ACT 1

SCENE 1

(An office. Present day. Tanith Lee, writer extraordinaire is meeting with her editor. She is dressed sensibly because she is British and holds an aura of excitement. The editor is seated behind her desk. The audience can immediately tell the editor is hard at work by the weary look in her eyes and also because she is shackled to one of the mahogany desk legs by a length of chain purchased from Sears)

EDITOR
Tanith, how lovely to see you!

LEE
Hi there.

(Lee takes a seat and admires the detailing of the Editor’s spiked manacle)

I’ve been thinking about a new book.

EDITOR
Oh really? Well don’t keep me in suspense!

LEE
Its very exciting, very exciting. You see it starts out with a young heroine.

EDITOR
Yes, yes.

LEE
And it’s set in the future.

EDITOR
I see.

TANITH LEE
And she’s under the thumb of a very controlling mother. And then she falls in love with a robot!

EDITOR
A robot.

LEE
Yes!

EDITOR
(Pause.)

LEE
I know it’s a very shocking concept—but I can make it work.

EDITOR
Yes it’s very shocking. Because you already wrote that book.

LEE
I did?

EDITOR
Yes. It was called The Silver Metal Lover.

LEE
(Blinks.)
Really?

EDITOR
Yes. Remember? It was about a girl named Jane in this future world full of robots and she finds herself desperately in love with a robot named Silver designed to pleasure humans. She runs away with him and they find happiness but only for a short time because he’s quickly captured and dismantled. It’s all very lovely and heart wrenching. One of your best young adult novels in my opinion.

LEE
Oh.
(Pause.)
How terribly embarrassing.

EDITOR
Oh Tanith, no! You’ve written over a hundred books, it’s very hard to keep everything straight–especially since your themes are so similar.

LEE
What?

EDITOR
Well you know. The mother thing.

LEE
I see.

EDITOR
And the rape of a naïve young woman—usually of high status, which is committed by a bloodthirsty but thickheaded warmonger.

LEE
Well…why aren’t more people reading it?

EDITOR
What?

LEE
This Silver Metal Lover. It’s an excellent premise. I mean—I’ve thought of it twice.

EDITOR
Well, it’s barely in print, Tanith.

LEE
Then I suggest more press.

EDITOR
For a ten year old book? I’m sorry Tanith, I can’t do that.

LEE
Then I’ll write another one. A sequel!

EDITOR
Wonderful! A continuation of Jane’s story?

LEE
Well. It will be about another girl.

EDITOR
Jane’s daughter perhaps?

LEE
No—completely unrelated—I’ll throw in some sort of crazed religious group and make her a little bit of a bad girl to solidify how different she and Jane are.

EDITOR
Okay. So what’s the plot?

LEE
Hmmm…
(Pause.)
I know! She falls in love with a robot

EDITOR
(Hides head in hands)

END SCENE

And so it is written, and so it is that Eileen pours herself a drink in order to medicate herself for this impending catastrophe.

ACT TWO

SCENE TWO

I stumbled upon the sequel to Silver Metal Lover, aptly titled Metallic Love, purely by accident—like when one accidentally lights themselves on fire. Tanith Lee is an award-winning novelist (1984 World Fantasy Award, 1986 Gilgamé³ Award, short listed for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, constantly nominated for the 1975 Nebula Award for best novel, the British Science Fiction and British Fantasy Awards, among many others). She is a prolific writer who has written hundreds of books, effortlessly moving from young adult to horror to historical romance. This genre hopping goddess, a writer I admire above all others, has decided to pen this sequel for no other reason then the fact that she has completely gone off her nut.

This calls for another drink! Mmm, delicious.

Okay, now lets talk aesthetics. Simply put, the cover art of this book leaves a lot to be desired. There’s a serpent creature with a yellow apple and a female person/leopard. I guess it’s a replica of the Garden of Eden. Silver seems to enjoy hawking. Also, Loren (the narrator and Silver’s love interest) looks like Vanessa Carlton.

When fearfully opening the book (another drink please) the inside cover is tastefully marketing—Silver Metal Lover. “Tanith Lee has another winner in The Silver Metal Lover. It’s an aluminum soufflé that’s both amusing and touching.” –Asmiov’s Science Fiction

Hey, Asmiov’s Science Fiction, I just read Metallic Love and it was like eating an aluminum soufflé. It cut up my insides. I’m also blind. Thank you.

