In a previous post I reviewed The Planet Dweller by Jane Palmer. Moving Moosevan is sequel to that novel, also published by Women’s Press in 1990 in their groundbreaking science fiction series.
Moving Moosevan follows directly on from The Planet Dweller with many of the same characters and some new ones. Neighbours Diana and Eva are once again caught up in the battle to save the world from invasion by the malodorous Mott, asssisted by Yuri, and also Drax and Reniola, two inter-galactic super-intelligences able to shapeshift into other forms, including a cat and a woman who looks disconcertingly like Mrs Thatcher.
Inept frog-like Olmuke underlings Kulp, Tolt and Jannau are assisting the Mott invaders by trying to open a portal to earth from the Mott planet. And there are some new players in the game: Yat and his fellow androids on the Mott planet scheming to take the earth for themselves.
The planet dweller herself, Moosevan, now firmly entrenched below ground starts to make changes to the earth, unhappy with what humanity has done to the planet’s environment. Britain and Ireland start moving southwards, for instance, and mountains topped with observatories grow much taller:
Under the curious gaze of the Pole star even stranger things were begining to happen. The ozone layer, seasonally shredded by pollution, was reknitting itself. The palls of smoke which regularly hung over so many parts of South America were inexplicably doused and trees with manic growth rates began to reforrest the scarred land. …In the north of the continent similar dramatic acts of land reclamation were underway. All the open-cast mines and quarries whch had scarred the land were inexplicably filled in. The ground was being shaken up and put back in its original shape. Topsoil was strewn over the blasted land and vegetation shot up like a tapestry to weave it into place before the winds could scatter it again. Being so public an exercise, no land agent could persuade buyers to claim a plot of this miracle pasture. Even prairie dogs thought twice about taking up residence. It was no place for the God-fearing, superstitious or nervous rodent. So, like belladonna, being allowed to fruit, beauty was left to prosper.
Industry flanking the Rhine slowly sank, and plants once more secured the eroded banks of the Ganges and Brahmaputra
Oh , and there is Salisbury, “a tall, lean, friendly-looking man, ” who unknowingly is Moosevan’s new object of desire.
By the end everything is resolved in a good way, although humanity has been moved to a new home, Titan. So a sequel beckons.
Jane Palmer designed the book jacket.
Fantasies of Possibility 