A Barnstormer in Oz

1919



We return to Oz courtesy of Phillip Jose Farmer. Barnstormer falls somewhere between the convoluted sequels of the original books and the adult-skewed Wicked series with PJ's take on the land of Oz. Farmer sets the groundrules of his version of Oz quickly: Oz is real, but so are the books by Baum, who interviewed Dorothy and turned her story into a successful series of fantasy books for children. Where the original books describe Oz as a hidden land existing in the real world, Farmer drops a dimensional portal to transport his protagonist, Dorothy's grown son.

Having read the Wicked series so recently, I couldn't help but compare the two. They are both similiar in that they attempt to flesh out Oz with a grown-up dose of realism, and a blatant sexuality. But the differences are too great. You can tell that McGuire was either completely unaware of this prior version (likely) or had read it and set out to be as contrary as possible (possible). Glenda is very different, Ozma is non-existant, the politics are topsy-turvy, the talking animals are different, the Scarecrow is very different... you get the idea.

How to reconcile this in a crossover context? Like always- parallel universes of Oz! I'd feel more nerdy about this issue except that Farmer is the Forefather of Crossover Fiction. If there can be 6,667 versions of Earth as we know it, constantly diverging, merging and experiencing crisis that require artistic retcons, why not multiple realities of Oz, disparate enough to have their own warped versions of storybook and adulterized realities (let's not even get into The Wiz or Tin Man!)

The best part of old-school seventies writers like PJ Farmer is his tendancy to dissect every nuance of every character and situation. Sometimes this gets too carried away, though, and bogs down the pace of the story too much, as I've noted in my Riverworld reviews. However, in Barnstormer it is put to good use, as Farmer puts a microscope on the existance of Dorothy's friends. Just how is a talking scarecrow and tin man possible, even in a world of magic? Their existance is an anomoly, a fact that all other Oz historians choose to ignore.

Despite my inability to merge this Oz with other versions of Oz, or accept it as the real Oz as PJ might like, it's a great book with a nice fusion of post WWI warfare and magic, and is a great follow-up to Wicked versus the lame sequals from it's own author.