Spacial Delivery
Series: Dilbia 1
Reviewed date: 2009 Oct 9
Rating: 1
155 pages
The setting: In a galaxy where Humans and Hemnoids vie for supremacy, the planet Dilbia has become a tactical battleground. Both races are trying to persuade the native Dilbians to join their faction.
The damsel: Ty Lamorc, nickname Greasy Face, has been kidnapped by a Dilbian named The Streamside Terror.
The hero: The human ambassador to Dilbia conscripts John Tardy, the All-Systems Olympic decathlon champion and sends him off to rescue Ty Lamorc.
The pun: Because there's no way Tardy can catch up to the Streamside Terror (Dilbians being much faster than humans), the ambassador mails John Tardy to the Terror. The Dilbian mailman, named Hillside Bluffer, vows to let nothing stand in the way of his official government duty to personally deliver Tardy safely to the Streamside Terror.
It's not a very good book. I wonder if Dickson didn't write it just as an excuse to use that awful pun in the title. Did Tardy ever rescue Ty Lamorc? Yes. And did he get revenge on the inept ambassador who hung him out to dry? No, not really. It turns out that Joshua Guy, the ambassador, hatched a plot to purposely get Ty Lamorc kidnapped specifically so he could send Tardy off to rescue her--thereby impressing the Dilbians with a display of human courage and strength. It worked. The Dilbians are impressed and choose to ally themselves with humans, not the Hemnoids.