1968: Stand on Zanzibar (Brunner, John)

Disassemble, consume, and relish (4/5)
From May 12, 2011

My 11th Brunner novel to-date and also one of my favorite Brunner novels because of its unique composition, epic subject matter and plot continuity. If you're like me, I love to dive head first into a novel without researching it, without reading the synopsis. In most cases, I'm wowed by nearly any novel's content simply on the basis that I'm surprised. But perhaps I should have braced myself for what lay in Zanzibar. I took it with me on a trans-Pacific flight, hoping that the sheer thickness of the novel would keep me attentive but the first fifty pages were so scatter-brained that I put it down and only picked it up again ten days later when I took the same flight back home... and still, it seemed scatter-brained. Only about one-third into the novel did I begin to feel comfortable with the composition.

Rear cover synopsis:
"This is a giant of a book, in many senses of the word. It had to be, to give elbow-room for its subject matter. There are seven billion-plus of our species crowding the surface of the twenty-first century Earth in an age of acceleratubes, Moonbase Zero, intelligent computers, mass marketed psycheddelics, politics by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes--hive-living hysteria that is reaching its bursting point all over the world. But a hive seldom knows about its madness until it's too late. Employing a dazzling range of literary techniques, John Brunner has created a future world as real as this morning's paper--moving, sensory, impressionistic, as jagged as the times it portrays. This book is a real mind-stretcher--yet beautifully orchestrated to give a vivid picture of the whole. Read it with care--move in with it--this may be where we're headed..."

Divvied up into four parts, each gives the reader a glimpse into the world Brunner has created:

The meat of the novel lays in "Continuity" where the two plot lines of Norman (headed for Beninia to establish a new economy) and Donald (headed to Yatagang under subterfuge) start as one and eventually split into the two said strands. Beginning as roommates, we're introduced to the lifestyles of their generation, the living conditions, the language, etc. This alone provides a detailed picture of the year 2010 where earth is being over-populated.

The second most important of the quartet is "Tracking with Close-ups" where the reader can catch glimpses of everyday life for a smattering of humans on earth: witness their decadence, see their plights and perils, come to understand the one drop in the ocean of flesh. These slices of life are more like short stories based in the Zanzibar world, each as minor as the next but like a flood, the torrent is composed of many small water droplets.

One less interesting aspect of Zanizbar is the inclusion of "Context" which highlights social troubles via the written works or spoken word of an author in the novel by the name of Mulligan (or sometime snippets of other conversations, songs and such fluff). Sometimes insightful, usually wordy and preachy but the best bits lay in "Hipcrime Vocab" where Brunner shows his mastery of wit and language akin to a modern-day Devil's Dictionary... all interesting, but not essential to the 650-page novel.

Lastly, there comes "The Happening World" where the novel should NOT have started the novel and which, really, added nothing at all to the overall picture. It's like stream-of-consciousness writing with no connectivity, no basis, no logic. No, thank you.

Even if I hate a book, I still read it cover-to-cover. But with Zanzibar, I found myself skipping much of the peripheral "Context" bits and nearly all of the obscure "Happening" sections. These two lines of page additions distracted me from the greater whole of the core plot: that of Donald and Norman in the context of an over-populated world and where one man, especially a changed man, can make a difference and how science, too, can push society one way (to greatness) or the other (off the cliff).

Zanzibar is a definite re-read but next time around I'll have that knowledge brace of knowing which chapters to skip and which chapters to focus on.

1971: The Falling Astronauts (Malzberg, Barry N.)

