Gladiator-at-Law (SF) - Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth ****

I have a horrible feeling there will be plenty of younger science fiction readers for whom the names of Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth mean nothing, but for those of us of a certain age they are among the greats.

I've just re-read this classic title, Gladiator-at-Law. It's over sixty years old (I see on Amazon.com you can buy the June 1954 Galaxy Magazine part of it first appeared in), and yet apart from a few niggling details, it is as fresh as ever. This bread and circuses dystopia, with an early focus on the dangers of corporations and lawyers having too much power is superbly crafted. It's a page turner, but thoughtful as well.

Those niggles? There are inevitably technology flaws - in this case, most notably the use of microfilm to store data. And, as is common for writing of the period, the female characters mostly fit within limited stereotypes (although some of the younger female characters are pretty violent). While you can argue also with aspects of the embedded morality tale, the fact is that this book does everything you want from good science fiction, at a tremendous pace and with lots of content.

I don't want to give too much away, but I can almost guarantee it will exceed expectations - and where some themes may now seem quite familiar, chances are they were novel at the time, because this was pretty much groundbreaking stuff.

At the time of review it's out of print on paper, so links are for secondhand books.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight ****

Not everyone would class this as popular science, but it concerns an attempt to take a scientific approach to paranormal abilities - notably premonitions (aka clairvoyance) and as such, it fits the category. Writing in the typical dramatic storytelling style of a US magazine, Sam Knight brings to life the remarkable tale of the work of two British figures from the 1960s. The central one is psychiatrist John Barker, with a supporting role given to newspaper and TV science reporter Peter Fairley. Barker had a long interest in extra sensory phenomena - the story takes off when he was inspired by a number of people claiming to have foreseen the Aberfan disaster (which terrible tragedy Knight covers movingly). As a result of the Aberfan premonitions, the pair were responsible for London's Evening Standard newspaper setting up a long-running experiment in the form of 'The Premonitions Bureau.' Aware that the Aberfan predictions were only reported after the event, and hence flawe...

Search This Blog