Special Deliverance (SF) - Clifford Simak **

This 1982 novel could be seen as either a measure of the changing measures of quality in science fiction, or the sad fact that even great writers can decline as they get older. Clifford Simak was a big name from the late 30s and had major success in the 1960s - in my edition of this book, his name is even given a special logo. His Hugo Award winning Away Station was excellent. But, sadly, Special Deliverance is dire.

This book fits into the now largely defunct literary category of science fantasy (though it live on on the screen with Star Wars) which has fantastical happenings or devices that are given a scientific gloss that makes it seem feasible that they could be real. The main character, Edward Lansing is a university lecturer in an alternate Earth where, for example, education is funded by the income from slot machines. He is transported to another alternate Earth where he joins up with five others, each from a different version of Earth, on a quest that is, for most of the book, opaque. The quest members are given no guidance as to what to do and meander across a stock 'weird place' landscape.

So far, while nothing too original - it's reminiscent of outright fantasies like Heinlein's Glory Road, with a touch of Away Station's theme of being taken out of your own world to do a role selected for you by aliens - as a concept it has some promise. But the dialogue (of which there's a lot, much of it bickering) would, frankly, be wooden in the 1930s, let alone the 1980s - it doesn't so much creak as collapse under its own dead weight. The characters have 1950s attitudes and the whole plot seems dreamed up as the author went along with very little structure or point.

There's surely no way a book like this could be published today, even by a well-known author. It's a real shame. But it is a reminder to go back and rediscover some of Simak's better titles.

Surprisingly, despite many far better SF 'classics' being out of print, this is still out there. The image, however, is of my 1980s Methuen cover.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...

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 ...

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

Search This Blog