Stagnant character, stagnant author (3/5)

My exposure to Barry M. Malzberg has been limited. I've only read his novel The Last Transaction, which was a character-fueled trip through the sex-driven private life of a US president. The amount and description of the sex is off-putting, but as least it was pertinent to character's state of mind. This EXACT SAME formula is used in The Falling Astronauts, but rather than the private life of a president, the focus is on the private life of a fallen astronaut. The similarity between the two unlinked book has me thinking that Malzberg just likes to lightly mold a near-future science fiction tale around his core concentration of sex--a sign of a weak author, in my opinion. Not too many novels use the 4-letter C-word, but it feels like Malzberg uses it with relish.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Colonel Richard Martin had been to the Moon and back, but he would never be sent on a mission again.
Martin had suffered a nervous breakdown while he orbited the Moon, and he couldn't be trusted to pilot an expensive space capsule anymore. So no Martin handled public relations for the space program, and after one more Moon launch his connection with the program would be completely ended.
But on one could foresee the strange disaster that would turn the coming space mission into a nightmare that only Martin, is anyone, could end..."

Martin wasn't sent to rove the lunar landscape, but he was given the command of the orbiting module. Alone in the cabin during the communications blackout, Martin is seized by a gripping impulsion to ignite the retro-rockets, leaving his two crewmen stranded on he lunar surface for dead, and sending himself rocketing into deep space or into the sun. The BUTTON beckons his attention, berating his refusal to act as an individual. Mentally breaking down, the rest of the mission is scrapped but the details are never released to the press.

Returning to Earth, Martin is again with his ill-adjusted wife who cannot tolerate the social atmosphere on the space program. Simply labeled as an "astronaut's wife", Susan is childless and anti-social. Her hatred of the atmosphere drives her weak relationship with her husband to the point that he can't even discuss his work problems with her. Shut out of her life, Martin is left to his own mental wreckage as his wife leaves him.

The declining interest in the space program has seen more and more press ignoring the details of each consecutive flight, which may be why Martin was temporarily placed as press liaison. His distant, curt manner is unsettling to the reporters who generally lack interest in any of the happenings at the project. One reporter in particular, Perkins, has a very crass attitude when posing questions, accusing the staff of hiding secrets and harboring information which should be shared with the public. Martin's patience wears thin with Perkin's ill manner, but the rest of congenial press sympathize with Martin's uncomfortable position.

The space agency is gearing up for another lunar flight when martin assumes his press liaison position. Martin would rather avoid all socialization, but the parties revolving around astronaut induction is one he isn't able to miss. The wives make their own awkward scene while Martin makes a few loose connections with the crew of the next flight: commander Allen is a husband but also a curiously friendly fellow, lieutenant colonel Davis is a pompous sociologist, and colonel Busby is a widower who shares the same position as Martin one had--module command.

The main focus of The Falling Astronauts in the internal drive which drove Martin to his temporary insanity and how he deals with the fallout during his desk job at the agency. His disconnection with other people is symptomatic of the acceptance of his personal limitations... and his failure. The sheer amount of training Martin endured had a negative characterization upon him; he sees himself as an individual, but the agency has trained him to be a part of a machine. His attachment to BUTTON in the lunar orbiter is part of his conditioning to be a machine, which should contrast his emotional attachment to the two members on the moon:

SHOW THEM, the button had said, unpersuaded in its mercy, determined voice, SHOW THEM YOU ARE A MAN AND NOT A ROBOT. SHOW THEM THAT THEY CAN'T PUSH A MAN LIKE YOU AROUND WITH THEIR GODDAMNED SILLY ORDERS AND ARROGANCE BUT THAT YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND OF YOUR OWN AND YOU CANNOT BE TRIFLED WITH. (70-71)

The single mechanical button overrides the importance of the two organic souls, his crewmates and fellow astronauts. The crux of the matter:

The ship... takes orbital fire and he feels his own guilt like a rosy glow inflaming his body; as the ship has taken power, so he has become a conductor for culpability and he feels himself burning: burning with darkening fire whose stains, if it were to surface, would mark him eternally. (109)

The sociological aspect is often a focus, be it with group dynamics or general opinion on social interaction: "We make patterns; you always have configurations in human relationships totally apart from the personnel involved... The human factor is paramount." (53) Much of it point to our own patterns reinforcing or destroying the greater social fabric, but the importance of the individual is casually ignored. Martin understands the power one man has and he can project this sometimes demoralizing force onto what Busby may feel when he, too, will be in lunar orbit alone; however, Martin's disconnectedness finds him uncaring.