Tanith quickly starts out Silver Metal Lover Two with an introduction to Loren. She’s the complete opposite of Jane—which means she’s a big slut and swears a lot. What a stretch of characterization (get this goddamn lime out of my drink, it’s sucking up all the vodka).

Loren is part of a fanatical group called the Acolytes. OMG I love X-men! Is Magneto going to fight Professor Xavier in the next paragraph?

Nope. Damn.

Instead, there’s a lot of exposition about how being part of a religious zealous sect is so not cool. Like having to work all day, wear robes that do nothing for the figure, and downing Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.

However, Loren finds a magical book underneath the floorboards. “Of course I kneeled down and peered in…my heart stood still, and when I saw that what was wrapped in the scarf was only a battered paper book, I felt a wrench of bitter disappointment (7).”

Yet Loren’s disappointment soon turns into revelation: “What do I say to you, then, about reading that Book (9).”

No she hasn’t found the Bible, you stupid losers. It’s Silver Metal Lover!

Loren is then kind enough to present the reader with THE ENTIRE PLOT of The Silver Metal Lover.

“Okay. Plotline. There’s this girl of sixteen (Jane), rich and naïve, and under the thumb of her tyrannical, bloody, mind-fucking bitch of a mother—only Jane innocently doesn’t know how terrible Mom is—but one day the girl meets a robot. Now we’ve had robots for ages, right. They do most of the jobs people used to—and so create a permanent underclass of unemployed subsistence plebs, like me…he’s part of a new line designed for pleasure…he’s tall, strong, elegant, and handsome. A musician, a lover…And Jane falls in love with him…So she leaves Dire Momma, and goes to live with Silver in the pits and craters of the slums…But then the firm that created him calls back all the robots of that special super-deluxe line…He’s caught. They dismantle him. They kill him (10-11).”

I smell a fucking skunk, Tanith.

Drink, please!

Soon the foul smell evolves into aged Vieux Boulogne as Loren becomes entrenched in the story of Silver. Stating that Loren read a certain paragraph of Silver Metal Lover is not enough. She has to DIRECTLY quote a paragraph from the book. Quoting a book quoting a book? How am I supposed to properly cite that?!

“I locked the door and sat down on his unmade bed, and started reading Jane’s Story for the thirteenth time.

She writes:

“’”””””He came within three feet of me, and he smiled at me. Total coordination…He seemed perfectly human, utterly natural, except he was too beautiful to be either.

“””””Hallo,””””” he said “”””””

(Silver Metal Lover aka Jane’s Story aka Metallic Love 13)…………..“””””””””

So the book completely changes Loren’s life; screw scrubbing for Jesus, she’s going to scrub—er—on her own terms!

So that’s just what Loren does. She becomes a cleaning lady. And who wouldn’t after such a sexy revelation? She’s so good at Windexing that she gets her own little satellite group called “The Dust Babes”.

“My gang, the Dust Babes, were over on Compton with a new client, when I got a call at the room in the bat-block.”

“Lor—Lor, wake up. We got some difficulties.”

“What? Can’t you deal with it Jizzle (23)?”

Freeze, at ease, now let me drop some more of them keys/It’s 19-9-tre so let me just play/it’s Snoop Dogg, I’m on the mic, I’m back with Dr. Dre!

Oh, sorry.

Drink!

Loren mostly forgets about Silver with her newfound job (probably due to the bleach fumes). But something happens! I can’t really recall what the something was. I was just busily engaged in constructing a noose out of some frilly summer scarves. But I digress…

Loren, with her good looks and whorish charm, ends up at the corporation that once created Silver and his robot lover cohorts. There’s some sort of wonderful bazaar, because the company, META, has decided to reinvest in the line of pleasure robots. So it’s a great big show of singing and tap dancing and shadow puppets. Wait—that was my 21st birthday.

These pleasure robots come in pairs—identified by the color of their various skin tones and talents. There are the Coppers, who act. The Silvers, who sing. And the Golds, who perform martial arts:

“After the coppers and silvers, the golds fenced. He and she. They leapt yards upwards, somersaulted and spun in the air, sprang up cliffs of nothingness and catapulted back (51).”

I love Cirque de Soleil.

Loren quickly meets the acquaintance of Sharffe. He’s French, so he’s associated with the finer things in life: wine, food and the backseat of a car.

Loren settles for the latter. He talks to her, half in French and half in English—because that’s what Frenchmen do, “Quelle joie. Get in. The seats are fun (55).”

He expresses his interest in Loren. Not for himself, as Frenchman are homosexual, but for an experiment regarding the META robots. You know what that means—Orgy time!

