Pyrric Publishing Last of the Drop-Dead Divas An unproduced Benny adventure

Author	Jim Mortimore
Released	2006

Synopsis: Fortune's Rise. Thousands have been there and only three have returned. Will Benny be number four?

• A Review by Paulo Felipe

A Review by Paulo Felipe 11/5/06

By March, Jim Mortimore himself posted on Outpost Gallifrey his cancelled script. I am a big fan of his work. Loved Campaign, his short stories in Decalog 1 and Benny's Life During Wartime, and my favorite BF Natural History of Fear. So I recently had the oportunity to print it and read.

Yes, It is a Mortimore modus operandi again, that I personally find very clever and original, but actually know that is far from conventional. And probably would not please everyone. How does it work? Characters that you love and know by heart are submitted to extreme conditions, they start to act out of character so mildly that you feel that you missed a piece of continuity and you did not know about a fact. But then you do a little research and confirm that you are right and said character is really acting strangely.

In Divas, Benny is bored with her life, so she takes a big cheque from a TV corporation to film her in the most distant edge of the galaxy, Fortune's Rise. A place where thousands visited but that only three people returned.

The first act is fine. We are presented with these three survivors and learn that they are not remotely sane. The TV crew is cleverly written with connected dialogue. They arrive at Fortune's Rise and start their way through odd enviroments.

Then act 2. This was survival at the extreme. It is 30 pages (a page per minute on audio?) that includes only Benny and the three TV people. They deal with hunger, pygmies, monsters, weird weather conditions. Some retro-editing is used, we jump some days, then the characters review their tapes of the previous days.

Act 3. Yes. A Mortimore feast. Death touches the crew in a unexpected way. Some of the characters were just not what they seemed. We reencounter the three survivors described in act 1. Then the mess is done when clones appears, some of the clones die and have their memory joined...

At last a (relative) happy ending is presented, but not necessarily a clear one. Pay attention for Peter and Adrian references, it will make your mind twist.

It was a pity that this work got cancelled. Some rewriting would make it very pleasant. Act 2 should get cropped a little and should not have only Benny and her surroundings. 4/5 for sure.