SF novel ID please

Cafe Society
1

I was going to mention a book I read recently in the time dilation thread, but now I realize I can’t even remember enough to go find the title. No idea when it came out - but it’s probably not very new.

It’s about a female young woman who is from Mars, and has just finished her tour on Earth, then for some reason I can’t recall tours the solar system where she encounters these giant crystals that she realizes see time very slowly, and uses that knowledge to write a song. Then the crystals cause an accident, which she escapes by using an emergency “hole” that keeps her in stasis. When she comes out years later, she’s a huge sensation b/c that song was a new form of music and became the greatest music in the universe.

Also turns out these “holes” were used as a weapon by Mars to win some conflict, and a family friend invented the technology and is in hiding inside one of them. I think he’s cajun? Anyway, the years pass and the woman winds up marrying the family friend, and…that’s all I got.

Oh, and she had a funny name which if I remembered would be easily searchable.

2

That sounds like Rolling Thunder by John Varley. The protagonist went by the name of Podkayne, as I recall.

3

My, how original.

4

It was an HOMAGE!!!

5

The reason she was touring was performing musical shows as part of her military service.

6

Yep. That was it. Thanks!

7

Varley wrote several novels in the past few years that were Heinleinesque pastiches. That was part of the point and the parallels were a deliberate nod to the source material. But the plots were nothing like any of Heinlein’s books and the characters only shared names or general attributes.

8

Yeah, that was John Varley, all right.

I liked his early stuff, but he sure seems to try to emulate Heinlein as much as possible this last decade or so.

9

In case you’re interested, Rolling Thunder was the third book in a series. The first two were Red Thunder and Red Lightning.

10

That started to occur to me while I was reading it. Serves me right for just grabbing books from the library with no information before I start reading them. Oh well - I’m off to get started on this new book I just checked out - Llana of Gathol.

11

Red Thunder was pretty weak, so I didn’t read the rest of the series.

I’m not even sure who Red Thunder was supposed to appeal to. It read like borderline young adult sci-fi but had at least one sex scene in it (between two teenagers) that read more like a married couple trying to spice things up.

This was compounded by Mammoth which was dreadful and made me hesitant to even look at any latter-day Varley.

And this is coming from somebody who ranks Steel Beach and The Golden Globe as among the best of the best.

12

Scupper–

I just read Mammoth a month or so back.

Why didn’t you warn me?