Indeed, if you think about it for a few minutes, you realize she has an excellent point.

Veep takes a leap
In "Danny Goes to Mars," former Vice President Dan Quayle, through several twists of fate, ends up becoming the first person to walk on the red planet. The story was inspired by a real life interview that appeared in Mother Jones magazine in which Dan Quayle gave his vision for landing on Mars, along with some stereotypically befuddled Quayle comments that made him a popular target for late night talk show humorists. (I think Letterman and Leno must have worn black armbands when Quayle withdrew from the primaries a few months ago.) An excerpt from that interview kicks off the story, which won the prized Nebula Award in 1992 as well as the prestigious Locus Award.

The story begins in a meeting between second-term president George Bush (yes, that's a change to history), his advisors, and the title character. Sargent has said that a great deal of research went into portraying the personalities of advisors like John Sununu, and that comes through in this meeting. Quayle seems to be barely following what is going on and suddenly realizes (or rather is told) that what they're discussing is whether or not to send him to Mars using a recently invented and vastly improved rocket engine (a second change to real history).

The motivation for this odd decision? Political, of course! You see, the primaries are about to commence, and nobody expects Quayle to put up a good showing. They want to ensure a Republican administration well into the 21st century. With no pressing domestic or foreign crises, they need some way to give Quayle an edge. It's made quite clear he won't have to actually do anything; professional astronauts will do all the real work. Meanwhile, he'll get plenty of photo-ops while working in cool-looking space suits. (The parallel between this and what a vice president actually does was clearly on Sargent's mind.) He won't even land on the planet itself, but will remain within the orbiter.

Well, I don't want to give anything away, but fate intervenes on these plans and forces him into far more action than he was counting on. The democrats even come up with some tricky business of their own, complicating the situation further, until the story comes to its entertaining conclusion. The plot flows along nicely. Just as everything seems to settle down, Sargent throws in a new twist that keeps Dan off balance. Okay, at one point I had the feeling that one of the plot twists was a stretch, but you have to give an author a little leeway when it results in the kind of payoff laughs this story delivers.

Throughout, we see a picture of Quayle that's somewhat different from his common media portrayal as a pure buffoon. Sargent does, as you would expect, take some potshots and sets up some wildly comical conversations (not to mention one hilarious speech by Quayle). She also shows him as a man striving to do his best, a man who really does care about his family and his country, and even shows him as courageous under trying circumstances.