Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson by George Alec Effinger

Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson Reviews

• 
  Tom King

  You need a sense of humor for this one. If you're one of those guys that lives in your Mom's basement and have a complete Viking raider costume complete with horned helmet and warhammer, you might not appreciate the broad satire of your favorite genre. Effinger drills straight into dozens of our favorite classic sci-fi and sword and sorcery epics and skewers the improbable magic and unlikely setups that are so often found in low-grade pulp fiction of this sort. He also does a nice job playing in harder sci-fi worlds as well. The sword and sorcery devotees may not find this particularly funny. Serious lot they are to say the least. This book made me laugh out loud. I wish I had written it.
• 
  Ian

  In the title piece of this collection of cult-fave stories, prep-school senior Maureen "Muffy" Birnbaum finds herself transported to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom (unnamed but readily identifiable nonetheless) and prevails against the natives armed only with her Heather-ish attitude and sense of entitlement (well, a honking big sword she picks up along the way helps too). Subsequent adventures take her to similarly copyright infringement-skirting versions of Burroughs' Pellucidar, Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, and so on, all of which she survives with her attitude and manicure intact. Sure, it's a one-joke idea, but it's a pretty funny joke all the same.
• 
  Melissa

  I was first introduced to Muffy & Bitsy in one of Esther Friesner's Chicks in Chainmail anthologies, and fell in love. I found this collection in a used bookstore and bought it without hesitation. The main stories of Muffy's adventures were fun but grew old fast, possibly because I don't know the backgrounds of the different worlds she intrudes upon. Of more interest to me was the progression of Bitsy's personal life. I enjoyed the book, but I think a dedicated collection is the wrong format for these characters - due to the story's very nature, these should remain split up, something to be stumbled upon at various intervals in time.
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  Susan

  
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  Charles

  Almost everyone loves these stories. I'm afraid I don't. Oh, they are well written, very clever, and witty, but they're not my cup of tea. I like my fantasy straight up and taken more seriously. These have just too much tongue in cheek for me to really enjoy.
• 
  Jim

  The late George Alec Effinger does a great job of parodying other authors with his stories of the teenage Maureen "Muffie" Birnbaum. His heroine finds herself on Barsoom, then at the Earth's Core, and then in other worlds. Perhaps my favorite is the story about Ms. Birnbaum appearing on the planet named Lagash just in time to face the panic that ensued when Night Fell ( from Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall").
  Very entertaining stories--only wish there were more adventures of the gorgeous sword-wielding Muffie Birnbaum.
• 
  Craig

  This collection is a lot of fun; it casts a clueless, preppy, Jewish princess society girl in the role of a swashbuckling, swordswoman-adventuress in famous fictional fantasy worlds. Great funny stuff!
• 
  Rob

  If you love parody, you have to read this. It's a scream. THe only low point may be when Maureen enters into a shopping context with Maid Marian. That, I could do without. But the rest is excellent.
• 
  Marsha

  At first glance, what you notice about this book is the woman on the cover. Like a Frazetta of old, she is scantily clad in the sort of gear Red Sonja used to wear, metal bikini, sword at her side. But look closer. Are those—credit cards tucked into the G-string? Are those two shopping bags on her left arm, one nearly obscured by the 1990s-computer-screen-yellow letters in the title?
  
  The blurb on the jacket confirms that something is not quite as it seems. In fact, nothing is. Maureen Danielle Birnbaum has been inexplicably whisked away from her skiing trip in Vermont to a red dust planet. She’s on Mars, completely starkers, and yet somehow able to breathe the air, leap many feet in a single bound and communicate in English with the first gorgeous humanoid male she meets.
  
  Yep, it’s a clear parody of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, complete with damsel in distress. But Maureen isn’t one to stay distressed for long. She’s a strong, powerful piece of womanhood, thank you very much, and when she finds a sword and notices four-armed Martians slaughtering a whole bunch of people, she wades in swinging.
  
  Maureen isn’t a dim piece of fluff either. She knows how to fence, has in-depth knowledge of Earth history and doesn’t hold back on putting men in their place if they try to treat her as if she’s fragile or stupid. She also is something of a frenemy, constantly popping back to harass her friend Bitsy with her adventures while taking nasty digs at her throughout her revelations of her fantastical exploits. Maureen is smart, pert, competent, cunning, calm in the face of danger yet also calculating, greedy, garrulous, opinionated and occasionally mean spirited. So she’s a well-rounded character, with her share of flaws and virtues.
  
