Three Beauties

Three Beauties is John Fraser's latest tour de force in speculative fiction. Beauty is an idea of perfection, moral, physical, social, political - and these three tales, with their beautiful questing characters, exemplify the search for the best there is.

In the first tale, the heroine aspires to perfection in sex, sport and literature. Genetic improvement too is tried - but in the end she runs foul of the classical link between beauty, judgement and the struggle to be top. Afrodite, the acme of beauty, notoriously had her champions, and intervened - unfairly - to have them score in battle.

In the second tale, Afrodite is absent or indifferent, as the characters tangle with high politics, and seek in vain a measure of social improvement.

The final tale has the beauty, the heroine, in a mechanical role, to oil the plot. The moral is that perfection lies beyond the world, up in the sky.