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They call them the "rat-catchers." They're the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which an economically destitute Earth has dispatched on a mission to re-establish contact with its far-flung, long-lost colonies in space. Alex Alexander, the ship's biologist, together with his staff, must help solve the mysteries of human and alien ecosystems that he encounters light-years from home. Dendra is a stable world, covered by a huge, unchanging forest?except that nothing living can really be free of show more change. The planet has no seasons, but its animal life still undergoes life-cycles involving birth, maturation, metamorphosis, and death. The Earth colony sent to tame the world has failed, at least in the terms expected of it, and seems beyond redemption; but the crew of the Daedalus still has to find out exactly why and how the program has gone wrong. Provided, of course, that they can survive the investigation itself! show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Thoughtful to a fault. This is the second entry in a Star Trek style puzzle series. Some elements of Earth's government want to restart extraterrestrial colonization after a long hiatus. Unfortunately, an expedition to several prior colonies found only disastrous failures. The Daedalus has been sent to visit another set of colonies. Their mission: find some successes or at least find explanations and solutions so that colonization can resume. Each book is a different colony and a different puzzle. In this case, the crew finds a small group of descendants still alive but just barely subsisting, child-like in their ignorance. What happened to the colony, and the role played by a heavily forested planet with no seasons is the heart of a show more plot very similar to the kinds of tales James White liked to tell in his Sector General series. Unfortunately, Stableford wants to make it all mean something bigger, so long after the puzzle has been resolved, the main character reflects on and on about life in general. show less
A bit dated.
Daedalus Mission 2
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Author Information
396+ Works 8,088 Members
Author Brian M. Stableford was born in Shipley, Yorkshire, U. K. on July 25, 1948. He received an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of York in 1969 and a Ph.D. in sociology in 1979. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1988, he taught sociology at the University of Reading. He has published over 100 books, including science show more fiction and fantasy works, non-fiction, translations, and learned articles. He has written under the pseudonym of Brian Craig as well as under Brian Stableford and Brian M. Stableford. He has received numerous awards for both fiction and non-fiction including the British Science Fiction Award (1995), the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (1987), the J. Lloyd Eaton Award (1987), the Science Fiction Research Association's (SFRA) Pioneer Award (1996), and the SFRA's Pilgrim Award (1999). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Belongs to Publisher Series
DAW Book Collectors (230)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Critical Threshold
- Original title
- Critical Threshold
- Original publication date
- 1977
- People/Characters
- Alexis Alexander; Karen Karelia; Nathan Parrick; Peter Rolving; Conrad Silvian; Linda Beck (show all 7); Mariel Valory
- Important places
- Dendra (Fictitious Planet); Daedalus (Fictitious spaceship)
- Important events
- Recontact with Dendra
- First words
- I collected the cards and bean to shuffle them half-heartedly, wondering whether I could squeeze a few last drops of competitive enthusiasm from my turgid brain.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I didn't mean it.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 196
- Popularity
- 168,883
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.57)
- Languages
- English, French, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 6
