Jack Williamson Books

The end of this book is 1938, the beginning fo the Campbell era at Astounding, and there are more Asimov anecdotes throughout, leading up to him having his first sale to the above publication.

Before the Golden Age 3 : Parasite Planet - Stanley G. Weinbaum
Before the Golden Age 3 : Proxima Centauri - Murray Leinster
Before the Golden Age 3 : The Accursed Galaxy - Edmond Hamilton
Before the Golden Age 3 : He Who Shrank - Henry Hasse
Before the Golden Age 3 : The Human Pets of Mars - Leslie F. Stone
Before the Golden Age 3 : The Brain Stealers of Mars - John W. Campbell
Before the Golden Age 3 : Devolution - Edmond Hamilton
Before the Golden Age 3 : Big Game - Isaac Asimov
Before the Golden Age 3 : Minus Planet - John D. Clark
Before the Golden Age 3 : Past Present and Future - Nat Schachner
Before the Golden Age 3 : The Men and the Mirror - Ross Rocklynne


Venus is not a nice place, and it tastes bad.

3 out of 5


Vegie men seek animal matter gold.

3.5 out of 5


Organic space is gross.

3 out of 5


The Atom vs The Brain.

3 out of 5


Leashed off-planet. Wah.

3 out of 5


Ravening violet guns to sort out those protoplasmic chameleons.

3 out of 5


Arctarians 'R Us.

3.5 out of 5


What killed the dinosaurs? Little dinosaurs. With guns.

3 out of 5


Anti-matter menace.

2.5 out of 5


Radium sleep age revival neutron barrier breakout.

4 out of 5


Space pirate-sleuth pendulum problem.

3.5 out of 5

This book contains the good old stories from the 1930's. There is nothing great here, but it is till worth reading. You can see the evolution of the Science Fiction field by reading the stories in this book.

(This review refers to Volume One only.) Asimov has collected eight stories in this anthology that were influential in his own writing. Asimov read most of these stories when he was about 12 years old, being fortunate enough to devour most of them from pulp magazines that were sold in his father's candy store. As might be expected with any anthology, some stories are better than others, and some have held up better through the years than others. Yet these pieces are not included for comparison to current stories, but to show what Asimov read as a young person and how the works influenced him. Asimov's mini-autobiography alone is worth the price of the book. After each story, Asimov tells how an idea or a concept from a story led to the formation of one of his own works. A very interesting idea. "The Jameson Satellite" is a forerunner of "I, Robot," and "Submicroscopic" is a small step from "Fantastic Voyage." As mentioned by another reviewer, the reader will have to deal with several prejudices from the time these stories were written (especially racial), but overall this book is a great insight into what makes Asimov Asimov.

This collection of early, pulp-style scifi works is a great joy. Asimov's introduction to the stories is exceedingly interesting and helpful. The stories sometimes show flaws or problems in their writing and in their attitudes (while several stories are forward-looking, most show the racism and misogyny common to that time), most of the stories are entertaining and all of them are interesting from a historical perspective. Check it out if you can get your hands on it, it's a great find. I really got a kick out of several pieces, which run the gamut from more reasonable 'conquered man, driven underground, strikes back at his evil alien oppressors' to the completely ludicrous story about the planets of our solar system hatching into giant space chickens. (That last story is meant to be taken seriously, by the way.) A veritable laundry-list of great, long out-of-print authors and some wonderful writing from the early days of popular science fiction.

Contents of Book 1:
"The Man Who Evolved" by Edmond Hamilton (Good)
"The Jameson Satellite" by Neil R. Jones (Good)
"Submicroscopic" by Capt S. P. Meek (Excellent)
"Awlo of Ulm" by Capt S. P. Meek (Sequel to above)(Excellent)
"Tetrahedra of Space" by P. Schuyler Miller (strange but Good)
"The World of the Red Sun" by Clifford D. Simak (Good)
"Tumithak of the Corridors" by Charles R. Tanner (Very Good)
"The Moon Era" by Jack Williamson (Excellent)

All stories were copyrighted 1931. In my opinion the stories vary from good to Excellent. If you like Sci-Fi / Fantasy of the early 20th century you will probably enjoy these stories or most of them anyway. The book also contains an interesting autobiography of the Editor Isaac Asimov discussing his childhood and his introduction to Sci-Fi through these and other stories.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

Contents of Book 2: (1933 and 1934)
"The Man Who Awoke" Laurence Manning (Good)
"Tumithak in Shawm" Charles R. Tanner (Excellent)
"Colossus" Donald Wandrei (Good)
"Born of the Sun" Jack Williamson (Good)
"Sidewise in Time" Murray Leinster (Excellent)
"Old Faithful" Raymond Z. Gallum (Good)