  Muffy’s brand of chatty, self-righteous feminism can be a little hard to take. Her snipes at her friend Elizabeth (not Bitsy, if you please) make her seem caught in a perpetual brand of childhood, a kind of reverse Peter Pan who bothers Wendy with the tales of his adventures while she’s growing up and trying to rear a family.
  
  The stories don’t necessarily inspire hearty gusts of laughter. But, as Mr. Effinger transports Maureen from one author’s worldscape to another, we see the humor of this Nineties woman yanked through space and time with no one else to talk to and in forever search of her stalwart Martian man. Maureen must be lonely but she never lets on so you don’t pity her. Instead, you admire her gumption and smile to see her taken through various scenarios from some of the most famous science fiction authors of previous decades.
  
  This anthology of fanfiction is one that collectors of past science fiction writing will want to get their hands on if it’s not on their shelves already.
• 
  Kathy KS

  The title for this one grabbed me years ago and it was placed on my TBR list. The concept sounded fun, too. Maureen Birnbaum, private school senior, suddenly finds herself on Mars, a la John Carter of Mars. From that start, Maureen (aka Muffy) becomes a "barbarian" swordperson and ends up travelling through time and space to help right wrongs, etc.
  
  After each trip, she returns to "home" and reports her adventures to her best friend, whether Bitsy (Elizabeth) wants to hear it or not.
  
  I'm kind of with Elizabeth here. After awhile, this "gag" became rather tiresome. Although there are some funny things, it's all very superficial and Maureen actually gets rather tiresome.
  
  A fun idea that is better as the short stories (which is how they were each originally published), rather than all together in one longer volume.
• 
  Larry

  This book is a lot of fun. I read many of these stories when they first came out in the magazines, but this is the first time I have seen them collected in one place. The central conceit is that Maureen is a prep-school senior who embarks on a series of fantastic adventures and recounts them to her best friend from school, and these adventures take place in fantasy universe created by other authors.
• 
  Charles

  A group of parodies based on a privileged New York college girl who travels from one fantasy/SF scenario to another, starting with Burroughs' Mars but including Asimov's "Nightfall." Middling humorous fanfic from a writer who is capable of doing much better. Kinda feels like he's slumming, but a mildly amusing read anyway
• 
  George

  I'm fairly sure that my feeling of uninventiveness about the last one or two stories was due more to them having been assembled where I could read them all on top of each other rather than months apart.
  
  But the fact that they WERE assembled where I could read them all on top of each other is worth knocking a star off from my standard of 5 for fully achieving the target aimed.
• 
  PyranopterinMo

  I might have read this once upon a time. I completely forgot until Amazon recommended it. Two stars for finished but nearly forgotten. I remember it tried to be funny. I don't think I even kept the book.
• 
  Vincent

  I remember in 5th grade almost getting this book confiscated because of the cover. Intelligent me didn't even think to remove the dust cover. Luckily, I was a good student and my English teacher gave me the benefit of the doubt.
• 
  Hallie

  Silly, campy fun with archetypes. Very much of its time/place. Recommend reading the series referenced before diving in, though.
• 
  Michael Swanson

  I don't usually go for silly, but this is a fine bit of silly. Anything I say about its place in our culture will be misconstrued at this time, so I'll trap it behind a tight-lipped smirk.
• 
  Scott Golden

  For fans, the fun in these stories is how they (gently-ish) satirize the popular fantasy/SF/horror worlds to which our intrepid heroine is whisked off to. Also fun is how Maureen overcomes -- or sometimes uses to her advantage -- her shallow, materialistic surface personality in order to overcome the various challenges that come her way. By no means is this serious stuff, but it's good fun, and short enough that it avoids the fatal flaw of wearing out its welcome.
• 
  Jerry Robinette

  Effinger is very funny, and an astute observer of the tropes, cliches and conventions of the heroic fantasy genre. Several famous worlds take their licks in here, but none of it is mean-spirited. You can tell these stories were written by a fan of the sub-genre. Pleasant, amusing, worth looking up if you're also a fan.
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• 
  Jenniffer

  Like Totally! No story is safe where Maureen Birnbaum is concerned. This book contains short stories, such as Maureen Birnbaum at the Earth's Core, and Maureen Birnbaum's Lunar Adventure. its definitely worth reading for the laughs.
• 
  Anna

  jewish princess who speaks with a heavy 80s valley accent hops thru a few , like, well known SciFi/Fantasy plots.
  The author gleefully parodies everything from fictional worlds (the very first trip is to Barsoom of course! followed by a stop in Pellucidar) to The Holy Grail mythos
• 
  Rick Jones

  I was lured by Effingers' trilogy of arabic themed science fiction, but this was not nearly as thought provoking, nor was the 'ironic' value really up to snuff.