Lisa Mason
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Subjects -> Science Fiction & Fantasy -> Authors, A-Z -> ( M ) -> Mason, Lisa
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
An appeal to sci-fi hippies of all ages 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
The funky rainbow cover of this book was what caught my eye at first, then the title began to resonate in my hippie soul. Summer of Love is about a runaway girl who calls herself Starbright who goes to the Haight-Asbury district during the summer of 1967, looking for her friend Penny Lane. She meets a time traveler from five hundred years in the future, who is looking for her as the key to resolving a rift which has occured.
The vivid texturing of the historical situation at the time alone makes this book well worth the read. I also recommend the Golden Nineties as a sequel to this great book.
authentic historical novel, my 1967 favorite 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.
(I don't understand why my previous review went uncredited but here goes)
I can agree with what has been written heretofore about this book. I think it's a great book. The level of character development is much higher than what we have come to expect in Scifi-Fantasy.
What I can add is that Lisa Mason has done a meticulous job of researching what the sixties were REALLY like, not the normal candy-coated version of them usually presented. To research this book Lisa Mason read 1967-68 back issues of the Berkley Barb and other Bay Area sixties publications. The "psychedelic" sixties were far different from the way they are normally portrayed, both in movies and books.
In 1967, one could go to the Fillmore and see The Doors, The Quicksiver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Mamas and the Papas, the Jefferson Airplane, The Greatful Dead, HP Lovecraft, legendary groups almost any night. Of the bands would just go set up in Golden Gate Park and give a free concert just because they felt like it! There was an assumption that this quality of music would last forever. There was a naive optimism about the future mixed with the omnipresent paranoia about the Man or the System. The wide open experimentation with drugs and life styles. The idea that anyone who dressed like you was your brother/sister. If you just had long hair, you were a member of a worldwide fraternity. "Summer of Love" shows the bright happy free side of the Summer of Love, but also the dark side of "free love". Someone with bell-bottomed pants and bare feet might hitchhike across the country to San Francisco with little or no money because a friend was there (somewhere) and a record said in the "Summer of Love", all you needed was a "Flower in Your Hair". There were individual & local acts of giving and charity: The Diggers, the Haight-Asbury Free Clinic, the Hashbury shop owner who gives Starbright a place to stay. These were mixed with the fundamentally unsupportable nature of the "Love" generation, soon to collapse at Altamont. "Love" Street (not Haight Street) was more and more filled with a tidal wave of pennyless, idealistic, escapist hippies looking for for a good time (free of parents, the war and responsibility), free drugs, free food, places to crash. And Cops and Narcs itching to bust them. Others hippies ready to steal from them. Character "Penny Lane" finds out the hard way about the darker side of life and the Summer of Love, "Starbright", who comes to find her, does better with the help of "Chiron Cat Eye in Draco". He is tackyported from the future to watch over her and has to be extra careful not to affect events which could redirect or diddle with the future. He brings a "knuckletop" computer with 3D holographic keyboard!
Ms Mason's love of San Francisco shines through her story so one can taste and feel "Haight Ashburg" local of the 60's. Walk thru Haight-Ashbury today, you can still almost feel vibes of the "Summer of Love". This is what it was really like.
One of the great sci-fi books ever written, but more than that, one of the most authentic historical novels ever written about 1967 (even if it does borrow a bit from the Terminator)! Starts a bit slow, but don't get confused. Persist.
Let's hope the publisher returns this gem to print SOON. Let us hope Ms Mason writes another book like this. What a great time the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love would be for a reissue!
Editorial Review:
A time traveler from 500 years in the future must return to San Francisco, the summer of 1967, to find and protect the life of a teenaged runaway whose own life will have vast impact on the future. Meticulously researched and full of fun, but also a serious examination of the strengths and flaws of both the "counterculture" and America in the sixties.
