John Rankine (1918–2013)

The plot could have come from Dick: are Bob and Ava, fleeing from aliens in a future time when Earth's empire is receding, really just a shared dream of Ben and Averil in an earlier future where Earth is dividing into North and South Hemisphere mega-complexes, warring over equatorial rights to mining an exotic new metal. Even the details are pulp SF as in Dick, e.g., Heinlein's "roads must roll" moving walkways (this in 1971).

Unfortunately, where Dick mastered the slippery reality plot, show more here the dichotomy just sits there until a final unconvincing resolution. And where Dick was conflictedly misogynistic, Mason is just repellently sexist in 1960s Playboy mode, with toss-off phrases like "one hot babe" and "pneumatic", and a repeated occurrence of having the main female characters naked and strapped spread-eagle for torture.

I have no idea what the title refers to.

Not recommended in the slightest. show less

There's actually a good old school space adventure here laced with a bit of sociopolitical philosophizing but it suffers from questionable grammar and punctuation and a florid writing style that left me feeling confused half the time (what is supposed to be happening, exactly?) And then there's the overuse of obscure literary references plus some of the clunkiest descriptors I've ever read: "...she could feel his body with her breasts taut and pneumatic against him..." Say whaaaat?

Could not get past the first chapters. Clunky writing and confusing characters made it feel like the pilot episode of a particularly cheesy '70s made-for-TV series. Perhaps it got better but I lost all interest in finding out.

This book is based on a British tv series from the 1970s called Space: 1999. The premise is that in 1999 humans have built a base on the moon. An accident on the far side of the moon where nuclear waste is stored blasts the moon out of its orbit, and it floats through space indefinitely. The people on Moonbase Alpha analyze every planet they come within range of hoping to find one that they can settle on. They face all kinds of dangers and mysteries as they travel through space (since it show more would have been a pretty boring tv series otherwise).

Each novel basically turns four episodes worth of scripts into prose form, so the plots are not new if you've seen the series. In this volume the Alphans go up against a seemingly hostile race of aliens that show them what would happen if the Alphans were to settle on their planet, a demon that possesses one of the crew members when an experiment goes awry, two alien races that put the moon in the middle of their interplanetary war, and a living meteorite that may either save them or destroy them. It's not great literature by a long shot, but it is interesting if you're a fan of the series. show less