Joseph L. Green (1931–2026)

A fixup novel of stories published in Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Analog in the last 1960's and early 70s. Distressingly poor. Fixups (novels originally published as a series of short stories) often suffer from the need to repeat basic world-building, but this suffers even more from the repetition of numerous narrative sins. First, there's the unrelenting reduction of women to sexual objects in extremis. In the first half, when any women is introduced, she's immediately show more characterized as either having magnificent breasts or other enticing features. or being dumpy. His terminology. Second, the world building fails on numerous grounds. By 2060 we have numerous colonies scattered around the galaxy. Plenty of alien creatures though none as advanced as humans. Still, some are probably somewhat intelligent and it is the job of the Practical Philosophers, aka Consciences, to determine if the inhabitants of a planet are intelligent enough that humans need to leave. Unbelievable this judgment is made by one person, pretty much by the seat of his or her pants, based on pretty crude anthropological observations over a few days. The aliens aren't all that alien. The author apparently felt there wasn't enough action in that plot device so there's also a political group called the New Romans to oppose the Consciences. The New Romans are not just wrong, they're out and out murderous villains. Rabbits are pulled out of hats. Info is dumped. Sex is had, but off stage. Etc.

Highly not recommended. show less

This is something i read as a boy of 11 or 12, i think. Not particularly good, if i recall, but i was a voracious reader of scifi at the time and it was one of those books on near-perpetual display in a wire rack near the circ counter at my public library.

What attracted me to it was an intriguing, Fantastic voyage-esque story where humans installed a control capsule in the body of a brain-dead alien giant to learn about them through direct observation and interaction. Like the Arquillians in show more the first Men in black movie.

What i found was a treasure trove of sex scenes. The first i had come across in my readings that weren’t glossed over or relegated to “clothes on” action. It affected my adolescent brain greatly.

I read it a couple of times, certain parts many times.

Interestingly, i see that there are a lot of other Goodreads reviewers that had the same experience. I haven’t read it in many years but i recall it being fairly well written with a memorable premise and content. show less

[2010-01-22] Astronomers discover alien space probe heading towards Earth. Fanatical environmentalists who have already killed off most of the space programme decide they have to stop any attempt to make contact with the probe, lest the people be seduced into wasting time and money on space research and high technology, when they could be fixing the problems on Earth. Wealthy space entrepreneur Henson, owner of the only private enterprise in space, sees the opportunity the probe presents, show more and is determined to bring the benefits to mankind.

This one was a Did Not Finish for me within the first five pages, and the next five didn't rescue it. I was just too irritated by the apparent attitude that all environmentalists are violent fanatics who are anti-technology. I can certainly find Green Puritans annoying, but this seemed to be presenting the extreme fringe as the norm. Now it's more than possible that I'm grossly misjudging the book and will find that it does address this further on; and I say that mindful of a "bailed after the first chapter" review I read recently that demonstrated exactly that problem. In fact, a quick glance at the last couple of pages suggests that it's a lot less black and white by the end. But I have a TBR mountain that's going to take me a couple of years to get through, and no particular reason to give this book another 25 pages to get my attention (unlike a couple of other books with similar annoyances which I've read). This one's going in the Oxfam box, unless the next book by this author in the TBR mountain gives me a reason to retrieve it.

[Later: checking on LibraryThing, I find that I liked the author's short story in New Writings in SF 10, and the tone of that one suggests that the annoying tone of this one is an opening gambit. The book gets a reprieve, but I'll read it some other time when I'm feeling more receptive.]

http://julesjones.livejournal.com/361761.html show less

Very interesting book about a man who has to work with an alien and in doing so comes to understand the alien way. A good book, pretty well written, although the end falls a little into older genre empty action territory.