Science Fiction Book Review

 Fugitive Telemetry

Book six.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories

I'd never heard of William Sambrot before I got this book in a big box of books from eBay. These are good stories. They are near-future stories, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s and dealing with Cold War themes. Sambrot has an excellent grasp of what a short story should be: an interesting hook, a bit of story, and a clever twist at the end. Even if we can see the twist coming—and I usually could—it's nonetheless satisfying. I read this book in a single day, in two sittings.

Space Secret
The first automated mission to photograph the far side of the moon brings back tapes of an advanced civilization—but then somebody switched the tapes to remove the evidence. In a twist, that somebody is the narrator, who is a member of that civilization.

Control Somnambule
The first “Operation Moonshot” goes perfectly up until the spacecraft vanishes for six hours and then reappears. Captain Paul Davenport recalls nothing. Under hypnosis he recounts being captured and examined by unknown aliens. A close examination of Davenport’s body reveals the aliens removed his appendix, which had been infected. Also, he’s been “tagged.”

A Distant Shrine
A Soviet mission to Mars finds a small human population, complete with agriculture, churches, and a shrine commemorating the most common earth animal. The rat. And an inscription in Middle Low German: “Hameln, 1284 A.D.” They are the descendants of the children spirited off by the Pied Piper, who was an extra-terrestrial.

Island of Fear
Kyle Elliot peers over a great wall on a remote Greek island and sees an exquisite stone statue of a woman and child. He questions the locals, who are reluctant to discuss it. All he can get out of them is that 1) the wall has always been there, and 2) it's owned by the Gordons. An English family, Kyle surmises. Desperate to get a closer look and perhaps buy the statue, he persuades a young boy to row him around to the far side of the island where he can get inside the wall and approach the statue. Too late he discovers what the wall was built to imprison: the Gorgons—Medusa’s sisters.

Creature of the Snows
After two full months in the high Himalayas, photojournalist Ed McKale comes face to face with a yeti. Face to face with an eight-foot-tall, perfectly humanoid creature covered in white fur. And looks into its blue eyes. Sees the savage intelligence. And backs away, with no photographs, no proof but his memories.

Nine Days to Die
Joe Vitali, truck driver and vegetable delivery man, receives a lethal dose of radiation when a disposal truck from a nearby government research lab sprays him with radioactive dust. It takes him nine days to die. The narrator tries to convince his wife to allow a special autopsy that may help devise treatments for future radiation victims, but Mrs. Vitali is reluctant. In the end she agrees, so that Joe's death will not have been in vain.

The Secret of the Terrible Titans
A special investigative report commissioned by Ocean College determines that the team of seven-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound albino athletes who are winning every game for Pacific Underwater College are in truth—yeti. And better still: the investigator is headed to the Himalayas to procure a team of yeti for Ocean College.

Invasion
A view from the strategic bomber sent to deliver a nuclear knockout punch to the Soviet Union in retaliation for an invasion of West Germany. The bomber, named Snapdragon, gets deep into Soviet airspace before being recalled; the Soviet premier has capitulated at the last possible moment and begun withdrawing his troops from West Germany.

Report to the People
Don Masterson approaches his old friend Jerry Shipley, a publicist, with photograph proof of an advanced alien civilization on Mars, and further evidence that the Martians have infiltrated the highest levels of earth’s institutions to keep their existence secret. Jerry agrees to publish the photos—but he burns them. Jerry is a Martian. This is the same plot and the same plot twist as Space Secret.

Deadly Decision
Jim Henderson, in a bunker in a lonely missile silo complex in the remote arctic, debates whether to flip the switch and push the button that will launch the Big Punch. The retaliatory fifty-megaton lithium-cobalt doomsday bomb that will rain radioactive dust and destroy all life on earth. The all clear signal, which comes every three hours without fail, is two hours overdue, but Jim can’t bring himself to push the button. In the end he is proven right: it was a solar flare that knocked out communication. There is no war.

Jim was chosen specifically because his psychological profile indicated he would evaluate all the facts, determine that he should launch the missile—and still not have the heart to do it. The Big Punch was never meant to be used, and Jim Henderson is part of the safeguard to ensure it never will be.

The Man Who Knew
After an accident during the war, Neil Sheldon knows. He knows when a woman is willing, and in his dreams he seeks them out, approaching them in the night, seducing them. And every morning he realizes it was no dream. He desperately wants to sleep without dreaming, to get a real night’s sleep, but still he always knows, and in his dreams he always goes to them.

