1976: Man Plus (Pohl, Frederik)

Throw-back from the 70s best kept there (2/5)
From July 29, 2009

I'll begin by giving credit where credit is due. This book was published in 1976 and has the hyphenated word broad-band, where as nowadays, the word isn't hyphenated, as broadband. That there is a sense of vision, as the English language tends to hyphenate words before combining them into a compound word. And that's about where the visionary writing ceases. The rest of the book is a rehash of old ideas and old sub-culture references.

In prior conversation with fellow sci-fi blogger Joachim Boaz, we have both mentioned that Pohl being one of the most over-rated science fiction authors of all time. Of the eleven Pohl novels I've read, six have received a 2-star rating. Man Plus is among Pohl's worst novels along with Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980), Syzygy (1982), and Black Star Rising (1985).

In regards to the Man Plus experiment itself, a few items struck me as poorly thought out. One: why does Man Plus need to have an enema when the Man Plus on Mars will have use for its sphincter due to the atmospheric pressure? Two: in the beginning the `bat wings' were for heat dispersal but later on the wings are used for energy absorption (heatsinks would have been more suitable for heat dispersal and also less of a corny idea). Three: Why did the team building have trouble, of all things, with the throat mike, when they could accomplish such feats as replacing an entire mans body? Four: There was utmost attention (2 pages to be exact) paid to the layman's explanation of how frog's eyes worked when the rest of the story paid no attention to the frog-like function's of Man Plus' eyes.

During the 60s and 70s (and perhaps to a lesser degree the 50s and 80s), there was an increase in the amount of effort to make sci-fi novels sexy. And not "sophisticated sexy" but more like "drop-sex-into-random-paragraphs-for-the-teenaged-readers sexy." Pohl has a tendency to randomly slap sex onto the pages of his novels when the sexiness really isn't called for--as in it leads little credence to the plot or characterization. Sexiness can be done artfully and/or tastefully, but Pohl lacks the grace of including sexual beings into his stories, rather it comes out of bestial lush of a one-track minded alpha male (ah, that rings true with a number of Pohl novels, actually). More to the point, Man Plus mentions "screw" six times, to a more mature degree it mentions the word "sex" five times and beyond these two words, an additional twenty references are made towards copulation, coitus, penetration, matings, etc.

For a book heralding the words, "A novel of unbearable suspense... a desperate political gamble to save earth from destroying itself... the struggle of a man is more than a man to becomes the first Martian," there isn't as much Mars as there could be. Only about the last 15% of the entire novel is dedicated to actually being on Mars. The rest of the novel is filled with the Man Plus research (which is actually fairly interesting, except for the rambling bits like frog vision), the political turmoil around the world (nice broad play here by Pohl but the generic references to Asia is annoying as Asia does, after all, have a third of the world's population) and a predictable set of events stemming from Roger and Dorrie's superficial marriage.

Sadly, there was a, frankly, stupid ending to the novel which brought the entire book down one star. It seems as if the last five pages was a desperate attempt to tie it into a sequel (and look, there IS a sequel!). This reviewer, however, is not conned into reading the sequel after this half-hearted 70s attempt. There is more sophisticated sci-fi in the world.

1966: Farewell, Earth's Bliss (Compton, D.G.)

Cast of Simple yet Complex Convicts (4/5)

This is my introductory Compton novel but the author supposedly has many other excellent titles. Since those titles are out of my reach for now, Farewell is my first Compton novel.

Rear cover synopsis:
"The time is the future; space travel has encompasses Mars, finding it barren, without mineral resources, useful only as a dumping ground for socially unacceptable humanity -- a latter-day convict settlement.

A new shipload ot deportees lands, and the twenty-four new colonists, male and female alike, have to adjust themselves to the harsh life here, and to the unexpected new social patterns that have developed for defense against the hostile Martian environment. Before long, as the colony is shaken by dangers from within and without, the struggle becomes the most basic of all -- not for comfort, but for survival itself."

This Ace edition synopsis does the 188-page novel no justice. The synopsis above is a flat, unemotional copy written by a desk jockey and doesn't even attempt to set itself apart from all the other Mars novels at the time (such as 1964's Martian Time-Slip and 1969's The Sirens of Titan). If it would have cost more than one dollar, I wouldn't have bothered stocking it on my shelves with a lame synopsis like that. I've got a better one:

Spending nearly ten weeks cooped up in a cylindrical inter-planter javelin, the twenty-four social criminals are at their wits end. Having landed on Mars safely enough, they are met by the convict colony representatives who are both terse and unemotional. The representatives take the haul of food back to the colony while the recent arrivals wait for supportive assistant... until "the arrival of a dust storm. Visibility outside the space craft was down to a matter of inches. The dust storm stayed for thirty-seven day." With their numbers thinned, the surviving nine new-comers find their place in the colony, learning that maintaining the status quo is to survive. To err it to risk taking "the cold way out."

The slim thickness of the novel is misleading as the contents of the novel are quite complex. Of the nine surviving arrivals, seven or eight of them become central characters along with one or two other convicts already stationed in the colony. As a matter of plot device seeking to keep anonymity among the convicts, each space-borne convict is given a biblical name. The banality of the naming compounded by the numerous cast had me reaching for a pen to keep track of their names. These aren't cardboard cut-outs either, they are fairly well fleshed out:
Mark: once democratic leader, justice seeker
Issac: once cocky, now bed-ridden
Simon: illusionary charm, sly, racist
Jacob: black, non-confrontational, internally demonized
Ruth: judgmental and observant, yet crass
Joshua: artistic, cynical, pragmatic
Paul: delusional, self-proclaimed prophet
David: once the second in command
Martha: liberal American spinster

I use the word "black" above but Compton uses "Negro" and two of the less-tolerant characters use the N-word. It's thrown around quite heavily in a few passages and it characterizes Jacob as the prosecuted yet innocent victim. While ethic diversity isn't appreciated on my Mars colony, the acceptance of sexual orientation is unheard of with the penalty for simply being homosexual is "the cold way out." I don't think Compton is reflecting his opinion in this novel, but merely using lack of acceptance as a ploy to show the bigotry and simple-mindedness of the convict hierarchy.

It's a slow read at times, where I didn't know which route the plot was taking but little did I know that I was the one who was going for the ride. Like one quote on the cover states, it "quasi-Kafkaesque" and the last-page conclusion will have you nodding with understanding, rather than approval. Further Compton read are a must for me (Thanks Boaz!)