Whipping Star

I can't explain how I feel about this book without this first paragraph. There are minor spoilers in it, but nearly all of them are made pretty clear early on in the novel. Whipping Star's plot more or less boils down to this: a sadistic, psychotic woman with vast amounts of wealth--who was obliged to undergo conditioning so she wouldn't be able to tolerate seeing pain in others anymore--has her minions nonetheless whip (with an actual bullwhip) a godlike alien (visible to humans as a small star the size of a big football & the shape of a spoon) that has the power to transport everything across space & time in the blink of an eye. Our villain can do this because the alien shows no feelings of pain. The alien lets her do this because it willingly entered a contract with her: being whipped in exchange for knowledge about humanity. However, in the very near future, the alien (that calls itself Fanny Mae!) will die because of the whippings, and when it dies, it will cause all other sentient beings--including humanity and a host of other aliens--to die instantly. There's a kind of government agent trying to solve the problem, but the alien has hidden the sadistic women on some planet in another dimension as part of the contract.

Well--and you thought giant sandworms were odd.

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Whipping Star is definitely interesting for its goofiness. I'd even say this: as it isn't a timeless classic like Dune, it might even be more interesting than Dune--that is, for those interested in the history of SF, and for scholars of the times in which it was published.

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