Rite of Passage (SF) - Alexei Panshin ****

It has been so common for science fiction novels to have a female protagonist that it can come as a bit of a surprise when there's a male central character, but back in 1968 when Alexei Panshin wrote this coming-of-age story, it was an unusual feature. We meet Mia aged 12 and follow her next few years on a ship originally designed to transport colonists to new planets, but since the destruction of the Earth acting as interstellar traders in technology to the low-tech colonists.

The focus of the book is the preparation for and experience of the rite of passage that provides the title. Fourteen-year-olds are dropped on a hostile colony world for 30 days. If they survive they become adults on the ship.

It was interesting to re-read the book after recently watching the TV show The Good Place, as these are the only two works of fiction I can think of where ethics and moral philosophy play such a front-and-centre role in a drama. (Interestingly, although literary fiction tends to look down on fantasy or science fiction as lacking depth, both fit into these categories.) It's handled in a lot more summary fashion here, but still plays a part as Mia comes to adopt a radically different viewpoint from her father in the way that the ship people should consider the colonists.

The genocidal ending is quite shocking, and the choice of 14 as the age of adulthood seems more than a little odd, but the book itself manages to be about young adults without really being a young adult title - it's a 'proper' novel for adults. My main criticism is that Panshin can belabour a point sometimes. In one training session for the trial, two teams of teenagers each build a log cabin, and we are told far too much detail on exactly how this is done.

A book that was arguably ahead of its time and that still holds up well today.

Paperback:

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