Amidst all of this social deconstruction and the internal debasement of Martin, the reader is shown glimpses of sexual deviation, shadows of their own reality only hinted at to the reader. Martin's own sexual deviation goes untold, but he mentions scatology four times and imagines this desire on his leaving wife once. A cross-section of the astronauts on the coming mission reveals only Allan's inability to cope with the stress of the program, which is veiled in a private interaction with Martin. The occasional hinting of sexuality is much more favorable than the blunt sex scenes, but combine the two and the reader begins to wonder what is making the author tick. Having read only two Malzberg novels, they share a very similar plot and emit an odd trait which reflects unfavorable upon the author.

The characterization I mention is a heavily condensed form than found in the novel. It often feels like the book is going nowhere; the reader waddles in the murk that is Martin's depression, slogs through the tides of disconnectedness with his personal and professional life, and stand on the precipice of the one-dimensional character of Martin. The stagnation has a purpose but behind the characterization there is very little going on, not even the supporting cast can lend a hand to its pacing.

If there's a Malzberg novel which deviates from his curious fixation, I'll happily pick it up, but Malzberg needs to present a different facet of his creativity which highlights science fiction as a dynamic genre, a realm of possibilities which he drags the reader through with a sexual agenda. Again, it's more of a distraction that anything when the author has so many routes of characterization to the same conclusion, Malzberg takes the easy way out time and again.

1971: Saliva Tree (Aldiss, Brian)

Aldiss at his best- some fiction with the science fiction (4/5)
From April 5, 2011

Having already read Aldiss's short story collections in Last Orders (3/5) and The Book of Brian Aldiss (3/5), I wasn't keen on starting yet another Aldiss collection. I'm a pretty big fan of his novels (six to-date, all above three stars) but his short stories never captured me. The longest story in this collection is also the most famous from Aldiss- "The Saliva Tree." This SF story was pretty good and so was another SF-themed story: "Smith's Burst." Some of the non-SF stories are better than his SF-themed stories. Finding that Aldiss wrote clever fiction and witty horror was a treat ("Lonely Habit" & "Shared Pleasure"). With just one lame duck in this bunch... it's the best collection Aldiss has, thus far.
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Saliva Tree (1965, novella) - 4/5 - Nineteenth century bucolic England is visited by meteorites and an innocuous pond-deep vessel which houses two invisible beings. The electrify-owning farmer, his fair maiden daughter and her suitor have differing opinions as the nature of the farm's recent mysteries and the nature of the beasts. 81 pages

Danger: Religion! (1962, novella) - 3/5 - A just history professor is home to a parallel earth where England is recovering from a war when a parallel traveler takes the professor back to his reality- a theocracy embracing slavery yet lacking technological progress save for the invention of parallel travel. 43 pages

The Source (1965, short story) - 1/5 - Traveling from Andromeda to visit the source of humanity, a scientist surveys the people and the land for mankind's great achievement but experiences more of an acid trip than anything. 16 pages

The Lonely Habit (1966, short story) - 5/5 - A greenhorn serial killer relishes the kill and the secret pleasure of identifying with the mementos of the disposed corpse. While initiating the threat of the fourth victim, the killer finds his ilk. 10 pages

A Pleasure Shared (1962, short story) - 4/5 - A rather proper gentleman and part-time murderer has befriended a young widow and has been unfortunately acquainted with another rather beastly tenant. The beast plans to marry the widow but the murder just wants a blanket to wrap his victim in. 14 pages

One Role with Relish (1966, short story) - 3/5 - A seemingly over-enthusiastic man forces a friendship upon another man after a dental visit. Are his motives merely platonic, sexual or perhaps slightly malevolent? 10 pages

Legends of Smith's Burst (1959, novelette) - 4/5 - A word-crafty man find himself sold into slavery on a wretched planet full of mutant beings. He manages to escape or overcome each challenger with wit and with the assistance of his fair maiden, the human daughter of a trounced king. 43 pages

