J. T. McIntosh (1925–2008)

I rarely give a one-star rating. This one earned it for its constant leering tone and eventually an out and out misogynistic torture scene with whips and slips, no less. This takes place far enough in the future that the Earth is pretty much all housing, going miles underground. So much for scientific plausibility. The people though are straight from the 1950s, with a casual attitude towards clothing. I suspect the author may have done this to justify more lurid covers. There's no sex per se show more in the book. There's not even any descriptions of human bodies, just of the clothing that is or is not there. The reveal at the end ("the literally shattering climax" according to the blurb) is OK for pulp SF, but there's nothing here to redeem the more reprehensible parts.

Not recommended. show less

A silly title though I can see why there was a desire to replace the forgettable original title "The Fittest". This reminded me a bit of Tucker's far better The Long Loud Silence as a not very sympathetic main character makes his way through a devolving civilization. The cause initially seems kind of silly: lab-created intelligent dogs, cats, rats, and mice have escaped, reproduced rapidly, and are now relentlessly killing people and destroying our infrastructure. Eventually this is made a show more bit more reasonable and the nature of the change a bit more nuanced. Like Kress' Beggars in Spain, the change is small. Like humans, the animals can do one-shot learning. They see something work or fail, and they remember it immediately. Otherwise they're still animals that can't communicate or do higher order cognition. The book also manages to maintain a steady growing sense of tension and despair for much of its short length, though it eventually becomes mostly about humans vs humans, as most apocalyptic stories do.

What makes this hard to recommend is the racism and sexism that appears on virtually every page. If it were just a passage or chapter, it could be noted and passed over , but it's deep in the fabric of the story.

Only for historians of British SF. show less

For a time, generation-ship stories were all the rage in SF circles. I suspect it came about as a rebellion of sorts against gee-whiz super-science magical warp drives that allowed space travelers to whisk effortlessly from star to star in the blink of an eye. It made for some interesting stories, and a lot of authors (good and mediocre) wrote stores for this sub-genre. It fell out of favor for several decades, but seems to be making a modest revival.
This particular story is actually one of show more the better ones. It focuses on the smallness of the community, with rigid social protocols sternly enforced. How can dreams, much less dreams of spanning the stars, exists under such a regime? And what about individualism struggling against such pressures for conformity? All in all, a nicely done story. show less

Really great book. Here, McIntosh takes some themes from
Brace New World (dividing people into distinct groupings depending on
intellect ) but really makes it his own. Here, people are not born into
Alphas, Betas, and Deltas but are tested with various intelligence tests
to move up from Blacks, Purples, Browns to White Circles, White
Crosses, and finally the ultimate White Stars. The caste system and
the alleged meritocracy are quite interesting as are the interactions
between these castes. show more
But this is not just a story about intelligence tests, McIntosh also
posits a stranger from another planet and his allies sent her as
embedded spies to await the invasion.
Also, he offers us the oddest love story imaginable with the stranger
who is too stiff to even mimic human emotions determined to wed
Allison, a White Star.
Although there are all kinds of ideas and themes in McIntosh's stories,
what really makes his stories and particularly this one great is how he
slowly develops the characters and the ideas. From where things start
in the beginning, it is hard to comprehend where they will end up
going. His writing style is rather captivating. show less