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The Mary-Sue Extrusion was the seventy-ninth Virgin New Adventures novel. It was the first novel since Deadfall to be almost entirely told from the point of view of somebody other than Bernice Summerfield, being told from the point of view of the Stratum Seven agent. He did, however, encounter several of Benny's friends and associates throughout the novel.
Publisher's summary
"Bernice Summerfield seemed to hold the key. She was in it up to her neck, and she was the one person left who could tell me what I needed to know. I rather hoped it wouldn't be necessary to snap said neck and kill her."
The planet Dellah was once one of the cultural centres of the galaxy. Now, it lies in ruins and things walk through the barren landscape, twisting the unfortunates who remain there to their unholy will.
The tragic effects of this cataclysm have been felt throughout local space, from cruel and draconian Thanaxos to the multiplexal chaos of the Proximan Chain Rafts. All know the ultimate result: a war is coming - is inevitable - and is set to blow the fragile stability of the galactic sector apart.
Only one person has the pieces of the puzzle that might prevent the coming collapse - Bernice Summerfield. The problem is, she's missing, and what's more she's not feeling precisely herself. And if Benny doesn't find out exactly who she is, and how she can fit into her newly shattered world, there isn't going to be a world for her to come back to at all.
Chapter titles
- Prologue
- Chapter 1
- Attachment (Supplementary)
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Supplementary Insert
- Chapter 4
- Supplementary Insert
- Chapter 5
- Background Insert (Personal File)
- Chapter 6
- Background Insert (Personal File)
- Chapter 7
- Attachment (Supplementary)
- Chapter 8
- Supplementary Insert
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Supplementary Insert
- Chapter 11
- Supplementary Insert
- Chapter 12
- Background Insert (Personal File)
- Chapter 13
- Attachment (Supplementary)
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Supplementary Insert
- Chapter 17 (Endgame)
- Attachment (Tentative Conclusions)
Plot
Needing a job, an agent of Stratum Seven clearance travels to Luna and has Box crack into the comms system. He accepts a job from Volan of Pseudopod Enterprises SA and, after surviving an attempt on his life, heads to the Dellahan sector and reads about Bernice Summerfield, identifying her as a fellow time traveller and potential asset. On the Star of Afrique, the captain and crew turn against him and he kills them before taking the ship and flying to Thanaxos to find Benny.
The agent gets himself arrested by the Thanaxons and taken to the off-worlder detention camp where, after three weeks, he finds Professor Sabron Jones and is told that Benny flew to heaven in the arms of an angel. Jones dies in an escape attempt, putting the agent into a state of depression until he is reunited with Sela Dane, a journalist whom he once saved from White Fire terrorists and who convinces the Thanaxons that he is undercover. They fly to Rakath and the agent is tasked by another version of Volan with acting as bodyguard to Prince G'jimo during his visit to meet the Sultan of the Tashwari on Dellah.
Slipping away from the Sultan's palace, the agent goes to the ruins of St Oscar's University and finds Benny's diary in which she writes about her companion, Rebecca, and about how she took a Mary-Sue. The agent fails to notice G'jimo acting strangely and, hurt, does not question Sela when she breaks off their sexual relationship because of it being immoral.
The agent travels to the Proximan Chain where his search for Benny brings him to the attention of Jason Kane, whose quasi-telepathic friend, Mira, uses her power to assess that the agent is not a threat. The three of them go to Beta Caprisis after Jason recognises the name "Rebecca" as belonging to Benny's doll and they find her, with Wolsey, calling herself "Rebecca" and her doll "Benny". Stranding the people who tried to kill the agent on Luna, Benny tells the group that she returned to Dellah to save Wolsey and that the Mary-Sue was to protect her from being influenced by the gods.
G'jimo has returned to Thanaxos as a prophet. On the way there, Benny requests that they land on an unnamed planet to pick up Emile Mars-Smith, who has exiled himself to starve the god in his mind, in the hopes that the god within him and the one now on Thanaxos will cancel each other out. However, the god within Emile began taking on the other's power until the agent punches Emile in the face and knocks him out. The agent then confronts the Thanaxon Volan about sending the assassins after him to keep him from exposing his embezzlement of Pseudopod money, leading Volan to throw a stupid bomb and run.
The stupid bomb kills G'jimo and, the agent believes, the god dies with him. The agent realises that the Volan on Luna had sent him to uncover the other Volan's crimes rather than to help Dellah. In his report, he changes his personality and history to keep his identity secret.
Characters
References
Businesses
- Pseudopod Enterprises SA are a "holding corporation" (ie a front) for other, less savoury companies.
Individuals
- The Stratum Seven Agent has Stratum Seven clearance.
- Prince G'jimo, is a quite stupid individual. He gets possessed by an All-High God (the Dellahan gods).
- Mira isn't a telepath.
- Professor Sabron Jones used to be a chemist at St Oscar's University, but is now held at detention facility, tortured by the inmates. He saw Benny being saved by Clarence.
- Bernice Summerfield has a "Mary-Sue" performed. Following the Mary Sue she calls herself Rebecca. Her return to Dellah to pick up Wolsey was the incident that activated the Mary Sue.
Literature
- A True Adventure of the New Frontier is the name of the books written (by various authors) about Benny's adventures.
- The Stratum Seven Agent reads A True Adventure of the New Frontier called Ship of Death which (badly) details the events on the Titanian Queen.
Locations
- Earth Station Prime is also known as Ptolemaeus Staging Port, Puerto Luminae, Heng O's Refuge, Lunaville, Colony One and the Luna Port.
- Aeon Flux is a capital city on Mars.
- Beta Caprisis is a wasteland caused by high yield detonations that decimated the colony. What was once grass is now like molten glass smeared over the land. There are still moderate levels of radiation.
Newsreaders
Planets
Species
- There are several Spindlekings shopping in the Proximan Chain.
- The Stratum Seven Agent is a Synthoid.
- A Draal refugee from Dellah is imprisoned in Thanaxos.
Technology
- The Agent mentions body bepple and body swap.
Time travel
- Time travellers are sometimes called persons of "meta-temporal displacement".
Notes
- This is told entirely from the Stratum Seven Agent's point of view, occasionally dipping into his past and into various emails and A True Adventure of the New Frontier stories.
- Although the term "Mary-Sue" has a different meaning in this novel, in fan fiction circles it describes a character created by the author who not only serves as an "avatar" or "fantasy figure" representation of the author but invariably "saves the day" for the established characters.
- The title was chosen by Kate Orman, but when her schedule meant she had to drop out, Dave Stone filled in by adapting material from a draft of an original novel.
- In March 2007, years after the book went out of print, Stone published a revised version of the novel with Benny Summerfield replaced by Pandora Delbane. An ebook was later released on the Amazon Kindle store on 9 October 2015.
Continuity
- Benny was saved and rescued from Dellah in PROSE: Where Angels Fear.
- There is an excerpt from A True Adventure of a New Frontier called Ship of Death, which features a particularly bad retelling of PROSE: Ship of Fools.