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The Adventures of Terra Tarkington
Meet Terra Tarkington, member in good standing of the Interstellar Nurses Corps. She joined up to aid her fellow beings and see the universe. But she got a little more than se bargained for when her first assignment took her all the way to the Bull Run. She's having some trouble adjusting to a steady diet of tuberoid muck-suckers and operating alongside of giant cockroaches: even after Dr. Scott (handsome, intelligent HUMAN Dr, Brian-Scott) joins the hospital staff, her life on the Bull Run just seems to consist of one glitch piled on top of another. Of course, what Terra doesn't know is that she's become a pawn in an intergalactic game of spy-vs-spy between the Galactic Intelligence Agency (GIA) and the dreaded KBG. And before the game ends, she and her dear Dr. Brian-Scott will find themselves hurtling between the stars with the fate of the entire universe resting literally in their hands! Come. Meet one of the most loveable, laughable heroines in this or any other galaxy. Join in her astonishing adventures as she sets out to make the universe a safer, healthier and far more hilarious place to live in. She is out to heal the universe, and steal your heart!
Dr. Brian Scott arrives just in time for Terra to avoid re-thinking species compatibility in the absence of any remotely human companionship. On Terra's determined way to romance, the couple become pawns in intergalactic espionage plots. Throughout various adventures, our intrepid heroine manages to keep her focus on the main priority — to not lose her only human contact or sense of humor.
Portions if this novel originally appeared serially in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, usually as if a collection of letters from the heroine.
Dr. Brian Scott arrives just in time for Terra to avoid re-thinking species compatibility in the absence of any remotely human companionship. On Terra's determined way to romance, the couple become pawns in intergalactic espionage plots. Throughout various adventures, our intrepid heroine manages to keep her focus on the main priority — to not lose her only human contact or sense of humor.
Portions if this novel originally appeared serially in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, usually as if a collection of letters from the heroine.
- GenresScience Fiction
192 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1985
About the author
Sharon Webb
43 books3 followersSharon Webb began writing with a poem published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1963. She initially used the masculine pseudonym "Ron Webb" and appeared only on occasion. In 1979 she became more productive and largely worked under her own name. Her works often concern medical issues or advances in medicine. Along with science fiction she has also written medically oriented thrillers.
Sharon Webb began her writing career at the age of eleven when she won her first author’s award for an original work of poetry.
Sharon Webb began her writing career at the age of eleven when she won her first author’s award for an original work of poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 28, 2018
I have had this in my physical library for a couple of decades. It's ridiculous. The cover is ridiculous. The premise is ridiculous. And if I were to describe it, I'd say, it's "A. Lee Martinez writes a space soap opera." There's spy verus spy. I believe there might be a sentient plant. There's a race of lizards, one of whom has a temper-tantrum. There's a human Doctor Dreamy and a sweet nurse who wants to Help and meet Dr. Dreamy, not necessarily in that order. I have no idea how I found it, but it always managed to crack me up and be rather sweet at the same time.
June 21, 2012
I have to admit that I judged this book by its cover -- on it Terra Tarkington appears as a writhing, buxom blonde in a slightly sexed-up nursing uniform, with the text "She's out to heal the universe ... and steal your heart" -- and wouldn't have dared myself to buy and read it if the author hadn't had a female name.
It was clear from the back cover copy that The Adventures of Terra Tarkington was humor; I was afraid the humor would be entirely dumb blonde jokes.
To my happy surprise, the amount of sexism in this book is very low!
+ Terra Tarkington is blonde, and she does tend to cause problems through naivete and mistaken assumptions (and to solve them in similarly accidental ways), but I don't think the text is really presenting her as lacking in intelligence -- just as a sort of Ordinary Girl With Pluck and Heart Facing Bizarre Circumstances. She is diligent and dedicated, and the mistakes she makes come from impulsiveness plus easily-explained ignorance.
+ There are quite a few other female characters. Most of the chapters about Terra include letters she's written about her situation to her mother and best female friend back on Earth. Terra doesn't have any female human friends at the hospital, but she does meet a lot of female aliens. There's one very short episode in which a human female tries to steal Terra's boyfriend, but even then it turns out there are ulterior motives.
