Zombies of the Gene Pool

From Kirkus Reviews\nHere, the frisky McCrumb (If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O, The Windsor Knot--both 1990), with deadpan humor and bull's-eye accuracy, skewers the science fiction genre, its eccentric authors, and outlandish fans and their nitpicking fanzines. Jay Omega and Marion Farley (the paperback Bimbos of the Death Sun) agree to accompany fellow professor Erik Giles (a.k.a. sci-fi writer C.A. Stormcock) to a reunion of the ``Lanthanides,'' a group of would-be writers who lived together in Wall Hollow, Tennessee, back in the Fifties. Now, one is dead, one is a Hollywood nabob, one is publishing a fanzine, and a couple are still writing and have become sci-fi stars. At Wall Hollow, they plan to dig up a time capsule they buried with some of their early work and cash in on their later fame by auctioning off publication rights to the highest bidder. Then someone starts killing them off, beginning with the reunion crasher--the supposedly dead author Pat Malone. Omega, with the help of computer log-ons, finally figures out not only whodunit but why...or does he? Author McCrumb has one more twist up her sleeve. Funny bits throughout, but the constant sendup of beloved sci- fi shticks begins to seem mean-spirited, and Omega and Marion are little more than walk-ons. Still: an engaging read. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.\nEn route to a sci-fi convention and reunion of the Lanthanides, Dr. James Owen Mega--engineering professor and science fiction author known as "Jay Omega"--and literature professor Dr. Marion Farley stumble into a web of dark secrets and murder\nFrom Publishers Weekly\nContinuing the delightful adventures begun in Bimbos of the Death Sun , engineering professor and famed science fiction author Jay Omega and his significant other, Marion Farley, a professor of SF, investigate the murder of another science fiction writer.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.\nFrom the Inside Flap\nIn the 1950s, a group of young science fiction writers, dreaming of literary immortality and calling themselves the Lanthanides, buried a time capsule with their stories and relics from the time. Now, in the 1990s, when several of them have become famous, the surviving Lanthanides are getting together at a special convention to dig up the capsule and open it. But the convention is startled by the appearance of a writer who was supposed to have died thirty years ago. Then murder materializes to throw the agenda further into chaos. Now, Jay Omega, author of Bimbos of the Death Sun, and his significant other, Dr. Marion Farley, must separate science fact from fiction -- and unearth a killer with a story of his own to tell.