BookBlog

A record of my thoughts on the books I've read.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Second stage Lensmen by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

By coincidence, two science fiction books in a row.

The Lensmen of the title are men (yes, men) that are capable of mind-reading, projecting thought, and telepathy. They bring Civilisation to worlds run by authoritarians, I think. I lost track in the long introduction. There are also good superbeings, and bad superbeings.

Lots of very idealistic ideas of freedom and a absolute veneration of the authority of policemen.

A million beams, primaries raised to the hellish heights possible only to Medonian conductors and insulation, lashed out almost as once. Screens stiffened to the urge of every generable watt of defensive power. Bolt after bolt of quasi-solid lightning struck and struck and struck again. Q-type helices bored, gouged, and searingly bit. Rods and cones, planes and shears of incredible condensed pure force clawed, tore, and ground in mad abandon. Torpedo after torpedo, charged to the very skin with duodec, loosed its horribly detonant cargo against flinching wall-shields, in such numbers and with such violence as to fill all circumambient space with an atmosphere of almost planetary density.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Space Prison by Tom Godwin.

A science fiction story that rivals the Swiss Family Robinson. A spaceship full of colonists on their way to their new planet is intercepted by the enemy. Half of them are taken as slaves; the other half are dumped on an 'earth-like' planet. Earth-like only in the sense that the air is fit to breathe, and the gravity is not too high. Despite a terrible death toll, some of the children survive to give rise to a second and third generation.

This book is fiction of the fairy-tale kind. There are enough stories of well-equipped colonies on earth who died to the last man to know that survival of a party of this nature is not very likely. Furthermore, the planet seems to be host to only about five animal species; certainly not enough for a viable ecology. I think it very unlikely that the technology to generate electricity will survive one generation of people who live without it. I also don't think that revenge as a motive will endure more than a few years under the conditions described.

A story with the distinct American point of view that existing solutions are enough to solve all our problems.

They needed aluminum ore of a grade high enough that they could extract the pure aluminum oxide. Specifically, the needed aluminum oxide ...
...
Only pretty rocks?—rubies and sapphire were corundum, were pure aluminium oxide!
...
The aluminum smelting continued until the supply of rubies and sapphires in the chasm had been exhausted but for small and scattered fragments. It was enough, with some aluminum above the amount needed for the wire.