Pride and Prejudice in Space #JAFF

Pride and Prejudice in Space, by Sybil Nelson, is basically the dream fanfic premise. An entirely new world for Lizzie and Mr Darcy? Scifi that’s definitely going to have women in it? I’m in!

And the beginning lived up to my hopes. Parts of it are an almost word-for-word recounting of the Pride and Prejudice dialogue, hitting all the plot points, but in distant space! With aliens!  You know, some apostrophes in the space names and tea served by droids and some random technology mentions. I loved this part.

“So how goes it between Mr. Bilson and J’ai?” Chai’loi Loomis asked Elloree as they walked through a classic hologram of a George Seurat painting.

I could have done with some more worldbuilding, because having the whole plot and characters already developed would have allowed for so much more cool space stuff. Why are the servant droids serving tea? They could be having Martian frappucinos or literally anything in the entire imaginary universe, with the snobby Bingley sisters snarking that you can really taste the replicator or the rehydrator on the space Bennetts’ humble offerings. It’s an odd feeling to enjoy what I was reading, while also feeling like there was a missed opportunity for a really great Janeite reinvention novel.

The plot of Pride and Prejudice in Space hinges on the idea that half-humans, like the five Bennezon daughters, cannot inherit property. So the girls need to marry well or risk banishment to the paedors at their father’s death. This is no genteel poverty, it’s basically space slums with murder, assault, sex trafficking, etc. It seemed a bit weird that there were no other options, and even weirder than none of the Bennezon daughters has any contingency plans. I’d expect Elloree Bennezon to have some plan for a study-abroad on Mars or whatever, wouldn’t you? And with such high stakes, Mrs. Bennezon’s desires to marry her daughters to wealthy non-humans — to avoid danger and violence, not for embarrassing social climbing — made her seem like a very sensible mother. Not comical at all!

The last section is a random interlude with a prostitute/vigilante in gritty space, which felt like a backdoor pilot or an ad for an almost unrelated sequel. There’s a Dramatic Cliffhanger ending, but since we only met that character a few minutes ago (a non-speaking, non-present reference in an earlier chapter barely counts), I didn’t really feel it. I was only reading through the random revenge story, set in space squalor, because I was hoping for a post-credits scene of Mr. and Mrs. Darkeny on their intergalactic honeymoon. I’m glad I read this for the two-thirds about royal alien Mr Darcy, but what the heck was that last chapter?