“In the champagne room people were dancing the Chaste, the two-together dance where you keep both your upper bodies plastered on each other by sheer ability or determination, not touching with hands or arms (63).”

I’m not even going to comment on that one. It’s like shooting soccer moms locked in a Starbucks.

Oh what the hell. Ahem. The Chaste? That’s not being ironic, Tanith–that’s just being stupid.

Lucky for Loren (unlucky for us readers) she won’t be engaging in an orgy—but a one on one—with, OMG SILVER!

“His clothes were white as ice. His red hair was longer than it had been earlier. It ran right down his back. He smiled. Calm as silence (65).”

Loren compounds her shock by once again directly quoting Silver Metal Lover like the good Cliff notes reader she is,

“””””””””””““His eyes were like two russet stars. Yes…exactly like stars. And his skin seemed only pale, as if there were an actor’s makeup on it…it was silver…that flushed into almost natural shadings and colors against the bones, the lips, the nails. But silver. Silver (65).”””””””””””………………

We Interrupt this Column to bring you an Important Survey:

In Tanith Lee’s next novel, Ms. Lee will:

Rip out the pages of her fairy tale novel “White as Snow” and repackage it with a new cover calling it “The Snow Might Be White”.

Record her next masterpiece by dictaphone and bomb the nearest Barnes and Nobles with “Tanith Lee’s 80’s Dance Revival Mix”.

Write a sequel to a book and then insert DIRECT QUOTES INTO THE NEW BOOK as if no one would notice Ms. Lee is hacking her own book. Like the book I’m talking about right now. LIKE METALLIC LOVE, TANITH.

Pencils down.

So Silver and Loren meet, and it is quickly decided that Loren is there to “test” Silver like the highly motorized vehicle he is. Like a Saturn. I have one, very comfortable.

Loren takes Silver to her apartment, which is on Tolerance Street. Oh, God I can’t take this. Can you mix gin and beer?

Loren confronts Silver about Jane. Silver tells Loren he’s not Silver, but Verlis. He’s a changed man. Like I haven’t heard that line before.

“Are you telling me—”

“I’m telling you that those things belong in another life. And that, just possibly, what Jane innocently wrote in her book wasn’t entirely either what anyone else supposed had happened or what in fact did happen. The one she thought she knew as Silver—isn’t necessarily who I am (74).”

Is it true? Was Silver Metal Lover a lie? Or is Silver/Verlis (heck, lets call him Livers. Anagrams ahoy, mateys!) just lying in order to make it with a hot chick? Historically this has been done before.

But Livers is different from Silver. Not because he was recycled from Silver’s parts like a Coke can, but because he’s a virgin and Loren was his first! Shit, girl, now you’re stuck with him.

Livers leaves and promises to come back. Loren ponders their night together and is kind enough to use her own thoughts instead of directly quoting from The Silver Metal Lover. Such a nice blessing.

Sharffe meets up with Loren. Offers her some cheese. They talk about Loren’s wild romp. Sharffe doesn’t utter a single French colloquium he learned from that French dictionary he picked up on the way to Loren’s place. He’s in a serious mood.

After a pointless conversation where it is inferred that Frenchie is checking up on Loren, we are led to Part Two, aptly title, “A Flyer Names Desire”.

I am so not shitting you. Drrrrrriiiiinnnnnkkkk!

Verlis comes by to visit with Loren. He takes her out and he notices her nervousness. “We can have,” he said, “the rest of the day. All night, if you want. Not for sex, if you don’t want that (113).”

I’ve heard that one before.

Loren and Livers start arguing because Loren refuses to believe Livers is not Silver and doesn’t remember Jane.

They make up. Livers gets Loren into bed, and another woman again realizes that when a man says he’s not in it for sex, he’s a total liar. A liar who is also a robot. A lying robot that can make daiquiris.

It is then that I decide to start drinking heavily. My vision gets somewhat blurry, as does my mind. I can’t tell you whether or not the book improves—only that there’s a part where Jane comes in, but she’s actually a robot Jane, and some subplot with murderous robots. Livers keeps telling Loren they’re being watched by some high tech organization. He then proceeds to hump her against a tree. Ow, bark chafes!

Other things happen and Loren finds out that Jane’s evil mother is the one who has been running the META corporation all along. Livers turns into a dragon. Loren finds out she’s half robot. She doesn’t turn into a dragon. She and Dragon Livers run away and melt together into some sort of weird 7th grade science project.

But I’m drunk now, so whatever.

END

Tags: eileen lavelle

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