Following on from the first set of notes about my sci-fi reading over the past few weeks, the rest of the roundup is below. Again, spoilerish.
Gateway
Frederick Pohl
I have a suspicion of fiction that’s based around psychoanalysis to any
great degree; this probably stems from M.A.S.H.; the period when Alan Alda
got ahold of the reins and episode after episode turned into analysis
sessions about Hawkeye’s father or whatever were part of what most people,
I think, would consider the decline of the show. Given my first exposure
to endless M.A.S.H. re-runs was at an early age, I think we can see where
the aversion begins. More than that, though, I’m not overwhelmed by
analysis generally. A discipline where people can still declare themselves
“Freudians” is pretty broken; no doctor of the body would be allowed to
practise if they preferred the theories of Galen to the things we’ve
subsequently learned; no engineer would practise if they preferred a
pre-Newtonian view of physics.
So my knee was pretty much set to jerk against Gateway, which interleaves
chapters of the protagonist’s analysis sessions with a head-doctorin’
computer amongst the narrative of his time spent as an interstellar
explorer; the exporation has a twist, happening against a backdrop of
ignorance. Humanity has discovered the remains of a vanished civilisation,
and, scrabbling amongst those remains, we jump in spaceships we don’t
understand, and hope that they’ll take us somewhere interesting. Or just
somewhere the explorers can survive.
Ships fail to return, or return with
the crew smeared around the interior, or, more mundanely having run out of
food on the trip. It’s an interesting idea that evokes not only our own
collapsed civilisations; Celts breaking up Roman Villas because they don’t
understand how to maintain them as western Europe segues into a dark age
when the most basic tools of reasoning were discarded; it also harkens back
to our own age of exploration, when sailing ships were loaded up with crew
and food, then sent out into great unknowns in the hope of discovering a
profitable new trade route, or a land rich in fabulous resources.
The Forever War
Joe Halderman
This was famous—or, in the climate of the day, imfamous as an anti-Vietnam allegory; hardly surprising given it was written by a veteran of that war, and reflects a hostile view towards war; I, however, had heard of this from people who don’t like Robert Heinlenn’s work very much, and celebrate it as the “anti-Starship Troopers”. While that may be part of the writer’s intent in writing it, I think it’s a description that sells it short (although it might provide an insight into the shallow mind of the person running with that description); to be honest, had the description not been mentioned to me I doubt I would have made the connection.
Setting that aside - and one ought to, because it stands happily on its own, rather than as a polemic against another author -
As with Cities in Flight, the author has made some corrections to this edition; in the case of The Forever War, Haldeman has pushed for an uncut edition; previous releases had been edited down against his taste to make them more saleable at times when publishing an anti-Vietnam allegory was a great way to be buried forever.