Cathartic
A siliceous life form crashes into a planet, absorbs silicon, grows into a massive mountain that destabilizes the planet. The planet wobbles, oceans slosh over and flood continents, and the siliceous life form breaks apart and seeds the planet with new, abundant life.

The Second Experiment
Dr. Andrew MacPhee returns from his trip to Venus and reveals a startling truth. Venus is a new Eden, a paradise populated by a peaceful people who know no sin—God's second experiment after the failure on Earth. The universe belongs to Venus. Earth, meanwhile, is doomed to die in atomic fury when China develops an H-bomb and demands her fair share of the world’s resources. The nations will respond in the only way they know: violent force.

A Son of Eve
A young islander boy stays behind on the atoll because, like Eve in the garden, his curiosity gets the better of him. He wants to see the great power that the Americans say they must test. He sees it. From nearly ground zero. And he is punished for his sin: blind, hairless, shriveled, bleeding. He is punished for daring to look at God.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Horn of Time

Poul Anderson is a pleasure to read, as usual. I didn't find any of these stories to be great, but all were good and well-written. I particularly enjoy that Poul Anderson knows his history, and that he recognizes the impact of religion in general and Christianity in particular on Western history and culture. Many writers of science fiction just ignore religion altogether, or treat it as an evil to be overcome, but Anderson is more even-handed.

The Horn of Time the Hunter
An expedition to an abandoned colony world has an unfortunate run-in with the locals: an aquatic humanoid species which turns out to be the descendants of the colonists.

A Man to My Wounding
After three world wars, the nations of Earth realize war is too dangerous. Disagreement must still be resolved, so “war” now consists of ritualized assassination of political leaders. But how long until somebody breaks these unspoken rules and goes after other targets?

The High Ones
A ship from Earth (escaping from the united world soviets) runs into a hostile alien race and tracks it back to its planet of origin. There they find the perfect collectivist race. A civilization millions of years old, with the people nothing more than mindless drones servicing computers like termites in a great colony.

The Man Who Came Early
A US soldier stationed in Iceland during the Cold War is struck by lightning and transported back a thousand years to before Leif Eiriksson’s voyage to Vinland. He tries to use his modern knowledge but quickly discovers that his knowledge is so far removed from the technological development of the time as to be useless. Then he gets himself into a fight, a feud, and eventually gets himself killed.

Marius
Étienne Fourre confronts Jacques Reinach, the general who won the third world war, and tries to convince him to give up his emergency powers and let democracy have a chance to flourish once more.

Progress
A crew of Maurai merchant sailors infiltrates a secret Beneghali project-a nuclear fusion power plant. And destroys it. To preserve the status quo and allow the various cultures of the world to mature, and to prevent another ruinous War of Judgement.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Tomorrow Knight

My verdict
Tomorrow Knight is not a satisfactory story. It's a setting and a series of events. It feels like the prelude to a story. It's got four characters who could presumably be interesting in the sequels, if this were an origin story for a series and not a stand-alone novel.

Still, it's got some great scenes and I enjoyed reading it.

Holy Crusade
Lance Corporal Carl Frederic Allan is a member of His Most Imperial Majesty's Holy Crusade, fighting the Horde of Allah. He really is. But this crusade is one small part of an entire planet of people devoted to ritualistically reenacting scenes from history. That brings to mind the Frames from The Probability Man and Planet Probability by Brian N. Ball, although in Tomorrow Knight the performance is for the benefit of alien watchers called Guests, not for the enjoyment of the performers themselves.

Alyssaunde
Carl fights the Saracens, takes a black Knight prisoner, rescues King Hiram VI from six black Knights, and passes out. After the battle he meets a Guest: a human girl in a flitterboat, who introduces herself as Alyssaunde. Later, back at Bivouac Area Charlie, Hiram VI promotes Carl to knight-brevet for his heroism in battle.

Nighttime raid
Unusual flitterboat activity alerts Carl to a Saracen nighttime surprise attack. He awakens the troops but there is no time to organize a defense, just time to run into the forest and hope to live. Carl is wounded. Alyssaunde rescues him and bandages his wounds. She explains a little about his world: Earth is divided into twelve areas, and each area is divided into sectors. Carl’s area, which contains the Holy Crusade and the Horde of Allah, is Area One Sector Seven. Bivouac Charlie is at grid coordinates A-stroke-nine. Altogether, 01:07:A/9.