The Day of the Doomed King (1965, short story) - 4/5 - A progressive but starry-eyed king is maimed by an invading force. He and his general venture to warn the next town over but not before seeking good omen with a seer. 16 pages

Paternal Care (1966, short story) - 3/5 - A student spies from a hilltop a woman working in the field and perpetually rushing to her hovel to put the escaping child back indoors. When the student gains a close perspective, he finds out the city's defense isn't as loose as it seemed. 5 pages

The Girl and the Robot with Flowers (1965, short story) - 3/5 - Aldiss bounces an idea off his about a short story he's working on where the main visual image is a robot holding flowers, but Aldiss mulls over it and decides he's not in a robot-flower-war-with-humans kind of mood these years. 8 pages

1921: Voyage to Faremido & Capillaria (Karinthy, Frigyes)

Gulliver's wanderlust finds precarious realms (5/5)

Frigyes Karinthy is an early 20th century Hungarian satirist, playwright, and journalist. His parody and humor were once well-known in the Hungarian literature circles, but his international fame was more subdued. Best known for his autobiographical neurological journey of his experience with a brain tumor, its affects on him, and his anesthetic-less surgery, A Journey Round My Skull was first published in 1939 and later reprinted in 2008.

The twin novels Voyage to Faremido & Capillaria were written in Hungarian in the years 1916 and 1921, respectively. They weren't translated until 1965, when they were published in Hungarian, translated to English (by Paul Tabori), and later published in 1966 (with the Living Book publisher) and 1978 (with New English Library). The two novels are Karinthy's literary extension to Jonathan Swift's four-part Gulliver's Travels (1726). These fifth and sixth journey's of Gulliver's are some of the earliest examples of the continuation of Swiftian literature.

Rear cover synopsis:
"First there is Faremido- a planet peopled by machines who regard organic life as a disease. Gulliver is held to trial as a representative of the most corrupt disease in the universe--the disease of humanity.
Then there is Capillaria- an underwater world where the men are nutritious delicacies and the women rule like gods. Gulliver is mysteriously saved from drowning but his respite is short-lived when his dreaded sex is discovered..."

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Voyage to Faremido (1916, 33pgs) - 5/5

Synopsis:
Promising to never travel again after his four adventures, Gulliver gives in to his wanderlust and signs on to the navy as a surgeon. The ship he's on is struck by a mine and as the boat sinks, the captain saves him in a hydrofoil, which flies into the air. Regaining consciousness, Gulliver realizes the captain is dead and the hydrofoil is now thousands of feet into the frigid atmosphere... when a metallic craft captures him.

The first being he approaches intones the notes "F D E C" which is the name of the planet he now strides upon--Fa-Re-Mi-Do, or Faremido. During the next eighteen months of his stay, he befriends the race of intelligent machines which gave "the impression of simplicity and of a self-evident inevitability" and were "a masterpiece of economical and perfect technology." (28) Being an educated man, Gulliver wishes to speak of epistemology and technology while envying the god-like beings, but the mechanical aliens have their viewpoints about organic lifeforms such as Gulliver, himself. Organic beings are seen as tumorous, infectious, malodorous, parasitic, pathogenic germs; a transitory phenomenon. For what of a better place in the universe, Gulliver convinces the machines to make him more machine-like, a process which would see him as part-organic, part-machine. To get a glimpse of his post-humanism to come, Gulliver is injected with an inorganic substance (nanites?) that alters his perceptions and sensations to a temporary omniscient level.

Analysis:
There are a number of progressive elements from the era found in this story which reflect the progress man has made and Gulliver's eagerness to pronounce such accomplishments to the robots of Faremido. Psychoanalysis was a science in its early years at the time Karinthy penned the novel and Gulliver mentions concepts revolving around consciousness and ego, something which is seen as a sickness to the purely inorganic robots. The robots, themselves, use a technology which was being pioneered around 1916--the assembly line. Gulliver mentioned the effectiveness of the system and the division of individual labor.

Karinthy sees a post-human world where man can transcend death through evolution into a bodily vessel, surpassing "the corruptibility of the organic body" into one composed of "inorganic, enduring, imperishable elements." (50) Also, a brief philosophy on technology and mankind is given when Gulliver reflects on the state of the art:

In the course of centuries science and art naturally became more perfect. [...] Finally we reached a stage where the machines not only aided men in all their labour and multiplied their strength--but carried out their work far more perfectly than this could have been done by our frail human bodies, [...] they surpassed Man; they became more perfect, and soon we reached the point where, if he wanted to be perfect, Man was forced to imitate the machines and works which has once imitated him. (32)

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Capillaria (1921, 66pgs) - 4/5
Synopsis:
Promising to never travel again after his five adventures, Gulliver gives in to his wanderlust, again, and signs on to the navy as a surgeon, again. Struck by a U-boat torpedo, the ship sinks and Gulliver is inexplicably rescued from drowning by the shell-shaped gills surrounding his ears. On the seabed Gulliver has no use for his lungs as the artificial gills provide sufficient oxygen for his body. Without using his lungs (?) he is still able to produce speech when he speaks with the pulchritudinous denizens of the deep: the Oiha. The ever-chivalrous gentleman Gulliver, a philosopher and well-read individual, orates to the babylonianesque women about the nature of the role of sexes on terra firma.

Gulliver witness the atrocious act of cannibalism but accepts the cultural oddity because of his wide experience in such counterculture matters while abroad on his travels. The women are lackadaisical gadflys, sucking the "blood" of productivity from male contingent; the smaller, inferior men are incomprehensible to the woolgathering women, whose air-headed language consists "entirely of interjections and ejaculations". (78) Their life goal is the pursuit of pleasure, "in the eternal pursuit of pleasure, the search for and enjoyment of artfully selected physical sensations." (79) His eighteen months under the sea are devoted, not to the physical serving of the scores of women, but to the oration of terra firma human philosophy of the human sexes to the queen. During an excitation in audience with the queen, his true sex is revealed, thence he is banished to the male enclave where his size quickly brings him favor to the industrious men.

Analysis:
I wasn't sure if Karinthy was (1) expressing his own viewpoints on the dichotomous nature of the social function of the two human sexes, or (2) viewing the same functions through the eyes of Swift, a man of the eighteenth century, or (3) peniing the entire novel as written satire... which is actually the widely held belief. Some of the misogyny is hard hitting stuff:
* the female as supporting wife (pages 61 and 94)
* the female preoccupation to physical beauty (pages 88, 95,and 96)
* the female vacuous mind (pages 74, 77, and 88-89)
* female success based on seduction or position (pages 90 and 94)
* aggrandizement of singularly male achievement (pages 101-102)

Page 102 proved to be the most conversational (well, internal monologue debate) with the topic of "The problem of women":

I had endeavoured to prove the inferiority of the female mind, the mental poverty of women by the fact that they were unable to define or describe themselves--so that in order to have a proper idea about them the genius of man was needed because women had no independent conception of their own souls. (102) 

I had admitted to myself [...] that women had a far greater preference for feminine men than men for masculine women--what else was this but a striving towards a uniform, unisexual type of humanity, a longing for 'debasement', 'degeneration', 'feminization'. (102)

Even in Karinthy's fantasy creation of an underworld, the sexes still maintain the same roles as they would on terra firma. Either this clearly shows a lack of imagination, which isn't the case, or a twisting stab at satire in order to awaken the inequality of women in modern society. Karinthy was an anti-war advocate but he wasn't noted for his feminism. One last paraphrase about this feminism from the same controversial page 102: "feminists" are "just degenerate men." You have to keep reminding yourself this is a satire!

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The two stories aren't linked in any way besides simply being stated as the "fifth voyage" and "sixth voyage" of Gulliver. The post-human injection Gulliver received from the Faremido robots never materialized in Capillaria and the events which took place on Faremido were never recalled while under the sea.

Lastly, I found it a quaint comfort to read the lines "I found my wife and children in good health" (55) and "I found my wife and family in the best of health" (124) at the conclusion of the respective stories.

1897: The War of the Worlds (Wells, H.G.)

Bucolic English tour in the midst of an alien invasion (5/5)
From May 3, 2009

The War of the Worlds is more than a scary monster book, which some people who don't read science fiction may see it as. In fact, this is part of a broad foundation of the genre of science fiction as well as the father of sci-fi/horror. Though written in 1897, it is indeed filled with grisly descriptions of charred bodies lining in the English streets, dogs turned feral feeding upon their masters and rotting corpses. The people of southeast England find themselves "leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd" (268-269) once the Martian invasion begins to asphyxiate bucolic England.

Rear cover synopsis:
"At first they thought it was a falling star...
Then it landed, and THINGS began to emerge: ugly, tentacled monsters that saw men, not as slaves, but as food. In days the country was occupied. Mankind was helpless against the Martians' poison clouds, scalding steam jets, and flaming Heat Ray.
But Earth had a secret weapon--a weapon the earthlings didn't even know existed!"

Though written in 1898, the narrator doesn't give the year of the invasion, though he makes a number references to events, statistics ,and inventions which help the reader pin a year down. The current timeframe is one hundred years after the Lisbon earthquake, London is populated with six million citizens and the countryside is sparsely touched my automobiles yet still has a strong train line. From this data, we can estimate the time to around 1880-1900, which is different from many of today's sci-fi novels which typically take place ten or more years in the future. Wells' novel must have been hauntingly timely when it was penned.

From Woking (just 23 miles southwest of central London) to the Tillingham coast in Essex (50 miles northeast of London), Wells takes the reader, even though as ignorant as we may be of 19th century English country life, through a detailed cartographic wandering across the land. From the initial discovery of the Martian cylinder in the narrator's town, to the horse and bicycle escapements to the adjacent villages all the way to the eventual tours of mayhem and destruction of downtown London. The personalized tour of the 19th century bucolic England is exotic and charming, even in the midst of an alien invasion!

Needless to say, the English used is British English and dated, as well. Wells seemed to favor the word tumultuous and its root word tumult, which I don't come across very often in other novels. Reading this novel had me fetching my dictionary from time to time to reference Wells wide vocabulary. Sometimes his use of words is humorous to the modern reader. One example I giggled to myself for a number of minutes at the thought of Wells' words: "I grew very weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; I tired at the sight of his selfish despair." On a more serious note, the passages of the narration are full of wonderful imagery, imagination and an uncanny ability to convey the sense of despair himself and his fellow countrymen are experiencing before, during and after the invasion.

Not only is this the first `alien invasion novel' but it's also the finest... which hasn't been more poetically written or enriched with detail in over 110 years. Wells' The War of the Worlds has withstood one century already and will continue to awe readers for the next dozens of generations.

1963: The Reefs of Space (Pohl, Frederik & Williamson, Jack)

 Great premise lacking detail and follow-through (3/5)

The collaboration of the science fiction greats of Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson rivals other such duos: Pohl & Kornbluth, Niven & Pournelle, Pratchett & Gaiman, gin & tonic, and sloppy & joe. All renowned for being fine examples of collaborative efforts, but from this reviewer's experience, doubling the effort doesn't always doubly yield. Take for example Pohl & Williamson's Farthest Star (1975): starts with a great premise, lacks in follow up of interesting details, then includes scientific anarchisms and dragons. This sort of rings a bell with The Reefs of Space (minus the dragons), a 1964 serialization of three stories printed in late 1963.

Rear cover blurb:
"The team of Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson combines two of the top writers in the field of science fiction. In the REEFS OF SPACE, this has produced a tale brimming with the ingenuity, inventiveness and satiric commentary characteristic of the great classic adventure tales of science fiction. To science fiction fans, this is like a joyous coming home, to new readers, the book will be a fresh and exciting discovery."

Though the novel itself isn't divided into three distinct parts, the novel still manifests its "stitch-up" heritage through the plot's choppy flow. The first 90 pages of the 188 page book contain the first distinct setting, which sets the tone for the entire novel: Steven Ryeland awakes after three days of interrogation and detention with very little memory of his past and murky details of the examiner's questions. His affiliation to the physicist Ron Donderevo is unclear but his descent to the rank of Risk is made clear by the explosive ring around his neck. Ryeland is imprisoned and given the orders to develop a "jetless drive" for the Machine, an all-knowing computational tyrant organizing and directing the affairs of thirteen billion people, a process known as "The Plan of Man." This Plan is often whittled down to the phrase, "To each his own job--and his job only." Guarded by the military sporting "radar horns," a proximity deterrent to Ryeland's explosive fuse, Ryeland delves into the mystery of an inertia-less creature which resides in the Reefs of Space beyond the orbit of Pluto and is also detained in the Machine earthly prison. Obviously countering the mathematic certainty of Newton's third law of thermodynamics, Ryeland discovers that the secret to the creatures inertia-less movement to be powered by a crystal node within its nervous system.

The next 50-page story is a drastic jump from the first, where Ryeland has been played the pawn between the unseen power struggle of General Fleemer, overseer of the project, and The Planner, a trustful human who steers the Machine. Accused of treason and sabotage, Ryeland is shipped off to Cuba, one location of the Machine's Body Banks. The Risks residing in the Body Banks are fed sedatives as they are gradually taken apart, piece by piece, for transplantation to an unknown recipient. Ryeland soon possesses a hand-me-down journal penned by D.W.H., which inspires him to escape in a similar manner, if he can live long enough without losing too many body parts to the Bank.

And the remaining 48 pages are yet another drastic jump from the plot: In his eleventh-hour after his failed attempt at escape, Ryeland is rescued and taken aboard a ship powered by the same inertia-less creature he studied all those months ago. The Reefs of Space are seen as a haven from the tyrannical Machine, a region of freedom beyond the sphere of suppression, which is the main reason the Machine wants to "jetless drive." Too far for a propellant systems, the inertia-less drive will allow the machine to conquer the Reefs and conform all who wish to reside there under its nebulous Plan of Man. The Reefs have fauna and flora with "enormous lovely flowers that shone with uncanny colors", "a kind of golden vine that struck back with high-voltage", and "innocent little pods that squirted jets of radioactive isotopes." (51)

The first half of the book, which is primarily the first 90 pages and the first story, is an excellent 4- or 5-star start to a novel. The world-building is rich with the inclusion of the nebulous Plan of Man, the shrouded (benevolent?) Machine, and the system of communication between the humans and the Machine. The binary digital computer requires laborious encoding, taping, and decoding of information, yet the Machine still transmits actions and information through the "teletape" machines, a type of tickertape terminal found in every room in which any person can key in their request. The entire system has the aura of 1984, possibly giving a nod towards "thoughtcrime" ("Nobody can argue with the machine! [73]) and "doublespeak" ("[...] is was plain as the fact that two plus two is four." [179]).

Some additional quirks are of interest, but only adds light spice to an already well-seasoned story. Keeping in mind the population of earth is thirteen billion, it seems Pohl and Williamson kept this in mind even when writing in simple details to the story: "He ate the last dry beef algae sandwich, and the last bitter drops of cold yeast coffee" (180) It's a minor but amusing detail. One recurrent detail but unexplored theme are the "Togetherness" girls in the laboratory/prison where Ryeland is incarcerated. These girls are cheerful, optimistic, and seem to be on the same sedative drugs as the prisoners in the Body Banks. As they name suggests, their optimistic nature is a glue which keeps the engineers stuck to their work and vision. There's no detail regarding the nature of the robotic-like Togetherness girls, but it's just one of the things which are of interest in The Reefs of Space.

As it reads above, the greater setting of The Reefs of Space is grand. However, the transitions between the three parts is too abrupt. Just when the laboratory/prison environment is becoming lurid and lush, Ryeland is jetted off to the Body Bank. Once the Body Bank setting is becoming sinister and depressing, Ryeland is sprung off planet to the Reefs. Once there, the story takes on a sort of cheesy space horror montage. The earthly realm of the Machine with its Plan of Man is what is really captivating about the Reefs of Space, how Ryeland can contribute his discoveries for the benefit of the Machine's nebulous Plan, and how the existence of the Reefs affect the Plan.