Contents of Book 3: (1935-1938)
"The Parasite Planet" Stanley Weinbaum (Excellent)
"Proxima Centauri" Murray Leinster (okay)
"The Accursed Galaxy" Edmond Hamilton (okay)
"He Who Shrank" Henry Hasse (okay)
"The Human Pets of Mars" Leslie Frances stone (awful)
"The Brain Stealers of Mars" John W. Campbell, Jr. (Excellent)
"Devolution" Edmond Hamilton (okay)
"Big Game" Isaac Asimov (okay)
"Other Eyes Watching" John W. Campbell, Jr. (Non-fiction)
"Minus Planet" John D. Clark (okay)
"Past, Present and Future" Nat Schachner (Good)
"The Men and the Mirror" Ross Rocklynne (Good)

Believe it or not this is one of the best coming of age stories ever written. In the tradition of studs lonigan or a midnite glear It truly is a powerhouse. Young Keth Korone passes through the threshold from boyhood to manhood set to a borg like invading army of benevolent robots. This is the only book I have read three times. Though I can not tell you who I am this work has had an amazing impact on my work

this is a great book. For anyone that likes science fiction this is worth the read. It even has a happy ending, well sort of

Jack Williamson deserves to be remembered among the all-time science fiction greats. With The Humanoid Touch, he revives the humanoids - robots whose Prime Directive is to protect Man from harm. The Humanoids debuted in "With Folded Hands" in the late 1940s (which I've read) and in the novel The Humanoids (which I've not). In The Humanoid Touch, a last bastion of humanity tries to hide from or fight against the inevitable humanoid advance.

Williamson's humanoids are provocative in every sense. What happens when robots become too perfect, no matter how "benevolent" their intentions? There is a latent horror throughout the book as the characters realize the humanoids are near. Williamson succeeds in creating the aura of fear that Saberhagen hints at with his Berserkers, or Star Trek with the Borg. Williamson's humanoids, however, are far more terrifying than either - who would have thought the words "At your service" could induce such spine-tingling horror?

The human characters more or less get in the way of the true protagonists, and here is where Williamson's skills perhaps aren't quite up to snuff. The interaction and personal relationships between characters is not much more advanced than in his 1930s pulp sci-fi Legion series (a nevertheless fine read). And the ending doesn't sit right; it's on the one hand too pat, and on the other too troubling - I can't say more without divulging spoilers.

All in all, however, this one ranks as a must read by all science fiction fans. The humanoids are among sci-fi's greatest creations, easily the equal of Dune's Fremen or Asimov's psychohistory. If you thought the Borg were creepy, you haven't seen anything until you've seen the humanoids.

I got this book as a gift, and my first thought was "how good can a set of sci-fi stories from 1928 be?" Needless to say, I thought this would be a boring book. But I was wrong. It's a trip to another time. One one hand, it's a trip into a past that was still filled with the art of imagination where there were no boundaries. It's also a trip into the future, some of has transpired and some that never will (at least not like as described in some of these stories).

Nonetheless, there is a quality of writing in these stories that makes them worthy of preserving. Mr. Williamson excels at the short story. He is able to quickly make the reader care about his characters, and the plot lines enage the reader. Even though many of the stories are "dated" and come out the old pulps, they remain entertaining, engaging, and fun. I enjoyed this book so much that I ended up buying the other books from this series.

These are definitely stories of more historical than literary interest. Jack Williamson is an amazing writer, but also an amazingly prolific writer, and let's face it, they can't all be gems. These were stories produced by the word for the pulps, and it shows. I will buy and read the other volumes in this beautifully produced series, but this one at least would make slow going for anyone not a dedicated fan of the author and/or the era.

These stories are from 1928-1931 and appeared mostly in Amazing Stories magazine, an early "pulp" rag of which the only survivor is the still-available Weird Tales (Quarterly). Jack Williamson was in his early 20s when he wrote these, and the tales are full of the passion, excitement, wonder and naivete of a young man. These are "space operas" in the truest sense -- fantastic landscapes, shakey science, high adventure, and beautiful girls (who seem to always appear out of nowhere, for no reason other than to titilate; they often don't speak English, but they're eager to learn!). Not literature, but who cares. I found this book so entertaining, I bought the other two currently available.