+ Possibly because Terra is surrounded mainly by aliens who find human bodies strange and somewhat repulsive, this book avoids having other characters hit on or sexually harass Terra. (They are likely to treat her improperly because humans are so rare in this part of the galaxy that they don't have facilities for her or understand her biological requirements, but that's different, and pretty funny.) For the same reason, Terra, who is very heterosexual, spends much of the book complaining that there are no human men around, and then when a really nice one shows up, working hard on their relationship (e.g. saving him from the itching plague, etc.). The result is that in this story Terra really gets to own her sexuality -- not only is she very clear about what she wants and needs (and gets), there's almost no one else who cares about imposing any kind of sexual script on her.
The humor is very kind-hearted, and for the most part very creative. (There's an important plotline about spies that gets a lot of its humor from puns on commonly-used spy movie phrases, such as "pipeline" and "mole", but this is the worst of it.) I especially like the characterization of some of the aliens -- there's a lovely scene from the perspective of a rather bourgeois giant lizard as she's having her scales done in a beauty parlor, and another from a different giant lizard who, thwarted in his career goals, throws a massive temper tantrum. However, my favorite non-human characters are ... buttons on the shirt of a human spy, which are actually living computers made of electronic components and bacteria. They refer to Cuthbert, the human on whose shirt they live, as "the Cuthbert peripheral."
It was clear from the back cover copy that The Adventures of Terra Tarkington was humor; I was afraid the humor would be entirely dumb blonde jokes.
To my happy surprise, the amount of sexism in this book is very low!
+ Terra Tarkington is blonde, and she does tend to cause problems through naivete and mistaken assumptions (and to solve them in similarly accidental ways), but I don't think the text is really presenting her as lacking in intelligence -- just as a sort of Ordinary Girl With Pluck and Heart Facing Bizarre Circumstances. She is diligent and dedicated, and the mistakes she makes come from impulsiveness plus easily-explained ignorance.
+ There are quite a few other female characters. Most of the chapters about Terra include letters she's written about her situation to her mother and best female friend back on Earth. Terra doesn't have any female human friends at the hospital, but she does meet a lot of female aliens. There's one very short episode in which a human female tries to steal Terra's boyfriend, but even then it turns out there are ulterior motives.
+ Possibly because Terra is surrounded mainly by aliens who find human bodies strange and somewhat repulsive, this book avoids having other characters hit on or sexually harass Terra. (They are likely to treat her improperly because humans are so rare in this part of the galaxy that they don't have facilities for her or understand her biological requirements, but that's different, and pretty funny.) For the same reason, Terra, who is very heterosexual, spends much of the book complaining that there are no human men around, and then when a really nice one shows up, working hard on their relationship (e.g. saving him from the itching plague, etc.). The result is that in this story Terra really gets to own her sexuality -- not only is she very clear about what she wants and needs (and gets), there's almost no one else who cares about imposing any kind of sexual script on her.
The humor is very kind-hearted, and for the most part very creative. (There's an important plotline about spies that gets a lot of its humor from puns on commonly-used spy movie phrases, such as "pipeline" and "mole", but this is the worst of it.) I especially like the characterization of some of the aliens -- there's a lovely scene from the perspective of a rather bourgeois giant lizard as she's having her scales done in a beauty parlor, and another from a different giant lizard who, thwarted in his career goals, throws a massive temper tantrum. However, my favorite non-human characters are ... buttons on the shirt of a human spy, which are actually living computers made of electronic components and bacteria. They refer to Cuthbert, the human on whose shirt they live, as "the Cuthbert peripheral."
September 15, 2021
This is a fix-up novel comprised of stories originally published in Asimov's SF magazine from 1979-1981. The first was Hitch on the Bull Run, followed by Itch..., Switch..., Niche..., Twitch..., and Bitch.... Terra is an interstellar Registered Nurse who tries to make up for what she lacks in training and experience with a persistently plucky attitude and a big heart. She foils the nefarious schemes of half of the evil spies in the galaxy and manages to find true love in her first six months on the job. It's a very cleverly written novel, with much amusing wordplay, and frequent letters home to her best friend and to her mother. The striking cover by Luis Royo makes her look like a blonde bimbo, but she's a heartening and heart-warming character.