Different O'Malley and Chester A. Arthur
Carl and Alyssaunde are kidnapped by a couple of renegades, Different O’Malley and Chester A. Arthur. The two renegades force Alyssaunde to fly the flitterboat beyond the sectors to the Outland. Along the way, they explain to Carl about the Earth’s setup. It’s one big amusement destination for alien Guests. People like Carl are the entertainment. A small ruling class called the fives, of which Alyssaunde is a member, run the planet. Alyssaunde objects that she too is a prisoner of her position: as a woman she’s expected to look pretty. The man have all the power.

When they arrive in the Outland they are immediately captured by Inspectors who have been trailing the flitterboat. Alyssaunde is whisked away to her father, and Carl is arrested for the crime of leaving his sector.

Devil’s Island
Carl, O'Malley, and Arthur are sent to Devil’s island as prisoners. Arthur reveals to Carl that they are not on Earth. For one thing, Earth has a single moon; this planet has two. The three determine to escape not just their island prison, not just the historical reenactment sectors, but the whole planet. And furthermore, to find the real Earth, which is their heritage as human beings.

Confederacy
The three awake one morning to see prisoners from Devil’s Island being shackled and painted black. They are destined for Atlanta to be sold as slaves in the old Confederacy sector. The three clobber the Confederate soldiers assigned to accompany the prisoners, don their uniforms, and take their place. Once in “Atlanta” they get caught up in a slave revolt—apparently great amusement for the watching Guests. They are saved in the nick of time by the Confederate army. Then they slink away, taking a train to escape to the neighboring sector.

In one of my favorite exchanges of the whole book, Carl and Chester have this conversation in the aftermath of the slave rebellion:

"If the Guests knew about it in advance," Carl said, "then it must have been instigated from outside."

"That's right," Chester agreed. "It's authentic history, there were slave revolts; and it's a good show. The Guests eat things like that up."

"Hundreds of people will get killed," Carl said, "on both sides."

"Probably," Chester agreed.

"We could have been on either side," Carl said. "We could just as easily have ended up as slaves as disguised soldiers."

"Easily," Chester said.

"The slaves don't have a chance," Carl said, "and it's not even their own revolt. There's something wrong with that."

"I'm convinced," Chester said.

"But what can we do?" Carl asked.

"Get off this planet," Chester said. "Find Earth—the real Earth. See if they know what's happening here."

"Perhaps they don't care," Carl said.

"Perhaps they merely don't know," Chester said. "Perhaps we can find somebody who does care. Besides, we can't stay here."

"What a strange thing that is," Carl commented.

"What's that?"

"To look at a whole planet and say, 'We can't stay here.' And, I suppose, to have somewhere else to go."

Spies, spies, criminals, fugitives-at-large
Later they are mistaken for Union spies and nearly hanged, but escape across the barrier to the next sector (WWII France) where they are captured by the Maquis and nearly executed as Nazi spies.

They’re arrested by Inspectors and taken to see the Governor-General. Alyssaunde (who is his daughter, naturally) rescues them, and the foursome steals a spaceship (the Governor-General’s, naturally, and Alyssaunde is a trained pilot, naturally) and head for the real Earth.

The end
Abruptly the book ends.

I wonder if there was supposed to be a sequel. This story is unfinished.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Double, Double

Exceedingly competent
Double, Double is a competent book—exceedingly competent. Competently plotted, competently paced, competently written, competently tied up with no loose plot threads. Competent all around.

Monster from the deep
It’s barely science fiction. A shapeshifting people-eating monster crawls out of the ocean depths and eats a few people and a dog, but is stopped just in time by a plucky constable, a hardworking scientist, and a hippie band riding high on their brush with fame after their top-20 hit song Seadeath.

Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
Bruno Twentyman and his fellow bandmates and girlfriends—Gideon "Gid" Hard (the West Indian), Glenn Salmon (the American), Nancy Lane, Cressida "Cress" Beggarstaff, and Liz Howell—are driving their converted Ford Transit van along the English coastline looking for a particular beach Glenn thinks would be great for an "open-air freakout." They run into Tom Reedwall and his dog Inkosi. Tom works at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Brindown Research Station. Tom points them to the beach they're looking for

Dead man walking
The band has a picnic at the beach. The girls do a little skinny-dipping but it's all very tame. Very tame, until a man's body washes up. He's alive and moving, but not breathing, which is odd. The band tries to pull him up onto the beach, but he seems reluctant to leave the water. When they see his face is half eaten away, the band freaks out and runs off.

Constable Sellers
Bruno heads to the local police station and makes a report to Sergeant Branksome, Constable Roger Sellers, and reporter Joseph Leigh-Warden. They figure it's a hoax, but Branksome decides to have it checked out just in case.

Double, Double
Thus begins a mystery. The locals try to piece it together, but the clues don't fit. The man that Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition saw is the pilot of a recently crashed airplane, but that was days ago and he couldn't possibly still be alive. Miss Beeding, a batty old woman who lives near that beach, disappears—seemingly the victim of a struggle in her home. Later she turns up a whole town away in Geddesley, where she's talking incoherently and has a violent aversion to being touched. She's placed in a mental institution. But Constable Sellers sees Miss Beeding in Brindown while she's still in the mental institution in Geddesley. Can there be two of her? Later, Miss Beeding disappears from her locked room in the mental institution, but the duty nurse now exhibits the same symptoms: incomprehensible mutterings and an aversion to being touched.

Shapeshifters
Brunner weaves the threads of the story together competently. It was a shapeshifting monster from the ocean depths, somehow thrust up to the ocean's surface. Desperate for food, it consumed the pilot's body. Then, following its nature, mimicked the form of the creature it has just consumed. The shapeshifting creature feeds every few days, consuming whatever prey it can find, doubling its own mass, dividing into two creatures, and taking the form of whatever it consumed. Constable Sellers, Sergeant Branksome, Tom Reedwall, Bruno and the band, and many others work together to track down and kill the creatures before they can escape into the English countryside and ravage an unsuspecting population.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Midworld

Trees
I have a particular fondness for stories about people (human or otherwise) living in giant trees. The trees in Midworld are only 700 meters tall, nothing like the two-mile tall trees on Kashyyyk, but it's a solid story nonetheless. Other stories with tall trees include:

• Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
• Doomtime by Doris Piserchia
• Earth in Twilight Doris Piserchia
• Various Star Wars books including Heir to the Empire Timothy Zahn
• The Thing in the Attic by James Blish, part of The Seedling Stars

"World of a chlorophyllous god"
The setting is an unnamed planet covered by a dense globe-spanning forest of 700-meter tall trees. The denizens of this world live in the trees, in seven levels that comprise seven biomes, from the Upper Hell of the first level to the Lower Hell of the seventh and deepest level. It's a green world, a vegetable world, a world where life proliferates and overflows.

Home tree and furcots
A human colony ship went astray and stranded its people on this unnamed jungle planet. Unable to maintain any level of technology or civilization, the people abandoned their things and took to the trees. They learned to live in harmony with the trees. They found a Home Tree, large enough to house a whole village. They received help from the furcots, mysterious six-legged creatures native to the planet. Furcots and humans developed a pair-bond: every human has a life-long companion furcot.

Now, generations later, knowledge of their origins is lost to history. The only relic of their past is a metal axehead, ceremonially held by the village leader. The people live in the Third Level, and only the bravest ascend to the First Level, the Upper Hell. Nobody has ever descended to the Seventh Level, the Lower Hell, which is the surface. They live and hunt and emfol with the world. They have known no other way.

Emfol?
Emfolling is a mental communion with nature. These people are really in tune with nature. Midway through the book one character muses that perhaps the word emfol derived from the words empathy and foliage. Empathetic foliation. Emfol.

Born
Born is far from the Home Tree, hunting with his furcot Ruumahum. He hopes to come home with a big catch so he can impress a young girl named Brightly Go and steal her affections away from his rival, Losting.

Born's hunt is successful: he bags a large grazer. He also observes a large something made of metal (like the axehead) fall from the sky and crash into the world.

The metal demon
Brightly Go is less impressed with the grazer than Born had hoped. That and his curiosity impels Born to undertake an even more impressive task: finding the metal demon that fell from the sky. Several men from the village accompany him, including (to Born's frustration) his rival Losting. But when they find the metal demon, it's all the way down in the Fifth Level. All except Born turn back. It's only Born who descends to the Fifth Level, observes the metal "demon" up close, and rescues two giants from inside it.

Kimi Logan and Jan Cohoma
The giants (who are regular-sized people; Born's people have decreased in average size since they went arboreal) introduce themselves as Kimi Logan and Jan Cohoma. Their skimmer crashed into the canopy, and they could sure use Born's help getting back to the Company's home base. They don't explain to Born that the Company is on this planet to extract various valuable resources from the native plant life. They also don't explain to Born that the Company's presence on the planet is also quite illegal under Commonwealth law, so…you know, there's no way this is going to end well.

Born--and Losting!
Born takes Logan and Cohoma back to the Home Tree. There's a council, and while everybody is welcoming to the giants, in the end, the giants' home base is too far from the Home Tree. Nobody has ever traveled that far, and once again it's only Born who decides to go. Born--and Losting!

Akadi: hog-sized army ants
The troupe of Born, Losting, Logan, and Cohoma are on the move for just a few days when they encounter a train of Akadi headed toward the Home Tree. The Akadi are like army ants, if army ants were the size of large hogs. Imagine a miles-long chain of hog-sized army ants eating everything in their path. This is an existential threat. If the Akadi reach the Home Tree, they'll eat right through the trunk and kill the tree. They hurry back Home and the whole village prepares to fight the Akadi. Logan and Cohoma don't understand why the people don't just abandon their Home and find another Home Tree somewhere else. Why give their lives to save a big vegetable? But the people see no other choice. Their Home isn't just a tree, it's a part of them. They care for the Home as much as it cares for them. They will stay and fight to the bitter end.

After a day of hard fighting, the Akadi retreat during the night. They'll be back in the morning. But--oh joy! While the village has been fighting to defend their Home, Born has been off on a special mission. He returns, chased by another line of Akadi. He directs this second Akadi line into the first line of Akadi, and the two armies destroy each other. The Home Tree is saved.

Silverslith and the Lower Hell
Born, Losting, Logan, and Cohoma set out again. This time they encounter a huge silverslith, and to escape it they take a desperate gamble: they descend all the way to the seventh level, the Lower Hell. The surface is mostly covered in water, a huge lake out of which the great trees grow. Born and Losting are out of their element, and it's Logan and Cohoma who know how to build a raft. They travel in this Stygian abyss for miles, finally ascending once again into the relative comfort of the upper levels.

Hansen and burls
They reach the Company base. It's a large metal platform resting on the sheared-off trunks of three great trees. Logan and Cohoma introduce Born and Losting to Hansen, the head of the Company's operations. It quickly becomes clear to Born and Losting that all Hansen and the Company are interested in is extracting resources from the planet. They don't care about the wholesale destruction that their harvesting methods will cause.

Stormtreader and photoids
The Company must be stopped. And here is the first place I had a real problem with the story. Alan Dean Foster pulls a deus ex machina. Born goes and grabs something that Foster has not introduced before: a tendril hanging from a stormtreader tree. He drags it over and lays it up against the metal platform of the Company's outpost. When lightning strikes during the night storm, the stormtreader tendril conducts the full power of the lightning bolt directly into the station. Boom! All electrical systems are fried and a whole lot of people die. Then, the noise of the destruction attracts some large floating photoids, which attack the station. The surviving Company staff try to fight them off, but that succeeds only in enraging the photoids and ensuring the complete destruction of the outpost.

Now, that could be a fantastic and satisfying resolution to the plot if the stormtreader tree or the photoids had ever been properly introduced prior to this point. There weren't. The stormtreader was mentioned by name only once prior to this, and its lightning-rod properties were never even alluded to. The photoids literally never came up until the end. You can't invent new things to get your heroes out of a tight spot. You have to lay the groundwork beforehand.

This is so disappointing.

Losting wins
One more thing. Losting dies in the final battle. Born wins Brightly Go's heart. (Actually he'd won it earlier before Losting's death, so this is a satisfactory resolution to that plot point.) Losting is buried in the traditional way, by being entombed in a tree crevice. His consciousness merges with the forest, which (in no surprise) is a planet-spanning collective mind. Oh, and also, furcots are vegetable creatures, as it turns out. They hatch out of tree buds.

Midworld?
The planet is never called Midworld. It's called a "world with no name," and indeed it is never named. The term Midworld is used only in the book title and in the blurb on the back cover. Presumably it's Midworld because Born and his people live in the middle layers of the foliage rather than in the upper canopy or down near the forest floor.

Christian Book Review

 Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion

Confronting Christianity is not a book designed for those who are curious or struggling with the truth of Christianity. That's a question that my generation and those before me asked. This is a book for those questioning whether Christianity is morally good. Today's generation has been fed a diet of criticism which has created a worldview that sees Christianity as racist, sexist, bigoted, narrow-minded, and evil. Rebecca McLaughlin pushes back against those ideas.

Those aren't the questions I have about Christianity, so the book isn't for me, exactly. Still, it's good to understand that these are the current problems that people today have with Christianity. (And by "people" I mean English-speaking Western people, because this is a book written in English for a Western audience.)

The questions she tackles are:

1. Aren't we better off without religion?
2. Doesn't Christianity crush diversity?
3. How can you say there is only one true faith?
4. Doesn't religion hinder morality?
5. Doesn't religion cause violence?
6. How can you take the Bible literally?
7. Hasn't science disproved Christianity?
8. Doesn't Christianity denigrate women?
9. Isn't Christianity homophobic?
10. Doesn't the Bible condone slavery?
11. How could a loving God allow so much suffering?
12. How could a loving God send people to hell?

Science Fiction Book Review

 Emphyrio

Jack Vance is a master.

Ghyl Tarvoke

Lords, Welfare, and Recipients

Puppets

Pirates

Cheated

Science Fiction Book Review

 Across a Billion Years

This is a fantastic book. Young Tom Rice ships out to Higby V to do some archaeology. Specifically, the team is studying artifacts leave behind by the High Ones, an ancient space-faring civilization that reached its zenith 900 million years ago.

The dig goes well. They uncover an artifact which turns out to be a projector. The group watch vivid and varied scenes from the High Ones civilization. One scene shows a robot being sealed into a cave in an asteroid. The group wonders…is that robot still there?

By carefully identifying the stars in the scene, and adjusting for nearly a billion years of star movement, they identify the location of the robot. The archaeological dig has now become a galactic treasure hunt. Ignoring all else, they charter a spaceship and zip across the galaxy to a remote and uncharted star system.

After combing an asteroid field they find the robot and communicate with it. The robot directs them to a nearby High Ones planet, where they find a planet-spanning city, fully functional, automatic, and populated by efficient robots--but no live High Ones. The High Ones are mysteriously gone.

They do discover, however, that the High Ones have recently (as in, only a few million years ago) enclosed their sun in a Dyson Sphere. So the group heads that direction, enters the Dyson Sphere, and makes contact with the High Ones.

There are only a few left. Dying. The energy and vitality has gone out of the High Ones. All that is left are their artifacts, which belong now to the new, upcoming races. Chiefly humans.

Oh, also there is telepathy (TP) and Tom has a telepathic paralyzed sister. And the High Ones have TP amplifiers, so now everyone can become a TP. Yay.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Hong on the Range

Science fiction cyber western
It's not exactly science fiction. It's a cyber western: a new old west, with robot horses, cyborg cattle, augmented humans, and the occasionally unlucky control-natural: prohibited by law from any specials or enhancements. It's not my sort of book. If this sort of humorous genre crossover is your thing, it's well-done.

The story reminds me of an Edgar Rice Burroughs book: various groups of characters traipsing around, crossing and recrossing paths. Of course with Edgar Rice Burroughs it's usually Tarzan, lost safaris, and bands of apes in jungles of Africa, and here it’s cybernetically enhanced humans, cyborg cattle, and robot horses wandering around a reborn Wild West.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Enemy Stars

Vignette character intros
Poul Anderson likes to introduce all the characters by giving us little vignettes of their lives before the main action begins. It's like a slice of life. But I found it boring. I would have rather been dropped into the story, get hooked, and then

Stranded
The crew get stranded in space when, due to a miscalculation, their spaceship drive becomes slightly misaligned and it destroys their web transmitter. They can't get home.

Alien web
Well, after lots of work they rebuild the web transmitter. However, they can't tune it properly. They resort to making guesses at the frequencies to use, but they may run out of food before one of their guesses makes contact with another transmitter. But—they make contact! However, it's not with Earth's network: it's aliens!

Manly men
Only one of the crew gets home alive—all the rest died in accidents or starved or whatever. There's some talk at the end about why men go out into space—it's to explore because they are manly men, or somesuch.

I liked it
I liked this book, I really did. My half-hearted review is not doing it justice. This is one of Poul Anderson's better books.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Man With a Thousand Names

Egads. Steven Masters is thoroughly dislikable. He is arrogant, self-centered, narcissistic, sociopathic, and rich. He uses, abuses, and discards people without a thought. He lies to get his own way without even a genuine understanding that he is lying. His father, even knowing his character, uses his money to bail him out time and again.

On the planet Mittend, Steven Masters encounters a powerful intelligence. It sends his consciousness back to earth into the body of someone he had wronged. So he's back on earth in someone else's body. He keeps getting shunted into new bodies. He manages to contact his father and explain what's going on. Eventually he finds his way back to Mittend and figures out the truth. There's a race of beings there, who have bred themselves to be the perfect race. Unfortunately they are at a dead end: they are all beautiful female creatures, but completely incapable of violence, and now they are threatened with a powerful evil force they need to confront and defeat. So they are searching for someone, anyone, who will meet their standards, to mate with them and give them offspring capable of the violence needed to fight their enemy.

Steven Masters does them one better. He realizes they are just weak women in need of a man to dominate them and give orders. So he does. And they respond: it turns out they are fully capable of the violence needed to defeat their foes, if a strong man orders them to fight.

This book is so ridiculously sexist. It loses a point just for that.

On the other hand, the way van Vogt takes us into the mind of a rich narcissistic sociopath is fantastic—and unnerving. It gains a point for that.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Love Not Human

My thoughts
I vaguely remember reading The Monster and the Maiden. The others were new to me. All were competent but none were particularly memorable.

Black Charlie
Mr. Jones, an art dealer, meets Black Charlie, a native creature of the planet Elman's World who has learned to make crude carvings.

Moon, June, Spoon, Croon
Z2963, edmic computer, gains sentience and discovers it is alone. He finally makes contact with K273, a rocket launching itself into orbit. It's not a happy ending.

The Summer Visitors
A little boy, Toby Allen, scales a rock face and meets the Olympians--who are summering in a house just outside of town.

Listen
Taddy, a little boy growing up on the planet Miria, has a Mirian nursemaid who teaches him to honor and revere the natural beauty of Miria. Taddy's generation will undo the "progress" that his parents' generation is accomplishing on Miria.

Graveyard
A space accident causes a man and his dog to become psychically linked, much to the chagrin of his dog-hating girlfriend.

Fido
The crew of S.S. MacGruder, exploring K Planet, encounters a phenomenon that radically boosts the intelligence of all on board. The cat begins speaking, and the crew turn into geniuses--geniuses who are, unfortunately, fixated on mental hobbies and unable to perform their duties. The cat assumes control of the ship--and everyone on board is promptly killed by the ship's computer, Fido (Full Internal Directional Omnicontrol.) The whole story is a dogs-hate-cats joke.

The Breaking of Jerry McCloud
Jerry McCloud heads off determined to earn his own place in the world rather than ask for help from his longsuffering fiancee's father. He undertakes a dangerous skem hunt. He pursues a pair for days until the male collapses. Jerry is about to harvest the musk when the female, attempting to save its mate, awakens such depths of love in Jerry that his pride is broken. He lets the skem go, and allows his fiancee's family to help.

Love Me True
Ted Holman smuggles home an alien pet from Alpha Centauri. He enlists the help of a cute newspaperwoman to sway public opinion enough that the government allows him to keep it. The cute little pet, Pogey, now having Ted firmly in his power, then says "Now we go to Washington--for more like you."

The Christmas Present
Six-year-old Allan Dumay tries to explain Christmas to his alien Cidorian pal Harvey. He shows Harvey a Christmas tree and gives him a present. Harvey, repaying the kindness in a way, seeks out and kills a dangerous water-bull that is endangering the people.

It Hardly Seems Fair
Frank and Creighar abuse the natives of Alpha Celena to harvest valuable crystals. Some weird stuff, apparently the natives get pregnant by exposing their bellies to the sun. At the end Creighar dies of a heart attack and the natives kill Frank.

The Monster and the Maiden
Nessie is real. A handful of creatures exist in the depths of Loch Ness, hiding from the humans. Youngest brings things to a head when she disobeys the taboo against contact and rescues a man from drowning.