I wish the original illustrations could have been included -- the covers of the original magazines are cleverly used to decorate the endpapers though. Also, the typesetting is not up to standard. ITC Garamond is not ideal for text setting (there are no true small caps, text figures or ligitures available, and the X-height is HUGE), and there are double spaces between sentences. I can forgive these shortcomings because they are not a serious impediment to the enjoyment of the material, and the stories are a real joy to read.

The titles of the stories on offer are: The Metal Man, The Girl from Mars, The Alien Intelligence, The Second Shell, The Green Girl, The Cosmic Express, The Birth of a New Republic, The Prince of Space, and The Meteor Girl.

The publisher, who is doing a real service by preserving these gems, says the series will total about seven volumes. I'm the first in line.

Sour grapes abound on Amazon, so be wary of other authors sabotaging fine work! Penn W has one of the most unique voices out there today. If you're looking to be transported to another place, another time, and be completely absorbed in a story, ANY of her works will do that for you. I've read them all, the "Sin" books first because they are fully ripe with Penn's talent. Her romances, all out of print, are wonderful as well. She'll be one of your favorites.

This book is fabulous. I thought the writing was tight and colorful. The characters were complex and the mystery compelling. If you like New Orleans fiction and a good "who done it" then give this book a try. I couldn't put it down and have already started the follow up, Wages of Sin.

Class and racial mixtures, open infidelity and hidden affairs are the underplot of what is not really a murder mystery. This is a sociological investigation of the fluctuating web of old families, political power, inheritance -of property and personality- and passions. Of course these themes were touched upon in Chopin's story about racial identity a hundred years ago.with much less wordiness.

If you have the time, it is a tour of dusty mansions, cities of the dead, and places outsiders do not go, but it is a long read. And languid.

I finished this book in about 3 days. I absolutely couldn't put it down. It practically had me sitting on the edge of my chair. It's not often that a book such as MORTAL SINS really grabs me and keeps me enthralled for 3 to 4 days. I look forward to reading Penn Williamson's THE WAGES OF SIN.

This book was outstanding. I don't say that lightly either, as I can usually find something wrong with everything. Not so, in this case. The story takes place during the flapper era in New Orleans. Ms. Williamson has a deep atmospheric style of writing that is perfect for this setting. Her characters are real and completely three dimensional, with both good and bad characteristics. Sometimes you want to hate them, but other times they're heroic. In other words, they're very real people you'd like to know. It's a great mystery with a surprise ending. I highly recommend it for a hot summer day.

I've developed a love-hate relationship with this classic tale of shapeshifting and witchcraft.

I loved Williamson's descriptive prose and found his ability to set up a mood truly brilliant. The concept of what the lycanthropes really are is extremely innovative and, as one reviewer mentioned, has been the basis for countless stories that came after. Williamson spins a fascinating story that interweaves the supernatural with science and does a compelling job considering when the book was written.

Unfortunately, the weakest part of the book is the hero. No seriously...he's a wimp. William Barbee is the most sad-sack, ineffectual character I've ever come across in Sci-Fi/Fantasy literature. He's perpetually petrified by his surroundings, pushed around by his companions and never EVER has the sense to ask the right questions. Granted, he's supposed to be somewhat of a loser. But Williamson drives the point home so hard, it's hard to root for him. Even towards the end, as Barbee plunges his way towards the Big Reveal and experiences some revalations of his own, he's still annoying.

It's like watching a great movie with a really bad leading man. If you can get past that, you'll enjoy this book.

A not-so-successful journalist meets a dazzlingly fasvcinating young colleague at the airport: a scientific anthropological exoedition returns with a disquieting breaktrough about ancient human history. "Disquieting" would prove quite an euphemism, as events unfolds and the horrible truth becomes clear. Owing something to the Lovecraftians "The Outsider" and "The shadow over Innsmouth", this novel has a quite modern approach to horror, albeit having being written in 1948. Very interesting!

This is the perfect book to be retaken by a Hollywood script writer and give it a more modern approach. At least one in which the "hero" is not such an imbecile. Additionally, the reason why the crucial release of information is being delayed by the "good guys" does not make sense and such secret sustains the plot, so the reader always feels that some tension is missing and that on a suspense novel is a terrible flaw. Nevertheless is fun to read and is quite likely to keep you engaged.

The most pleasant surprise about "Darker Than You Think" for me is how NOT-dated it was. When I realized that it was a reprinting of a novel from the 1940's, I kind of expected the writing style to reflect its age. Not that 60 years is a LONG time in the writing world, but I have read other novels that practically screamed "Hey! I was written in the 1970's!" and so on. There was some jargon and lingo that was dated, and the newspaper was clearly NOT run in the computerized world. But other than that, this novel could ALMOST have been written this year.

My favorite element was probably the loose interpretation of lycanthropy. I wasn't as crazy about the use of the law of probability and such, but it was cool seeing one individual being able to turn into a wolf AND a saber tooth tiger AND a snake and so on. The explanation behind this was new and interesting, not quite like any other horror novel I have ever read.

The one thing about the writing style that DID bug me was the constant "shivering" by the main character. That and his flip flopping attitude about humanity versus the monster. For the first part, once the real "horror" of the plot started to unfold, the guy was CONSTANTLY "shivering" in horror or "shuddering" in fear, and let's not forget "gasping" words such as "Huh." By the end of the book, I think one of those words was used at least once per page. As for the flip flopping, he would embrace the monsters, then he would rebel on behalf of his human friends, then he would embrace the monsters again, then he would rebel. And on and on. It got a little tiring.

BUT ... looking past those two elements, I enjoyed the novel quite a lot. It is definitely a worthy read.

I've avoided writing a review of Darker Than You Think for an awfully long while. My reason is that I find it difficult to separate the novel from the time I first read it and the kind, helpful man who wrote it. I read this book during the early 1950s because I admired and respected Jack Williamson as a man and a bit of a mentor for a youngster aspiring to be a writer.

During the intervening years I've read the book several times. Sometimes I've found 'mistakes' in his science distracting. Other times I've been slightly put off by implications of the plot I missed as a youngster.

I believe this book can be read and enjoyed strictly as a novel, as a demonstration of early years of SF, as a fun read to pique the not-too-skeptical imagination. As an indicator of Williamson's philosophy, of the power of 'dark forces' of the universe, a reader would be looking too far, too deep. Such thinking would be an anachronism, would have made Jack's life unbearable in the small, evangelical Christian town where we lived.

Read this book for fun and enjoy it.

This nvel was a first and although dated and to be honest not a smooth read, it is good for scifi history.

Hugo Gernsback (SF's "Hugo" awards are named for him) wrote this in 1911, so a big part of its value comes from campy quaintness. Set in the year 2660, everything is grander and more glorious than what we poor slobs of centuries 20-21 could possibly imagine - something that Ralph points out with remarkable frequency. The story itself has lagged the times, a formulaic romance of accidents, kidnappings, and heroic saves.

Many parts of this hundred-year-old story are decidedly dated, not least the references to the "ether" that carries light waves. Some just look silly to a modern eye, including the broadcast power distribution (sort of like a live-in microwave oven), electric roller skates, or restaurant that serves only liquid food, pumped through pipes to patrons turned off by the idea of chewing. And the daily disinfections, killing off all bacteria in the body, look positively pernicious, now that we know more about the importance of our symbiotic microbes.

A few points are strikingly prescient, though. Cable video might have been the obvious next thing, once telephonic voice transmission was common. Gernsback went even farther and predicted "video walls" tiled from many smaller video panels, and even channel surfing, albeit with patch-cord panels rather than typed URLs.

Read this if you want a quaintly futuristic, doubly-anacronistic romp, a shallow space opera, or an interesting artifact from the start of the last century. If you're looking for light, contemporary fiction, look onward. This is probably best for the hard-core SF fan or for the historian of technology trying to understand the social context of the time. The right reader will find a lot to enjoy, but it's not for everyone.

-- wiredweird

If you were to take away the historical context of this book, and treat it as a pure piece of science fiction, it would be a poor purchase, two stars at best. Plot seems contrived at times, and overly romantic. (Perhaps because the book wasn't actually a book but orginally published as many installments of magazine story.) There are phrases that read awkward, whether due to the age or lack of focus on literature I don't know. Having said that, I still give it four-stars, and there is a reason why science fiction achievement award is named after Hugo Gernsback.
This book is widely considered the first science fiction and Hugo credited with creation of the term 'science fiction.'

It is a must read for serious fans of science fiction. But for casual readers, you'd be glad modern SF is leaps and bounds more interesting. (Then again, who knows what people will say a hundred years from now about Star Wars?)

This is the seminal work in sci-fi by the man who's editing direction shaped the modern genre, Hugo Gernsback, the guy they named the Hugo Awards after.

A future where everyone wears electric roller skates, has a number instead of a last name and cities have moving side walks... One of theose travelogues of the future extrapolated by a writer from the very beginings of the pulp era. The gadgetry seems almost Victorian, the philosophy seems dated, yet somehow you'll never forget this book.

I read this book in the early 60's and it was already very quaint and dated even back then. But somehow I've never forgotten it and parts of this book come to mind even now almost 40 years later. If you've ever seen the 1930 film "Just Imagine," then this is the literary equivalant.

I came across this title in the usual way: surfing for something almost, but not quite related. I knew of Gernsback's publications. And I'm quite familiar with the SF award that bears his first name. But it never dawned on me that the man actually wrote SF himself. I had to read this obvious classic.

Only knowing a glimmer of the book's contents, I jumped in. Fully expecting stuff so "left field" from today's technology, I was quite surprised with Gernsback's predictions. A few of them are fairly accurate, and at least one is square on target. And winding through it all is a darling, innocent love story to boot. It reads as good as any Jules Verne, or H.G. Welles story!

Don't let either the title or it's author scare you off from reading this. You'll be glad you did!

_The Starchild Trilogy_ (1977) by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson is an omnibus of three novels dramatizing the future evolution of man. They are _The Reefs of Space_ (1964), _Starchild_ (1965), and _Rogue Star_ (1969). The copyright credits incorrectly state that _Starchild_ was a _Galaxy_ serial. In fact, all three novels were serialized in _If_ in 1963, 1965, and 1968 respectively. The basic method of collaboration was that Williamson wrote the first draft and Pohl wrote the revision. In general, this method seems to have worked fairly well.

_The Reefs of Space_ was originally begun by Williamson back in the fifties. It was worked over quite a bit before reaching its final form. The later novels were written more hastily, presumably to meet deadlines. Partly for this reason, the first novel remains the most imaginative and solid. _Starchild_ and _Rogue Star_, while passable space operas, are relatively thin.

The first two novels set up a contrast between the Plan of Man and the Reefs of Space. The first is the futuristic government of the solar system. It is tyrranical, static, conformist, militaristic, and brutal. It is run by a super computer (called the Machine) and a dictator (called the Planner). The Reefs are a series of islands of "space coral" formed by a stream of steady-state hydrogen atoms that is located well outside the solar system. They are non-mechanized, filled with some bizarre life forms (both carbon and non-carbon based). A handful of exiles and escapees have managed to form a free society there. _Rogue Star_ is set in a much later period. Mankind has spread far beyond the Reefs, and the Plan of Man has collapsed. But there are still characters known as Reefers, and Planner artifacts may still be uncovered and used.

There is a difference between the heroes of the three novels. Steve Ryeland, of _The Reefs of Space_, is an intelligent man who has seen the dark side of the Plan of Man at the outset of the novel. We can readily identify with him. Boysie Gann, of _Starchild_, is a blockhead who remains blindly loyal to the Plan for most of the novel. Even when he changes, he can't think of anything much to do except to pretend to be loyal. One of the heroes of _Rogue Star_ is a brilliant, manly, romantic fellow named Cliff Hawk. He is also insufferably arrogant, selfish, reckless, and obnoxious. Of course, he gets the girl. A similar pattern can be found with the heroines. Donna Creery of _The Reefs of Space_ is much more interesting and rounded than the heroines of the later novels.

I will conclude with some individual ratings. _The Reefs of Space_: Four stars. _Starchild_ and Rogue Star_: Three stars apiece. Perhaps not a perfect book. But certainly not a time-waster, either. Recommended.

I just finished the last book of the STARCHILD TRILOGY by Pohl and Williamson last week. I thought the first book REEFS OF SPACE was the best.

Some of the things I liked about REEFS OF SPACE:

The Plan Of Man - A super-computer which runs all human affairs. Citizens must constantly check-in at computer terminals for orders ie. before beginning work, after completing each task, before leaving a room, after entering a room etc.

Risks - People who have performed badly, underachieved, or been caught performing unplanned actions or having unplanned thoughts.

The Collar - An explosive collar worn by the Risks which can be detonated at anytime The Plan Of Man sees fit. It also explodes automatically if tampered with.

The Body Bank - If a Risk continues to screw up or underachieve there is still one way he can contribute to society by providing body parts for transplanting onto or into those citizens who need them in order to remain useful to society.

The JunkMan - A man built by using body parts and made to look exactly like one of the donors at The Body Bank in order to take his place so that this donor could escape, the only person ever to do so.

There was some cool scientific stuff too; jetless drive, Hoyle theory, simbiotic relationships. But all that mumbo-jumbo means little to me. Just call me Olaf Simpleton because it was the simpler concepts which I found entertaining and interesting.

One thing left me cold....At one point in the story someone says that they've known several people who were sent to The Body Bank, but they've never known anyone to recieve a body part from there. Nothing else was ever mentioned about that.

=============================Book II=============================

The first book of THE STARCHILD TRILOGY (The Reefs Of Space) I gave four stars. This book (STARCHILD) is not quite as good as the first one. I can't give it 3-1/2 stars so I'll round up and settle with giving it four stars also.

In THE REEFS OF SPACE you're shown how The Plan Of Man super-computer affects and controls every aspect of daily life for the citizens of Earth and it's colonies. You also get to experience what it's like to wear The Collar and a really good tour of The Body Bank. In STARCHILD The Collar is still a big part of the story, but only brief mention is made of The Body Bank. This second book of the trilogy also gives an up close and personal view of The Plan Of Man super-computer. You get to see how it needs human extensions of itself, humans who can be completely trusted. You're shown what it takes to become a companion of the computer; the education and training involved, the surgical modifications needed, and the sacrafice of "self" and the leaving behind of all that had been a part of your previous life, including loved ones. You also get to see what it's like to live out on the reefs as free men, out of the reach of The Plan Of Man. The climactic ending is great.

If you intend reading the entire trilogy I suggest you stop after this book, I could hardly finish ROGUE STAR(the third book). You DO need to read the first book(The Reefs Of Space), but I'd say the conclusion of STARCHILD is adequate enough to wrap up the series.

=============================BOOK III============================

This trilogy got progressively worse for me. The first book (REEFS OF SPACE) I really liked and it was my favorite, but by the time I reached the final pages of the third book (ROGUE STAR) I didn't really know where the authors were heading with it and I really didn't care.

I felt they had abandoned some earlier concepts a little too early, and perhaps could have pursued and developed other story-lines further. I hate when that happens! Abandoning one really cool concept or story-line for a lame one. I couldn't buy into that "infant star has a crush on a beautiful woman" thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It ate her boyfriend and that's why it has feelings for her. Still not sold.

I just finished the last book of the STARCHILD TRILOGY by Pohl and Williamson last week. I thought the first book REEFS OF SPACE was the best.

Some of the things I liked about REEFS OF SPACE:

The Plan Of Man - A super-computer which runs all human affairs. Citizens must constantly check-in at computer terminals for orders ie. before beginning work, after completing each task, before leaving a room, after entering a room etc.

Risks - People who have performed badly, underachieved, or been caught performing unplanned actions or having unplanned thoughts.

The Collar - An explosive collar worn by the Risks which can be detonated at anytime The Plan Of Man sees fit. It also explodes automatically if tampered with.

The Body Bank - If a Risk continues to screw up or underachieve there is still one way he can contribute to society by providing body parts for transplanting onto or into those citizens who need them in order to remain useful to society.

The JunkMan - A man built by using body parts and made to look exactly like one of the donors at The Body Bank in order to take his place so that this donor could escape, the only person ever to do so.

There was some cool scientific stuff too; jetless drive, Hoyle theory, simbiotic relationships. But all that mumbo-jumbo means little to me. Just call me Olaf Simpleton because it was the simpler concepts which I found entertaining and interesting.

One thing left me cold....At one point in the story someone says that they've known several people who were sent to The Body Bank, but they've never known anyone to recieve a body part from there. Nothing else was ever mentioned about that.

=============================Book II=============================

The first book of THE STARCHILD TRILOGY (The Reefs Of Space) I gave four stars. This book (STARCHILD) is not quite as good as the first one. I can't give it 3-1/2 stars so I'll round up and settle with giving it four stars also.

In THE REEFS OF SPACE you're shown how The Plan Of Man super-computer affects and controls every aspect of daily life for the citizens of Earth and it's colonies. You also get to experience what it's like to wear The Collar and a really good tour of The Body Bank. In STARCHILD The Collar is still a big part of the story, but only brief mention is made of The Body Bank. This second book of the trilogy also gives an up close and personal view of The Plan Of Man super-computer. You get to see how it needs human extensions of itself, humans who can be completely trusted. You're shown what it takes to become a companion of the computer; the education and training involved, the surgical modifications needed, and the sacrafice of "self" and the leaving behind of all that had been a part of your previous life, including loved ones. You also get to see what it's like to live out on the reefs as free men, out of the reach of The Plan Of Man. The climactic ending is great.

If you intend reading the entire trilogy I suggest you stop after this book, I could hardly finish ROGUE STAR(the third book). You DO need to read the first book(The Reefs Of Space), but I'd say the conclusion of STARCHILD is adequate enough to wrap up the series.

=============================BOOK III============================

This trilogy got progressively worse for me. The first book (REEFS OF SPACE) I really liked and it was my favorite, but by the time I reached the final pages of the third book (ROGUE STAR) I didn't really know where the authors were heading with it and I really didn't care.

I felt they had abandoned some earlier concepts a little too early, and perhaps could have pursued and developed other story-lines further. I hate when that happens! Abandoning one really cool concept or story-line for a lame one. I couldn't buy into that "infant star has a crush on a beautiful woman" thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It ate her boyfriend and that's why it has feelings for her. Still not sold.

Of the Pohl books I've read, this took the longest to get to being something I could warm up to. The first two books seem to more or less build up to the last (and without the background the last book would be nearly impossible to read), with the last story drawing out the imagination of the reader. Definately a journey for the destination, not the journey itself.

If Heinlein had mixed "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" with the semantic subtheme of his short story "Gulf," and seasoned it with Clarke's "2001" and Disney's "The Black Hole," he could have cooked up this story. I would say the quality of the writing qua writing is competent but merely average, whereas the theories, especially regarding the nature of stars, are stellar. If you have read Harry Turtledove's historically-flavored science fiction, you have experienced this combination. An important thing the book did for me was to reduce the incomprehensible magnitude of space to a mentally graspable size. And--it was a real page-turner

A really large astronomical object is moving, so people decide to investigate and see what is going on. They are able to do this via a technique that is a little more commonly used now, perhaps, by sending fast moving copies.

What do you do when there are many versions of yourself, and you know you are sending them off to die, most likely? How do you relate to a single person via the different versions of yourself, that sort of thing.

All that and the worries associated with dealing with something that can create such an amazing display of technology.

CUCKOO WAS COMING...No one knew what it was--but everyone knew it was trouble. Designated Object Lambda when it first appeared on the fringes of the galaxy, 20,000 light-years away, it was traveling at one-sixth the speed of light. The astrophysicists said that it was vast...light....and had the potential for utter destruction. So an existing space probe was reoriented to intercept; it was staffed with replicates of both humans and aliens. Then the probe began to leak radiation....

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Tachyon transmission was a marvelous invention. A man could send infinite replicates of himself anywhere in the galaxy---wherever duty called. If one of the copies got killed, so what? The original would still be alive and well back on his home planet, and he could always send replacements. Such a man Ben Pertin, who lived on Earth. And then there was:

Ben Charles Pertin---stationed on Sun One, central headquarters of the intelligent races in the galaxy.

Ben James Pertin--sent to the probe ship Aurora after Ben Frank Pertin was reported missing on board.

Ben Linc Pertin---dispatched to the artificial satellite orbiting Cuckoo.

Ben Yale Pertin---one of the several Pertins sent to explore the surface of Cuckoo. Some returned---many did not. And most of them were in love with the same woman!"

An alliance of humans and alien species form a mission to investigate a Dyson Sphere, codenamed Cuckoo. Storyline involves the investigative team's moral/ethical problems involving Tachyonic Replication, the method of travel used to reach Cuckoo. (From the book cover, "Tachyonic replication was a marvelous invention. A man could send copies of himself anywhere. If one got killed, so what? He could always send replacements!") Additionally, the story involves the struggles of a young Cuckoo inhabitant named, "Fifteenth", against the cannabalistic masters of Cuckoo. All in all, it's an interesting read with fine concepts and characters.

This is very much an old man's book, full of digressions, stories without a point, and endless, endless repetition and ranting. Nor is the author, pulp veteran E. Hoffmann Price, a man of much intelligence or discernment--- at one point he proudly tells us how he advised a friend who needed immediate surgery to correct a life-treatening condition not to have it, because "the stars were wrong!" Fortunately, the friend ignored Price's astrological advice.

However, Price is the only man to have met personally and spent considerable time with all three of the titans of WEIRD TALES, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, during their heyday as pulp writers, and he can and does uniquely offer first-hand, fairly vivid (if frustrating) word portraits of these immortal creators. The book is filled out with a number of other similar portraits of fictioneers, such as Henry Kuttner, August Derleth and Edmond Hamilton, and even Price's favorite Turkish rug dealer. There are also attached some vaguely related essays by Price, and a useful bibliography of Price's literary output.

Price's general cluelessness and lack of perspective often results in some rich, unintended humor, as in his blandly told tale of a friend and colleague who graduated from the pulps to become a successful novelist and screenwriter, who was also a dedicated Communist, who spent years in Russia and took courses in Marxist philosophy at Moscow State University, and who upon return to the US immediately got a job as screenwriter with the Walt Disney Studios!

