The Enemy Stars
Reviewed date: 2025 Mar 14
Rating: 4
152 pages
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.