July 29, 2015
A fun episodic peril-to-peril sci-fi novel (with an unfortunately shoehorned spy-vs-spy connecting-thread plotline that is mercifully rushed to conclusion once the individual episodes are finished) that reminded me somewhat of something that, if it had been a comic strip, would've been serialized in some version or variation of Heavy Metal magazine. Which I've never read, mainly because I assume the stories are English translations of what the French think of as "sci fi" - three-breasted bald alien/insectoid queens that are rendered bafflingly sexless and/or unsexy, desert planetscapes ripped from Star Wars, icy planetscapes ripped from Star Wars, robots that are nothing more than floating spheres that speak in exclamation points or question marks, jungle temples with intricate pencilwork on the overgrown vines and bricks etcetera. I could be wrong.
George Scithers is credited in the dedication as having helped midwife the original five Terra Tarkington stories in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and in true Scitherian fashion, wordplay is tastefully utilized throughout the novel.
George Scithers is credited in the dedication as having helped midwife the original five Terra Tarkington stories in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and in true Scitherian fashion, wordplay is tastefully utilized throughout the novel.
April 20, 2026
I picked this up a couple years ago when visiting Cleveland w my folks. This is a prime example of a fix up novel. The novel’s cardinal sin is its contradictory condition. The short vignettes featuring the slight, sometimes sexy, sometimes slightly offensive adventures of Tarkington, registered space nurse, are charming. I found the contrast btwn her letters home to Sol & the adventures themselves endearing. Unfortunately the book gets stuck in its narrative glue involving a parade of covert agents of ill defined galactic special interests. The spy hijinks are confused & jumbled, lacking the breezy humor & endearing characters of Terra’s vignettes. By the close of the book, I get an inkling of Webb’s greater thematic tread. Webb comments somewhat on the looming specter of WMDs & the squishy allegiances of operatives. I just didn’t really care for it.
Webb admirably throws a battalion of alien terms and physiology and technology at the reader w little exposition or explicit definition. I enjoyed this free wheeling speculative elan & it reminds me of what Samuel Delany has written about the beguiling derangement of familiar meaning to known words in a SF space - when is a cigar not a cigar? When it’s 500 years in the future in a satellite orbiting Hydea IV.
Webb admirably throws a battalion of alien terms and physiology and technology at the reader w little exposition or explicit definition. I enjoyed this free wheeling speculative elan & it reminds me of what Samuel Delany has written about the beguiling derangement of familiar meaning to known words in a SF space - when is a cigar not a cigar? When it’s 500 years in the future in a satellite orbiting Hydea IV.
February 19, 2023
Wow! I was bowled over by how laugh-out-loud hilarious this was. I picked it up from a used bookstore for a dollar, charmed by the hilarious cover and the promise of a nurse romance novel set in space. Then I was pleasantly surprised by the clever, wry tone, and the titular Terra’s pluckiness. Loved all the world-building details. I lent it out already because it’s such a treasure.
Read
December 14, 2024DNF at about 25%. Fun ideas, but no connection to a plot that I can see and the title character is so scarce as to make me wonder why she’s the title character. From the notes in the book, it seems this is a collection of several previously published vignettes turned into a novel, not successfully.
May 5, 2026
As with "The Right to Arm Bears", the cover art of "The Adventures of Terra Tarkington" promised a book that the author didn't deliver. It's nowhere as sexy or fun as I thought it would be. There's some good stuff here, at least when the book is focusing on Terra, but it too often gets sidetracked into other characters I didn't care about.
July 20, 2020
Quick, delightful scifi read!
June 19, 2012
Oh my goodness. Not a good book. Campy and cutesy, but not in a good way. Full of bad puns and a plot that is yawningly predictable and boring throughout. I got it for free and it travels well in the hardcover/paperback size I have it in. It is also mercifully short. Those are good things, right?
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews