There is not much purpose to reading these other than an interest in science fiction history Storyline: 1/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 1/5 World: 2/5
There is not much purpose to reading these other than an interest in science fiction history or for the sake of nostalgia. This one is hardly necessary for the purposes of sci fi history, truth be told. One can get a picture of what E.E. Doc Smith contributed to the genre by reading the previous four Lensman volumes. The fourth, Gray Lensman, brought the series to what appeared to be a satisfactory close. Smith must have decided afterward that he wanted to extend the series, so in Second Stage Lensman he summarizes the series so far, narrating that the resolution we had so far achieved was not as conclusive as we thought. No, he tells us, there was actually an even bigger and more sinister plot behind the big and sinister plots we had already finished! True to seven decimal places (as Smith would have qualified it). As a result, Second Stage Lensman takes us flitting along to uncover the machinations behind the machinations. Most of the characters, battles, technology, and tactics for this volume are reused from earlier ones. The newest contributions were, perhaps, the worst parts of the story. Smith was emboldened to make women more equal with men and more meaningful in the story. His attempts to do so were so stunningly misguided that one has to either get angry or laugh at him. And it is not simply a matter of looking back on an earlier era holding different values; Smith was plenty oblivious in his own time. Also, our author was a little more patriotic in this volume, endorsing wholeheartedly the forces of democracy and light against the forces of autocracy and dark. This leads to such profundities as
“Not only did the invaders [the forces of good] allow—yes foster—free speech and statutory liberty; they suppressed ruthlessly any person or any faction seeking to build a new dictatorship; whatever its nature, upon the ruins of the old.”
And no, no irony was intended. Similarly, the fate of those dictatorship-loving foes comes down to their being made right by enforced “therapy” or executed. All in the name of democracy and freedom, of course.
My mental voice for this one was much like the melodramatic voice of the narrator of old black and white adventure shows. Those voices, in excited or foreboding tones summarize events thus far and set the scene for the action to come. The tone and pace of Second Stage Lensman was 271 pages of that voice, hurrying me along while pleading for me to join in the excitement. I hurried, but I just couldn’t find the excitement. ...more
Classic pulp. 1996 Hugo voters decided to nominate this 18th in the series for the Retro HugoStoryline: 2/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 2/5
Classic pulp. 1996 Hugo voters decided to nominate this 18th in the series for the Retro Hugo Award. Whatever may have come in those first seventeen volumes, it was not necessary for understanding the events in Red Sun of Danger. This is another interstellar cops and robbers story where the hero can learn and do anything but is most acclaimed for how fast he can draw a weapon from a holster. This was remarkably similar to E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensmanstories, the first of which would have appeared in magazine form nearly a decade before Sterling’s version. There does not appear to be much maturity in the genre at this time. Humanity not having been to the moon yet and before much of the advances in astronomy, the writer has to be forgiven for making the planets in the solar system habitable and with their own humanoid denizens. Sterling does have a neat idea or two in here, at least one of them being picked up by later science fiction. There is no doubt, however, that this is a 1940s adventure story from a “Scientifiction” magazine that was on the lookout for opportunities to use exclamation points!
Every now and then a little golden age science fiction found its way back into a genre that wStoryline: 2/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 3/5
Every now and then a little golden age science fiction found its way back into a genre that was on its way to abandoning it. Not that science fiction ever completely outgrew its pulp adolescence, but by 1964 it was becoming less fashionable to throw in such technological doodadery as the “Humanoid-robot Brainwave Dephasing Device.” Most everything in here, in fact, was just a little ill-fashioned—sometimes late and out of fashion, but just as often awkwardly attempting what was then newly fashionable. This latter was evident in the jaunty patter that periodically surfaced, affecting contempt or jocularity (I was never really quite sure). There were some proddings to social justice that were startling in their unprepared-for appearance and quick dismissal. There’s even a paranormal angle that would have been right for the times except that it had been drained of all mystery and significance. The story’s real merits were in its ideas for a new world. It was not so much the time as it was the place – the historical context being essentially incomprehensible and ill-connected. Smith drops in little details about the land that are real gems – quirky, satisfyingly unbelievable, surprising, and fitting with the rest of the established rules. This doesn’t come all at once but is instead spread out through the story. What started as amusing, however, becomes a little tedious as one sees Smith throw in idea after idea as a second-thought, with most never followed up on or through with. This would have been more bearable were there some story or characters available to pick up the tale. There’s very little tale, in fact. It was all more of a long prologue that was belatedly told to conclude. I can see how this sort of thing might still have had fans in the 1960s, but it is hard to believe there were very many of them then, and there have to be even fewer after. ...more
The Pirates of Zan features a hapless protagonist who regularly finds himself in absurd prediStoryline: 3/5 Characters: 3/5 Writing Style: 3/5 World: 1/5
The Pirates of Zan features a hapless protagonist who regularly finds himself in absurd predicaments not entirely of his own making. Resourceful, motivated, and with enough wit to outsmart an army of commoners, Bron Hoddan salvages misadventure after misadventure by taking advantage of the skills from his upbringing and a natural intellect. The first half gallops along, tossing out piercing commentaries on society erratically along the trek and with craftily designed escapes laced with comedy-of-errors embellishments. This is not prose to ponder or relish; this is supposed to be read rapidly and in a sitting. It is most dazzling for what it accomplishes in the rapid delivery, the story bursting with interconnections, surprises, and bite. The pace leaves one breathless, and one wonders who will falter first, the reader or the author. It does end up proving too much of a challenge for Leinster to keep up the pace for the entirety of the book, and the escapades of the latter half are more laboriously constructed and contrived. The story manages to keep the absurd tone throughout, though, ending with the same fanfare with which it began. This is not an era from which I find a lot of science fiction books to enjoy, but it fits right in with a few gems I've come across: Poul Anderson's High Crusade, Harry Harrison's 2nd Deathworld, or James H. Schmitz's The Witches of Karres....more
This was a fairly good story - for 1940s science fiction. There's continuity between most of Storyline: 2/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 3/5 World: 2/5
This was a fairly good story - for 1940s science fiction. There's continuity between most of the scenes, the action is relevant to the story, the characters generally make reasonable decisions off of plausible conclusions, and it avoids the completely outrageous qualities of the pulp era and the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs and E.E. Doc Smith. It was definitely ahead of its time, coming before the more carefully constructed and serious epochal turn that I think of having been issued in by Asimov and his Foundation. Still, its evidently a product of the Golden Age. Thus most character entrances are marked by expositions where they tell you their motivations and goals, boast of their strengths and plans, all in their initial dialogue. Lengthy radio announcements or overheard conversations give you all the background information necessary to proceed forthwith, knowing everything required. One never has any hesitation or doubt about what is going on or why as Vogt is ever ready with another confrontation where the hero and villain exchange all their hidden plans. In its more positive attributes, this presaged works such as Alfred Bester's Demolished Man or his The Stars My Destination. Slan was never as creative or zany, however, and the biggest disappointment was the rather tame science fiction elements. Vogt might have been ahead of his time a little with the paranormal angle, but the technology was straight out of the pulp era. Somewhere near the end, Vogt hints that there were bigger ideas at work throughout. He's done that before in his Null-A series, and I lamented it there as well. It reads less as a novel building up to anything than a sudden realization at the end that this would be a cool addition. Still, it is a relatively strong book for the era; I'm simply not much of a fan of that era and its style....more
I would say that this is classic pulp science fiction except for the fact that I often thoughStoryline: 3/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 3/5 World: 2/5
I would say that this is classic pulp science fiction except for the fact that I often thought I recognized some hints of a larger meta-narrative about the rise of the modern state, modernization theory, neocolonialism, the cyclic nature of development - something along those lines. After these moments of speculation, I would shake my head, clear it of any intelligent ideas, and say "Nah! It's too slapdash to have those kind of aims. I think, though, that Harrison did, but he just didn't have a handle on the terms, the mechanics, or the ways of making allegories, and so it came out as a simple-minded action-adventure with flickering moments of historical and sociological insight.
This was more Deathworld 2 than Deathworld 1 and settles for me what should have been obvious with the titles. These books are about the Deathworlds and not about the people, abilities and conditions that made the first so remarkable. The creative genius, the mad scientist brewing from disparate elements that was Harry Harrison of the first book, never makes a similar showing here, and what we have is a fairly fun, easy going, machismo battle story that includes all of the relevant players from the first without bringing any of their novelty with them. It really isn't a bad book, but it is a precipitate decline from the first two....more
There was something inexplicably fascinating about Harrison's pulp science fiction DeathworldStoryline: 3/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 3/5 World: 3/5
There was something inexplicably fascinating about Harrison's pulp science fiction Deathworld. Original, creative, and often surprising, it lilted along in an unfamiliar and exotic fashion. Deathworld 2 doesn't repeat any of that. None. We do get to follow up with Jason dinAlt, but he never behaves as the Jason dinAlt of the first book. His abilities and experiences from the Deathworld don't seem to contribute to his character here, and for the most part the events of the first book might as well not have happened. This really reads like it was a separate story entirely - not of Deathworld origins - and Harrison spent spent a few minutes swapping out the original character's name with Jason dinAlt and throwing in a few references to justify the common title.
So, it is a poor Deathworld book because it really isn't a Deathworld book. Still, there was something here to be enjoyed. It was humorous at times: entertaining in an episodic, comedy of errors kind of way - though never as witty with scenarios or crafty with language as Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. The characters are a farce, mere vehicles to move through the landscape. That landscape is actually pretty neat, but Vance parades us through it so quickly that we never get to appreciate it as more than tourists. Also, I do hope that Harrison didn't intend for us to take his discussion on ethics seriously. It was slapdash pulp but above average slapdash pulp with some fun engineering problem solving thrown in. ...more
Smith really wasn't a novelist. I can see how these would have been a lot of fun as magazine Storyline: 1/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 2/5
Smith really wasn't a novelist. I can see how these would have been a lot of fun as magazine installments for adolescent boys in the time between the World Wars. The technological speculation would have been amazing, the adventures awe-inspiring, and the vicarious feeling of heroism and doing-good-for-the-universe satisfying. This and its predecessors do, however, embody just about every flaw cynics and critics make about the science fiction genre: stultifying writing, alpha male heroes, weak willed damsels-in-distress, technobabble, showy technology and action in place of detail, depth, or meaning. The future of science fiction is written here, though. Science fiction would continue to be enamored with technology. Technobabble gets more and more plausible. We still love a damsel and hero, though we generally like them to be a little more like us - complicated, flawed, hopeful. A few setbacks along the way make our hero's struggle more believable. However hokey Seaton et al might be today, the road map to our science fiction present is written in E.E. Doc Smith's Skylark of Valeron. It just took us a long while to make out the details....more
What a cool oldie. If this had advertised itself as an action-adventure in the lineage of oldStoryline: 4/5 Characters: 3/5 Writing Style: 3/5 World: 4/5
What a cool oldie. If this had advertised itself as an action-adventure in the lineage of old school science fiction pulp, it wouldn't have attracted my attention in the least. But it was exactly that, and I found myself eagerly reading on to chapter after chapter. The writing was perfectly sufficient, promising little and delivering more than hinted. The characters initially looked to be cut-outs but turned out to be filling uniquely-cast roles. The story started as a generic noir then went on to reveal much grander ambitions. Holding me back from proclaiming my undying admiration for Deathworld was Harrison's habit of presenting scenes and decisions that were manifestly simple and/or dumb - very much in the style of the 1930s science fiction - only to later reveal that more complex machinations were indeed involved. At a 152 pages, it is in the novella range - one that I don't usually read. Holding quality constant, I would definitely opt for something twice the length. Some more backstory, pacing, character development, and this could have been a great action-adventure novel instead of a neat, short one.
P.S. This would make for an awesome Neill Blomkamp movie....more
After finishing The Skylark of Space I remarked, only partially in jest, that Smith compresseStoryline: 2/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 2/5
After finishing The Skylark of Space I remarked, only partially in jest, that Smith compressed nearly all of science fiction ideas - past and future - into a single, short text. He proved me wrong. What was left out of the first made it into the second, and we get another book of spectacular technological escalation.
Smith seemed to have believed that the minor character development of his first was sufficient to cover this second, and there was little to distinguish the characters here from robots or from each other. It was as if the adventure story was wanted but the presence of adventurers was an afterthought. That adventure story, however, was more coherent than in the first Skylark book. There is a plot, revealed near the beginning, that Smith mostly sticks to until the end. There were some surprising moments of real technological trouble shooting and social-theoretical musings. One can see how these themes would be picked up in later generations and turned into hard science fiction and speculative fiction. Whatever small differences between this and the first though, they are of a consistent identity and are prime examples of classic pulp science fiction. This is a story for good ole' boys and a call back to the golden age. Back to an era when women delighted in being adornments and civilized white men, on a whim and despite their ignorance, were entitled to decide the fate of millions. Back to an era where entire civilizations could be judged from the characteristics of a few representatives and genocide a reasonable solution to threats. It is not so much that I object to such stories or characters like this. I have a real sympathy for books being understood in their time. It is astonishing, however, to read portions like this and realize that Smith was completely oblivious:
“Do you remember, Dick, that I hailed you once as Columbus at San Salvador?” asked Margaret unsteadily from Crane’s encircling arms. “What could a man be called who from the sheer depths of his imagination called forth the means of saving from destruction all the civilizations of millions of entire worlds?”
There is not an ounce of irony in that; no self-awareness of what it says about our characters. Hence why this is a book for the good ole' boys who want to gallivant around the universe playing hero without any concern for untoward repercussions....more
This pulp science fiction novel begins with our Ph.D. wielding protagonist applying mysterious metallic solutions haphazardly to objects to see what happens. Really... I'm serious... It is in the first sentence, and the mystery metal is called - I kid you not - "X". Still, I was prepared for some old school science and outlandish technological discoveries (and it was 1928, so allowances must be made). I was ready and even looking forward to seeing the societal and technological implications of "X". Metal X, however, was only the beginning. This was a novel of spectacular escalation. Discoveries and repercussions increase at an exponential rate after the introduction of the mystery metal. Smith must have been aiming to compress all science fiction ideas, past and future, into a single 176-page volume. He got pretty close.
I liked the more constrained Lensman books better....more
What an interesting read. This was one of those puzzle-piece books for me that linked predeceStoryline: 3/5 Characters: 3/5 Writing Style: 3/5 World: 4/5
What an interesting read. This was one of those puzzle-piece books for me that linked predecessors and ancestors in just the right way to give a new picture of the science fiction genre.
This had an excellent opening chapter. It was well-written, with vivid descriptions and thoughtful turns of phrase. It was well-paced, slow and subtle with world-building of a very different and intriguing future. It even had impressive character development, containing mysteries and depth with forthcoming answers implied. I'm not familiar enough with the publishing history to be sure, but I suspect that first chapter was written before the rest and is what got Dickson published in Astounding Science Fiction. As the book progressed the prose turned bland, the pacing raced ahead, and character development reached a premature peak. There were so many ideas with tremendous promise (view spoiler)[genetics, "oddity," specialization, and contracts (hide spoiler)] and finespun allegories(view spoiler)[comparative advantage, mercantilism, the United Nations (hide spoiler)], but the nuance and attentiveness so obvious in the first half of the book had disappeared by the second. My guess would be that the author had to meet both deadlines and the expectations of his science fiction fan-base, so it settled into a much-easier-to-write pulp science fiction story.
One can see the impact of a science fiction forefather on Dickson (view spoiler)[specifically, Asimov and the concept of psychohistory from the Foundation universe (hide spoiler)]. I was hopeful that Dickson was going to build on that and turn the ideas into something even more monumental, but the development of those ideas fell prey to the same decline and haste as the rest of the novel. Perhaps more impressively, I had not realized how much this book must have impacted later writers and genre classics (view spoiler)[Dune is the most obvious. There are so many ideas here that would later be integrated by Herbert. It is also clear now where Orson Scott Card got his inspiration for Ender. (hide spoiler)]. I'm not sure if this is the origin of the term "jump" in regards to FTL travel, but the description of how this worked was taken up almost intact later (view spoiler)[by C.J. Cherryh (hide spoiler)].
If I had read this when it was originally published in 1959, I probably would have thought it the greatest science fiction ever written. Other authors, also undoubtedly impressed, saw the great strengths and numerous flaws, and the next couple of decades produced many science fiction works that built on and bettered what Dickson started. Today one could easily skip this because it has been mined of all its ideas. I'll go on to read another of the Childe cycle though to see if Dickson and the series matures beyond pulp....more
Niven was one of those talented authors that focused more on quantitative output than qualitaStoryline: 3/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 3/5
Niven was one of those talented authors that focused more on quantitative output than qualitative depth, and it was evident here.
A World Out of Time had a lot of great ideas. It dabbled in hard science fiction, politics, near-future prediction, far-future speculation, as well as sociological questions. Each element, however, read as a placeholder. It was if Niven had intended to go back and fill in the details and develop the sections but published rather than follow through with the edits.
I particularly liked the ideas and the setting of the first chapter, but it deserved to be a complete novel - the first of what could have been a trilogy. The full novel would have been a dystopian, near future, psychological thriller. It had the potential to frighten in that way that good dystopias do - to make one realize that these terrible events truly could come about. It had creative science fiction elements that were more than trappings and pointed out some thoughtful ethical problems around scientific advance. Those threads were all present, but they were the threads of an imaginative mind too undisciplined to untangle, sort, and develop the processes and implications for the reader.
The second chapter, too, was deserving of its own volume. This would have been much more of a psychological thriller and fun AI and space story (view spoiler)[very much like Poul Anderson's Tau Zero (hide spoiler)]. Here too the author raced through the story.
The rest and bulk of the story was more of a single, coherent novel. In fact, I think the book could have started with chapter three and would have been better for it. Though the best sections were the first two chapters, Niven devotes so much more attention, detail, and space on the less interesting later events that the marked imbalance taints the last two-thirds of the novel. Still, Niven hasn't run out of interesting ideas, and there's fun to be had, particularly if you don't mind that he basically copied over these same ideas into other books of his (view spoiler)[the Ringworld sequels (hide spoiler)].
This story would have made for a great graphic novel, I think. It is definitely bad science fiction writing, but I think well of creative ideas, however poorly presented....more
I read these 1950s pulp fiction classics more out of devotion to the genre than for the pleasStoryline: 1/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 1/5
I read these 1950s pulp fiction classics more out of devotion to the genre than for the pleasure of the actual book. In most regards this typifies the space operas of the 1940s and early 50s: damsel, hero, and villain characters; choppy action sequences; and awful dialogue. In a couple of areas this is a vast improvement, however, over the Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp era. Smith spent a lot of his wordcount and effort on addressing potential plotholes and providing a hard science fiction groundwork for his spacefaring. There were also some indications that Smith wanted this to stand as something more than a mindless adventure book, and he had some elementary musings on the slide from democracy to despotism. In all of these "positive" areas, however, Smith was rather amateurish. The plothole-plugging took the form of extended dialogues and were oftentimes hard to follow as Smith was the only one who knew what counterarguments were being prepared for. The hard science fiction is pretty hokey by scientific standards of today, and the bigger issues and musings read like someone considering the topics for the first time. "B-" for effort and "F" for execution. If I had to find something good to say about the book, I'd say that it did a fair job of projecting the police precinct into an international and galaxy-wide scale.
I usually try to read series books in the order they were written. That was particular difficult to do here. The first Lensman writings appear to have been published in serials in 1938 and later turned into the 3rd Lensman book. The first Lensman book, Triplanetary, is one of the oldest Smith writings but was re-written as a Lensman story only after the entire series had been issued through magazines. This, First Lensman, is the only one that wasn't a fix-up, was the second one to be published as a novel, but was the last of the six stories to actually have been written. Confusing huh? Anyway, the internal chronology would have you reading Triplanetary first. I haven't read it yet, so it is possible that I would have gotten more out of it had I read them in their internally chronological order. ...more
Ursula K. Le Guin. One of the science fiction greats that I've been long negligent in gettingStoryline: 2/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 3/5 World: 2/5
Ursula K. Le Guin. One of the science fiction greats that I've been long negligent in getting to. I have ambitions to read all the novels of the Hainish cycle, and I started here so as to read not only the first one published but coincidentally also Le Guin's first novel. I look forward to seeing how she grows into her most famous books: The Left Hand of Darkness (#4), The Dispossessed (#5), and The Word for World is Forest (#6).
Reading this now, 50 years after it was originally written, I can see how Le Guin was influenced and limited by classic sci fi magazine stories. By 1966, when this was published, Dune had already been written, as had Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and PKD's The Man in the High Castle. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress came out in the same year. Thus science fiction was already turning out novels that took characterization seriously and spent time building up and developing the story. Rocannon's World harks back to an earlier swashbuckling pulp science fiction era where characters were cut-outs and the scenes shifted from adventure to adventure with little opportunity for contemplation or resonance. Tropes, too, proliferated through the story. They are taken from classic high fantasy, folk tales, and science fiction. I was surprised to see the term "waybread," (view spoiler)[ and it being given by an elven-like people to wanderers on a perilous journey (hide spoiler)]. At times I wondered how much originality was really here and how much it was a bald-faced eclectic smorgasbord featuring the sci fi and fantasy highlights of the last 20 years. Just when I got overly cynical, though, Le Guin would surprise me, and I'd see a world such as ansible. I first came across that in Card's Ender's Game (published 19 years later). Le Guin really was a trend setter as much as she was a heavy borrower. How many of these tropes did she solidify or start herself?
There were glimpses throughout of something much bigger and thoughtful than the pulp fiction/fantasy that this emulated. Small asides and descriptions hinted that Le Guin was thinking critically about culture, gender, and politics. The novel felt like it had been constrained, as if there were a steel binding around it holding it together and keeping it from becoming larger. It was as if Le Guin had a page limitation and thus could not develop the characters or pace the plot. Or maybe she didn't trust her audience to deal with sensitive, nuanced, or complicated topics while they were reading their laser and swordplay adventure. Perhaps a woman science fiction writer in her first novel at that time could not risk sounding educated or philosophical. Still, there were definite hints here of an aspiration to do so very much more. Knowing now, in 2016, that Ursula Le Guin is respected and accomplished, I perhaps gave her more leeway in this book than I would had it been a forgotten author and out-of-print title. I am undoubtedly favorably biased toward liking this more because I want in on the Ursula K. Le Guin fan club. Were her name not on this, I probably wouldn't have given the author the benefit of the doubt and would have written it off as a hangover (however improved) from the terrible Edgar Rice Burroughs era and full of tentative, undeveloped ideas....more
The name carries weight. I didn't know exactly why, but I knew he had a cuStoryline: 2/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 4/5 Resonance: 1/5
"Kurt Vonnegut"
The name carries weight. I didn't know exactly why, but I knew he had a cult following. He is one of those rare few respected both in literary and science fiction circles. The only book I had read of his was Slaughter-House Five, and that a while ago. I think I missed the forest for the trees when reading it. I focused too much on the turns of phrase and characters and the events in isolation instead of trying to understand what it all amounted to. It is deserving of being reread, I think. With so many other books left unread though, I chose to read a Vonnegut book I had never before approached.
I get the appeal in his humor. Vonnegut is one of those actually deserving of the epitaph "witty." I grinned a lot through the first chapter. I chuckled quite a bit. I laughed out loud several times. I enjoyed myself. Thereafter it became a little tiresome. You know, that "funny" guy at the party that keeps telling hilarious stories long after people have tired of sharing the camaraderie? It is the same problem I have with Terry Pratchett. Another amazingly talented, intellectual, insightful, and satirical writer who just takes it too far. Every time. I've had difficulty finishing every Discworld book I've ever read even though I enjoyed them all for a while. I had a hard time coming back to finish The Sirens of Titan too.
I've seen this labeled as speculative fiction, but it disagree with that designation. Speculative fiction is a "what if? experiment. To some degree or another, the author of speculative fiction is uncertain of the outcome of the experiment (or, alternatively, uncertain what means are required to obtain the outcome desired). The author in a speculative fiction is trying to learn something about the world, and the reader gets to come along. This is far from what Vonnegut was doing. This was a manifesto. It was a jeremiad delivered preposterously, acerbically, and tragically. This wasn't an exploration or inquiry; it was a tirade made readable by being funny and bizarre. Vonnegut knew what outcome he wanted, the means to getting to that end mattered not at all. It stood a better chance of being read and heard if it was delivered as a humorous science fiction book than if it was an angry letter to the editor or a sober musing to a receptive audience.
What I least liked about the book was the consistency. Vonnegut couldn't stay on point. He couldn't concentrate on the outcome he had already settled on and was conveying. He had a dozen mini-complaints and grievances against the human condition that he was working through. Were this a lighter work from a different author, we would call them "wry observations." You know Vonnegut is aiming for something higher though. Some of these grievances and observations were similar enough to reasonably be discussed in the same book, but Vonnegut was also sloppy working through the concepts. (view spoiler)[Take free will for instance. This seems to be the major point of the book, but he devotes large section of the book to the idea of purpose. Vonnegut wants to ridicule the idea that there is some plan, some purpose for us all. This fits in with the pointed irreverence and the discussion of free will. It is very clear, though, that humanity did have a purpose in his story, albeit not a divine one. They had a purpose from Tralfamadore as well as from Rumfoord. Vonnegut lumps the lack of free will in with the lack of any purpose, but in the story it was oftentimes the purpose that denied free will. I think Vonnegut could have reconciled these issues. I think they could have been disentangled and discussed in coherent and pointed ways. My complaint is that the story was full of little diatribes that weren't fully thought through or finished. Often they contradicted one another. Another one would be the idea of God. Vonnegut makes fools of humanity (through Rumfoord) for their belief in God. Yet Rumfoord becomes a God-like figure for humanity (he can see the past and future, appears mysteriously, and speaks cryptically). I'd be willing to concede that Vonnegut was still mocking humanity by saying that they'd even make a god out of a disappearing man and his dog. In some ways, however, Vonnegut is clearly applauding the Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent for its corrective attributes. As it becomes a new religion, I couldn't tell what the author was trying to say. I really couldn't tell what the purpose of the body weights were in the religious order. Superficially, of course, they were to make everyone equal, but what did it have to tell us about the nature of religion? Was Vonnegut commending the equality or mocking it? How did it fit in with his discussion of luck? (hide spoiler)] This is one of the problems of making points through satire. It is hard to tell when you are being serious. I would have liked this a lot more were the criticisms and points careful and coherent.
Fans of The Sirens of Titan and Vonnegut probably will say that I'm taking it too seriously. It is true; I did take his points and objectives seriously. Taken seriously, they aren't thought-through, consistent, or persuasive. Taken light-heartedly, on the other hand, it wasn't that entertaining of a tale. It is only a science fiction novel in the trappings, and the plot is only marginally interesting. What is there left for me to like then? I think fans must value the humor and the iconoclasm. I tired of the former and never appreciated the latter. I'd rather have the lighter satire of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams or the weightier speculative fiction of Aldous Huxley or Philip K. Dick. ...more
This seemed to be Heinlein's homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs. To compose it, HeiStoryline: 1/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 1/5
I hated this.
This seemed to be Heinlein's homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs. To compose it, Heinlein regressed away from 50 years of science fiction advances and improvements to the field. He wrote a pulp fiction novel in that awful style of the 1910s - you know the one, where the everyday-Joe hero can pick up any talent and overcome any obstacle and win the favor of the overwrought princess on the way to becoming king/master/overlord/ruler of the castle/land/planet/galaxy. Heinlein's additions to the mind-dumbing, intelligence-insulting, neuron-degenerating sci-fi pulp of the early 20th century are to 1) make it longer and 2) propagandize his free-love Libertarianism. This is one of those rare cases where I would much preferred a 150 page book to a 300 page one, and I find Heinlein's hedonistic philosophy (and writings on it) among the most indulgent social commentary I've ever encountered in science fiction. The man wants to strip away all conventions of modesty and inhibition while retaining fidelity and prerogative. He wants his harem of women to innocently and freely give their bodies - but only to him. I suppose its not that different than many other lascivious sci fi writers, but it annoys me that he actually thought it was a philosophy.
To its credit, it is genre defying with a thoughtful (though still meandering) ending. Also, the prelude to the adventure does feature some edgy, hip, writing from a disaffected but patriotic war veteran that predates Apocalypse Now by 15 years. That character-building was the best part of the book, and I can see why voters of the 1963 Hugos might have focused on that. Still, it was but a tenth of the book and didn't fit well with the remaining pages and story. It might have made for a neat short story, except that edgy, hip, conflicted, war characters would become commonplace in short time.
Pulp science fiction/fantasy + free love didacticism. It is difficult to imagine a worse combination....more
Vogt's Null series just cannot get all the positive components in place at the same time. TheStoryline: 3/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 2/5
Vogt's Null series just cannot get all the positive components in place at the same time. The first in the series, The World of Null-A, had some really creative ideas and a fascinating world. It suffered, in contrast, from awful writing and incoherent development. In this sequel, The Players of Null-A, the writing has improved by orders of magnitude and the developments and plot largely (and in comparison with the original) proceed with order and clarity. Most of the big, neat, science fiction ideas are gone, however. (view spoiler)[ The Machine from the first is gone and never revisited, the Games and the society the uses them is never referred to again. (hide spoiler)] The one exception is the discipline (not a philosophy! Vogt reminds us) of Null-A.
The idea of non-Aristotelian logic held great promise in the founding book of the series. There, unfortunately, it simply seemed to confer comic-book like powers without ever explaining what it was or how it worked. If the purpose of the book was to explain or clarify an unusual system of thought, The World of Null-A was a complete failure. Vogt attempted to clarify this in the current novel, but it remains a failure. The author keeps repeating mantras over and over again: combine the rational and the emotional, remember the map is not the terrain, do not mistake the idea for the actual, etc. It is a catechism, and Vogt had no clue what will happen when someone actually internalizes and embraces all this. He simply makes the Null-A initiate a superhero.
This book is predominately a space pulp action and adventure tale that would have been more at home in the 1930s. A few minutes of background reading shows that the Players of Null-A was serialized in the late 1940s and turned into a novel in the mid 1950s. Thus it sits at an odd place in that it came when (in my own estimation) space pulp was dead (or dying) and the rest of the genre had moved on. In fact, there are some inklings of that more thoughtful and grand science fiction influence at the end of the novel. By the 1950s, most authors would have ordered this story very differently. But Vogt kept it a pulp fiction account, and our hero marches through the book, always with a plan, ever with the right answer, assuming and piecing together every puzzle from the slimmest evidence (well he was Null-A! of course he would!). I'm sure the 1950s fans of the previous pulp-era were pleased to have another novel in that lineage; I myself (and 60 years later) found it mind-dumbing....more
This was my first A.E. van Vogt experience. I can see why Philip K. Dick was inspired by the Storyline: 3/5 Characters: 2/5 Writing Style: 1/5 World: 5/5
This was my first A.E. van Vogt experience. I can see why Philip K. Dick was inspired by the mysterious, incoherent ideas of Null-A. I can also see why Damon Knight named it "one of the worst allegedly adult science fiction stories ever published." The two are not mutually exclusive. I was initially enchanted by what Null-A meant and the world crafted by Vogt. I was thereafter continually frustrated and pained by the writing and development. Null-A might be the most ambitious idea I've encountered in science fiction, and Vogt, perhaps, writes with the least clarity of any author I've read. I'd give this more credit had Vogt been the originator of general semantics or had he been successful in explicating it through the medium of the novel.
This was better than a lot of the similar, mindless action-adStoryline: 2/5 Characters: 1/5 Writing Style: 2/5 World: 3/5
Space police and space pirates!
This was better than a lot of the similar, mindless action-adventure science fiction of the 1930s. Smith devoted quite a bit of thought and attention to the technology of his science fiction universe and its consequences for military strategy. There was also a fair amount of problem solving thrown in along with the jetting from planet to planet. Make no mistake - it is still a action-hero-saves-the-day kind of book....more
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