Price spends a huge amount of space scolding his friend H. P. Lovecraft for viewing fiction writing as a private art rather than a cash-earning profession, and he takes every opportunity to ridicule the overweight, semiliterate, cultureless Lovecraft fanboys of the 1970s. But, of course, obnoxious fans aside, it is precisely Lovecraft's commitment to art that makes him the best-known of all WEIRD TALES' regular contributors, and the only one who will ever be conceivably of interest within the towers of academia.

Over a period of almost 60 years E. Hoffman Price, a writer during the pulp magazine era, befriended great writers from Lovecraft and Derleth to Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Williamson. He kept diaries and letters of his cross-country trips and encounters and in Book Of The Dead provides a set of fascinating biographical essays on his experiences and relationships with the authors, offering many insights and personal encounters.

I am going to open this review by posing a problem. In _The Reefs of Space_ (1963), the reefs are a series of islands of "space coral." The novel makes it clear that they were originally formed by a stream of "steady-state" hydrogen and helium atoms-- a clear referece to the steady-state hypothesis of the astronomer Fred Hoyle. Now neither Fred Pohl nor Jack Williamson could be fairly described as a scientific ignoramus. By the time that this novel was published, they were surely aware that the steady-state hypothesis-- which suggested that the universe had been created by atoms streaming out of a vacuum-- had been superceeded by the big bang theory. So why did they stick to an out of date scientific idea?

The answer lies in the history of how the book was written. In his autobiography, _Wonder's Child_ (1984), Jack Williamson says that he actually began to work on the novel in the late 1950s. He was inspired in part by the social ideas of Walter Prescott Webb and the astronomy of Fred Hoyle:

Webb saw all our precious freedom in danger now with the closing of the Earth's frontiers. The reefs of space, formed between the stars by the steady creation of new matter as the universe expands, could open new frontiers, rich with limitless freedom. (212)

In other words, Hoyle's theory formed the basis for a symbol. It represents a dynamic (if somewhat dangerous), organic, new frontier of freedom, formed by the perpetual wellsprings of life. In opposition to the reefs is the mechanistic, tyrranical, conformist, and brutal government of the solar system-- the Plan of Man. The Plan of Man is co-governed by a dictator (called the Planner) and a super computer (called the Planning Machine).

The hero is Steve Ryeland, once a top government scientist. Now, he has been arbitrarily declared a Risk by the Planning Machine. He wears an iron collar filled with high explosives that can be detonated at any time by security guards. He must report his presence from stop to stop in a computer terminal wherever he goes. He has gaps in his memory. But a chance meeting with Donna Creery, the Planner's daughter, changes his position-- though not his basic condition.

Williamson states that he had a 400 page draft to the novel that had gotten out of control. He and Pohl redrafted it, and Pohl wrote the final draft. It was serialized in _If_, begining in the July, 1963 issue, on sale in May. It had striking and dramatic illustrations by Ed Emshwiller. Kennedy was President. In many of his speeches, he had talked about a New Frontier. The final installment was in the November issue, on sale in October. During that month, Kennedy was assasinated. While Americans certainly did not use these words, they surely felt that they had moved a bit away from the New Frontier and a little closer to the Plan of Man.

I just finished the last book of the STARCHILD TRILOGY by Pohl and Williamson last week. I thought the first book REEFS OF SPACE was the best.

Some of the things I liked about REEFS OF SPACE:

The Plan Of Man - A super-computer which runs all human affairs. Citizens must constantly check-in at computer terminals for orders ie. before beginning work, after completing each task, before leaving a room, after entering a room etc.

Risks - People who have performed badly, underachieved, or been caught performing unplanned actions or having unplanned thoughts.

The Collar - An explosive collar worn by the Risks which can be detonated at anytime The Plan Of Man sees fit. It also explodes automatically if tampered with.

The Body Bank - If a Risk continues to screw up or underachieve there is still one way he can contribute to society by providing body parts for transplanting onto or into those citizens who need them in order to remain useful to society.

The JunkMan - A man built by using body parts and made to look exactly like one of the donors at The Body Bank in order to take his place so that this donor could escape, the only person ever to do so.

There was some cool scientific stuff too; jetless drive, Hoyle theory, simbiotic relationships. But all that mumbo-jumbo means little to me. Just call me Olaf Simpleton because it was the simpler concepts which I found entertaining and interesting.

One thing left me cold....At one point in the story someone says that they've known several people who were sent to The Body Bank, but they've never known anyone to recieve a body part from there. Nothing else was ever mentioned about that.