The Survival Game

The Survival Game is a pulp fiction story of intrigue and action I’ve read twice and possibly three before. I was much closer to my USMC years the first time and the tale of resourceful earthmen who confront overwhelming adversity and confound powerful star lords resonated with my young persona. In later years, I found the story to be an enjoyable escape that resonated with my no-nonsense approach to solving problems. A week ago, my semi-sporadic revisiting of earlier SciFi favorites brought me to this book again. I was surprised and delighted to find strengths I almost certainly overlooked in my earlier, more superficial readings.

Colonel Bogaert, military aid and technical consultant, Miriam, tall, slender, seemingly fragile wife of show more the King of Kings, and her children, Arma and Zim, are stranded on Avida. Also present is Bethschart, a native of Avida. The planet is so hostile to human life only extreme vigilance and luck will allow a human to survive a single day. Star lord Xzan removed the last 100 inhabitants for use in his army. Bethschart, his assassin, is returned with instructions to kill Bogaert.

On the surface, this is a story of the superiority of earthmen (most likely of Western European descent) to aliens from other solar systems. But such a casual interpretation misses the point. The earthmen triumph because of their philosophical approach to science and knowledge, not innate superiority.
The aliens possessed Ransad, a library of scientific knowledge left behind by an earlier civilization. Ransad allowed them to achieve a technologically advanced state, but it asserted that everything knowable is known.

This stagnating approach to the search for new knowledge has found expression in numerous contemporary settings. Many fundamentalist religions espouse the literal interpretation of their religious texts, leading them to oppose social and scientific advances in knowledge and increased understanding and tolerance of individual differences. This forms the basis for their treatment of women and their opposition to alternative lifestyles. Anti-vaxxers are similar in their rejection of modern scientific findings. The political leadership in the USSR from Lenin to the early 1990s required science and technology to conform to the approved dogma of the communist party. Mendelian inheritance was rejected in favor of Lamarckian interpretations, and the theory of relativity was dismissed as bourgeois idealism. The resistance of many right-wing political parties to scientific findings and social change that does not reinforce their worldview echoes this hostility.

The earth dwellers in Survival Game have a new philosophy that emphasizes the scientific method and an openness to new ideas and research findings that contradict the prevailing view. Much like the protagonists in Andy Weir’s The Martian and Hail Mary, the earthman survives life-threatening situations by using his knowledge of science and his willingness to experiment.

The Survival Game is a story of the triumph of the scientific approach and an openness to gender equality over an unquestioning reliance on tradition.

As a genre, science fiction is a rainbow-hued collage of the inventive range of human creativity. Oh, yes, and many SciFi stories are also swashbuckling pulp thrillers. show less

I have fond memories of this author’s 1972 novel The Patterns of Chaos which had some humorous aspects. The Survival Game is from four years later and unfortunately shows its age.

Two star kings are in dispute over whether or not to join those aligned with Earth in a federation. To resolve matters they agree to have their respective champions engage in a game of survival on the dangerous planet Avida. King Oontara chooses an Earthman, Colonel Bogaert, as his (unbeknowing) champion. His rival King Xzan has chosen a former resident of Avida as his. Meanwhile a Pretender to the throne of the emperor Kanizar has taken advantage of his absence to launch an attack against his capital planet. Kanizar’s wife and children escape and show more accidentally become Bogaert’s companions while they are trying to get to safety on Earth and stow away on the ship on which he is hi-jacked to Avida.

I suppose we are to take from the book’s title that the bigger game in which all the civilisations (I use the word loosely) in the novel are engaged is of survival but the treatment can not carry such a weight. Neither is the staleness of the premise the only problematic feature, the characterisation is uniformly minimal - not to say non-existent. There is an attempt at humour, of a sort, as Bogaert is sometimes referred to as ‘Colonel Bogey’.

The Survival Game is the sort of story where people from Earth are called Terrans and are infinitely resourceful and competent, effortlessly running rings around other inhabitants of the galaxy. In the past 35 years we have, thankfully, gone beyond that.

It’s just possible that this was a send-up of a style of writing around at the time, but if so I do not recall it and it does not read as pastiche. File it in ‘of its time’ and move on. Perhaps I should not go back to look at The Patterns of Chaos.

4½ stars? You have to be kidding. show less

This is an amiable old-fashioned sf novel, vaguely reminiscent of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy in its overall scenario, in which the upstart Terrans take on the role of the Foundation and outsmart the old-fashioned star kings who dominate the galaxy. In the survival game of the title, a resourceful Terran is tricked and dumped on a hostile planet, where his struggle for survival is described in some detail.

The book makes quite a pleasant read if you like old-fashioned sf and don’t expect too much.

The galaxy as described is populated entirely with humans, despite Terrans being upstart newcomers. There was a long-gone galactic civilization with a higher technology than anyone has now, so presumably everyone (including the Terrans) is show more descended from its people, but the author doesn’t say so explicitly.

The hero of this story does some incidental tricks with chemistry that are beyond my understanding—which doesn’t take much doing. I studied chemistry at school for only two years, long ago, and never gained much understanding of it. Don’t worry, tricks with chemistry are only a small part of the story. show less