroopers and escaping past Scylla the group learns that they're on Odysseus's ship and the crew wants to throw lots for the new slaves, especially a handsome young paratrooper. By tricking Odysseus and his crew into thinking they're magical they convince him into heading back to Aeaea, Circe's island. Soon it becomes apparent that something wants them dead as they search for a way home, journey eventually to Olympus and Egypt. Meanwhile on the outside the government continues to attempt to destroy the object. This is the best Flint I've ever read, surpassing his _Ring of Fire_ series by a long shot. I just have a couple of complaints, most of the time the humor was only punning which I enjoy, but I like having more variety of humor. I was also bothered by how much the 'mythographer', Jerry Lukacs, seem to be a Flint counterpart. It seems to me that in most of his writings Flint seems to have to put a character in that has the same ideas and attitudes as his and tends to use that character in long lectures (such W.E.B. du Havel in _Crown of Slaves_ and Melissa Mailey from the _Ring of Fire_ works). Overall _Pyramid Scheme_ was great, not at the same level as _Discworld_, but close.

Not Free SF Reader:
Mythology fun and pun. I am not sure if it is possible to make fun of everything in a book, but Freer and Flint give it a fair shake. This writing combination seems more than able in producing amusement. Right from the introduction of the first absent-minded professor they start skewering in the kitchen, you have some idea of what you are in for. A presumably alien pyramid lands in the USA, rather perturbing the military and spook agencies, who can't do anything about it, and when they do, it actualy makes it bigger, and things get worse. People also disappear, and end up in odd recreated mythological worlds. In this case, Greece and Egypt. The disappeared, including the prof from before, cops, soldiers, and others get to try and use what modern nouse they have to try and get back home. Everything talks it seems, hydras, sphinxes, dwarves, except maybe the odd big Egyptian crocodile monster. The gods are real, and don't take too kindly to upsetting their alien-dominated applecart. Plenty of fun, this one. 3.5 out of 5

Gods-awful:
Oh, my; where to begin? With the plot, perhaps. A big black pyramid appears out of nowhere in Chicago, and begins sucking in a seemingly random assortment of people, all but a few (our eventual protagonists) of whom return dead. The group who survives find themselves traveling through an approximation of Greek and Egyptian mythology. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the army throws increasingly powerful weaponry at the pyramid, which absorbs it all; its ultimate goal (apparently, as far as I can decipher) is to goad us into using a nuclear weapon, which will breach some threshold and allow it to conquer us. I guess. Yes, it's a spoiler, but I can't bring myself to care. Or maybe the characters. These fall into two categories; the first group are straightforward stereotypes. The Frenchman loves food and considers the Americans to be uncultured boors; the black woman works at a menial job, is loud and overbearing, and has a low threshold for disagreement. The second group are characters who are deliberately and heavy-handedly shown not to be stereotypes. The female biologist, in the name of avoiding a weak or passive female character, is instead large of frame, loud, and overly assertive and argumentative. The token black guy, though a janitor, takes a detailed interest in classical mythology and reads the journal Science on his breaks. This latter characterization irks me the most, I think. Having a janitor along in a group of academics and military types for variety is fine; allowing him to be intelligent, adaptable, and able to comport himself well in an alien world is fine as well, and in fact would prove the point I think the authors were trying to make. But this is an atypical janitor, with atypical interests, and it's precisely because of this "special knowledge" that he fits in so well. The implication is that an ordinary janitor wouldn't have been up to it, and I don't think this is what the authors meant to convey. (This is why even the most unrealistic novels should still contain real people.) Or everything else. The setting: are the gods and mythical creatures real? How real? They seem to think that they're genuine, and mention is made of a bargain between the aliens and the gods (as opposed to the aliens' having themselves created the gods), implying that the gods existed prior to the novel. But those gods didn't exist, right? I give up. The characterizations: people don't talk like this. You could attend Society for Creative Anachronism meetings and Piers Anthony discussion groups until the rapture and not hear as many puns as there are in this novel. They also don't behave like this. Every situation has three possible courses of action: the right way, the wrong way, and the silly way. Guess which one the characters usually choose? In short, it's an utter mess, without even the benefit of a clear explanation of the situation. Read my other reviews: I can find the good in almost anything. There isn't any in this book. The title is the zenith of the cleverness and wit displayed therein; in fact, it almost seems as though one of the authors thought of the title on a whim and decided to write a novel to accompany it. But that's not possible. Is it?

A Hilarious Romp:
A small pyramidal alien object crashes to earth in the midst of the library of the University of Chicago and strange things begin to happen. It periodically grows larger and selected people disappear. Of those who disappear, only the dead and dying manage to return, often with hideous wounds. The political situation is clear: something must be done. Unfortunately, everything that is tried seems to make the problems worse. Those who disappear find themselves in a strange world that seems to be based upon Homeric legend with bits and pieces of Egyptian mythology thrown in for leavening. The Olympian gods seem bent on their personal destruction, the "heroes" of legend seem less than heroic and the only allies are those usually portrayed as the villains. It is up to an academic specializing in mythology, a maintenance man, a marine biologist and a couple of soldiers to figure out what is going on without getting themselves killed. This is a hilarious book full of unexpected comedy. It was lots of fun.