In regards to scientific anarchisms, the universe in which The Reefs of Space exists is set in a steady-state universe (ala the Infinite Universe theory, circa 1948), where hydrogen gas is constantly being produced and the stars continually being developed from this gas... this opposes the Big Bang theory which triumphs in 1965 discover of cosmic microwave background radiation. The steady-state is important to some of the questions posed by Ryeland and his "jetless drive" so it's also important to the plot. The suspension of belief is easier than when reading the early works E.E. "Doc" Smith.

If the remaining of the Starchild series (Starchild and Rogue Star) would focus on the earth-based Machine and its Plan, then the series might be worth the read. But, I see that the series doesn't continue with the somewhat likable Ryeland, with his intelligence and vague history. Just as the end of the The Reefs of Space was jerky, the remaining series seems just as illy thrown together.

1985: Black Star Rising (Pohl, Frederik)

A steed of a start... followed by horse apples (2/5)
From April 6, 2010

Written in the time between Pohl's Heechee Rendezvous (1984) and his widely known satirical Merchant's War (1986), one would expect Black Star Rising (1985) to retain some aspects of his former greatness, as in the popular Man Plus (1976) or Gateway (1977). However, Pohl seems to have led himself astray with this one-off novel like he did with another one-off novel in the 1980s: Syzygy (1982). Both flopped.

Rear cover synopsis:
"When a mysterious alien spacecraft approaches the Earth and demands to speak with the President of the United States, then destroys a large Pacific island to demonstrate its strength and its seriousness, you'd expect the President to talk. Problem is, in the late twenty-first century, there is no President--not even a United States. China rules the Americas, and to most people 'US' and 'USSR' are just quaint abbreviations in historical dictionaries. But the aliens prove unreasonable about accepting substitutes. So one Anglo rice-cultivator from the Heavenly Grain Collective farm near Biloxi, Mississippi is forced to begin an adventure that will take him from peasant to President, from Pettyman to Spaceman."
 
Black Star Rising has a noble start: "It's the late twenty-first century. The USA and USSR have destroyed each other in a catastrophic nuclear exchange, and China now rules the Americans." The reader is introduced to a Caucasian workforce in Alabama who are restricted to the farm in which they work. Castor has discovered a human head in the rice fields and is called to the city to deliver his testimony. He becomes embroiled with the Han-descended Police Inspector, the many-minded Professor, and the affairs dealing with a mysterious object approaching Earth. The start is fairly good and lays a great foundation for a prospectively good novel...

... but inevitably the novel must continue. Behind this dignified steed of a novel's start there only follows a long trail of steaming horse apples. Once the "American Cabinet" arrives on alien soil (named World), the plot quickly loses steam with many pages of doubletalk terminology and a bizarre, out-of-the-blue plot twist with its ridiculous self-contained history. What follows is a sexual romp for a small cast of characters parallel to the politicking of people from Earth and the people of World. There are no bombshells dropped in plot (steady as she goes), there is no character enrichment (like a placid lake of boredom) and even the ending receives a shrug of whatever! One more additional observance includes the annoying overuse of the word "fool" and the gratuitous use of exclamation points in the internal bickering within the Professor.

It's one of those shoulder-shrugging books which the reader wades through, tests the water, comes out the other side reasonably unscathed, and ultimately forgets ever wading through the placid waters in the first place. It's been two years since I read this novel (now May 2012) and I couldn't remember one aspect about it without reading my prior review. It's a forgettable novel because of its mundaneness and aimlessness, not because it's irritating from cover to cover like Man Plus, Syzygy, or Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980). Pohl obviously isn't one of my favorite novel-length authors, but he has a prolific amount of short stories which seem to impress me from time to time, such as in The Man Who Ate the World (1960), Midas World (1983), and Pohlstars (1984). Stick to these shorter works and witness the greatness of Pohl through the decades.