Bimbos of the Death Sun (Jay Omega 1)

Ostensibly a mystery novel complete with a murder and an array of suspects with plausible motives, Bimbos of the Death Sun won an Edgar Award in 1988 for Best Original Paperback Mystery. While we follow the plot eagerly, curious to know who killed famed novelist Appin Dungannon and why, the fact is that what happens in this novel is in some ways much less important than where it happens. Bimbos of the Death Sun is not a mystery that just so happens to also be science fiction and fantasy; it's a novel about a particular American subculture as well in which Trekkies and Dungeon Masters convene—complete with their hobbit costumes and the like—to buy and sell memorabilia.

The novel is in fact a parody of that culture and as such, it has garnered ambivalent reviews from the science fiction and fantasy community that it caricatures. The perspective of the novel is decidedly that of an outsider, a protagonist named James Owen Mega, who—under the pseudonym Jay...