Science Fiction Book Review: Ace Double D-84: An Earth Gone Mad by Roger Dee and The Rebellious Stars by Isaac Asimov

United Kingdom
March 8, 2023 2:32pm CST
Over the last couple of years, I've got heavily into collecting Ace Science Fiction Doubles. This was a line of paperback books, published over a period of about twenty years, from the early 50s to the 70s. Each one consisted of two books published back to back. So two short novels (or sometimes short story collections) and two front covers, upside-down in relation to each other. The cover art was often good, especially the early ones, and as a bonus the covers sometimes related to the stories – but not always. Neither of the covers of this book have any connection with events in the stories. There were a couple of hundred published in total, and I've collected about a hundred of them so far. Here's my review of an early Ace Double from 1954. An Earth Gone Mad by Roger Dee I don't think I've read anything by Roger Dee before, the name wasn't familiar. Looking him up on Wikipedia, he seems to have been fairly prolific in the 1950s, but never became a big name in the field. This short novel is set in the year 2319. Interplanetary space travel seems to have become economically viable (finally) and human settlements have been established at least as far out as the moons of Jupiter. The hero is Paul Shannon, a construction engineer who was on his way to do some work on Callisto (which has apparently been colonised) when his one-man spaceship got into difficulties and he crash-landed on one of Jupiter's other moons, Io. With the experience of decades of space exploration behind us, we know now that Io is an extremely inhospitable world, but remember this story was written in the 50s, and the author assumed that Io would have a breathable atmosphere, native life and be warm enough for a human to survive on. You sometimes have to make allowances with vintage SF. Getting back to the plot, Shannon manages to survive the fierce wildlife on Io and eventually repair his spaceship, with the aid of an enigmatic and intelligent alien called the Kyril, who apparently lives on his own on Io, and doesn't talk about his background. His spaceship finally repaired after two years in the wilderness, Shannon returns to Earth and crash-lands near a farm not too far from Denver. He's taken in and assisted by the couple who run the farm, Carl and Olive Garrick, who identify themselves as “Cubists”. It seems that in the two years that Shannon was marooned on Io, there's been a revolutionary change on Earth. Cubes of unknown origin (but presumed to be alien) have appeared all over the world, and people who come close to them are mentally changed – not turned into zombies, but they become very tranquil and totally non-aggressive. They also believe themselves to be serving a larger Plan, which will eventually result in the whole human race becoming Cubists. Large numbers of people have already converted to Cubists voluntarily – people who are overwhelmed by their troubles and seek peace of mind. And it works – the Garricks even take it cheerfully when an assassination squad turns up at their house to murder them. It seems that some “normal” people are willing to use extreme violence to suppress the Cubists. On the run, and unsure what's going on, Shannon makes his way to Boston, where his fiance Ellen Keyne and his friend Gil Lucas live. On his travels, he observes a general deterioration in the mood of the general population. The world of the 24th Century seems to be quite a divided place, with economic power mostly being in the hands of the Syndicates, which run all the big businesses, and the Labour Guild, which has taken the place of the trade unions we know today. Industrial relations have deteriorated to the point when both the Syndicates and the Guild employ gangs of thugs to murder their opponents. There is still a Government which is supposed to keep order, but it seems to be both weak and corrupt, with both sides apparently being able to easily arrange to keep their thugs out of jail. I have to say at this point that the author's world-building isn't too great. There's no indication of why the industrial relations situation has become so confrontational and violent. Considering it's the 24th Century, most of the gadgets used by the characters resemble 20th Century devices. And space travel seems to have been somewhat retarded, the first visit to the Moon only having taken place a generation or two previously. Back to the plot, it becomes clear that the arrival of the Cubes has exacerbated the situation between the Syndicates and the Guild. The Syndicates like the fact that large numbers of people are becoming Cubists, because they make good, uncomplaining workers. The Guild wants to suppress the Cubists and find a way of destroying the Cubes for the same reason. The Government is protecting the Cubists from Guild violence because there are already enough Cubists to form a significant voting block. This creates an increasingly tense situation, with escalating violence and the danger of open warfare breaking out. And as the general population become more tense and fearful, more and more people are tempted to go to the Cubes and become Cubists just for the peace of mind. It looks like whoever or whatever is behind the Cubes is guaranteed to win – whatever the ultimate plan is. Back to Shannon, as he makes his way back to find his fiancée, it becomes increasingly clear that he himself is being manipulated by unknown parties for mysterious reasons. Two strangers pick him up and return his clothes and wallet from before he left Earth two years previously, without explanation. When he reports to his employers, a Syndicate called Solar Service, he finds that someone has impersonated him in a TV broadcast urging the general population to support the Guild's campaign of violence against the Cubists. Shannon doesn't want to be involved with politics, he just wants to reunite with Ellen, and when he refuses to take a public position in favour of the Cubes, he parts company with his employers. Shannon is unable to contact Gil Lucas, and when he gets to Ellen's house he finds that Ellen and her mother both fell into despair when he disappeared, and became Cubists. He resolves to restore Ellen to her normal state, but doesn't have a clue how to do that. He also re-establishes contact with his friend Lucas, who is the head of a team of scientists who are doing what they can to study the Cubes in hopes of finding a way to stop them – this research being sponsored by the increasingly desperate and violent leader of the Labour Guild, Zimmer Conniston. Shannon also meets an engineer called Dace Nugent, who is close to finishing the construction of a new type of spaceship which he hopes will take his crew of hand-picked colonists (including his daughter Ruth) to another star. Nugent believes that there is now no way of stopping the Cubes from converting the whole of humanity, and sees re-starting civilisation elsewhere as the only viable option. He offers Shannon a place on the crew. Despite feeling an almost immediate attraction to Ruth Nugent, Shannon rejects the offer, seeing Nugent and his followers as cowards and defeatists. But as the situation continues to deteriorate, the Cubists withdraw to self-sufficient communities, and the violence between the Syndicates and the Guild escalates into full-scale civil war, does Shannon really have any prospect of extracting his fiancée from the influence of the Cubes? What is the guiding intelligence behind the Cubes, and what plan are they ultimately serving? And how does Shannon himself fit into that plan? As I said, the world-building in this story is lacking. The environment resembles mid-20th Century Earth, with 19th Century-style industrial relations. The characters are fairly standard pulp fiction types, but with enough depth to surprise you at times. The Cube Plan is brilliant in its simplicity. And the purpose behind everything that's going on – which is only revealed at the end, so I won't spoil it – is very novel and quite logical, at least to my mind. The central idea is cosmic level, but the action is very personal. Despite its faults it's a fast-moving story that never gets boring. Overall, I give this story 4/10. The Rebellious Stars by Isaac Asimov An early Asimov story, this is more like it. I used to read a lot of Isaac Asimov's fiction and non-fiction when I was a kid (especially his robot stories), but for some reason it's been a good few years since I last read his work. This story has an interesting publication history. It was first serialised in Galaxy magazine in 1951, under the title “Tyrann”. It was also published as a hardback in the same year under the name “The Stars, Like Dust”, which was apparently Asimov's preferred title. The edition I'm reviewing it the first paperback publication, from 1954, the title having been changed to “The Rebellious Stars”. The cover says “Complete and Unabridged” but one online source I found says it was heavily edited. I don't have another condition to compare this one to, so I can't say for sure. Whatever the case, it's still an entertaining story. This is part of Asimov's “Galactic Empire” series, although it's set centuries before the rise of the empire portrayed in his famous “Foundation” trilogy. The story is set a thousand years after most of the Earth was rendered uninhabitable by a massively destructive nuclear war. Before the war scrapped civilisation on Earth, interstellar space travel was apparently developed, because a large number of planets out in the galaxy have been settled by humans, and have developed their own cultures and governments. The hero is Biron Farrill, son of the Rancher of Widemos - “Rancher” being the title of the hereditary ruler of a planet near the Horsehead Nebula, one of a cluster of inhabited planets in the area, collectively known as the Nebular Kingdoms. Each of these planets is ruled by a hereditary monarch of some kind, although the titles vary – Rancher, Director, Autarch etc. All-powerful monarchs seem to be the standard political system in this degraded future time, democratic and republican ideals being forgotten concepts. The Nebular Kingdoms are themselves part of an empire run by another kingdom called the Tyranni, who are themselves ruled by a Khan. Thy Tyranni conquered the Nebular Kingdoms about fifty years previously. Like a lot of real-life empires, the Tyranni prefer to rule through existing power structures as much as possible, so the existing aristocracy have mostly been left in place. At the start of the story, Biron has been studying at a university on Earth for the last three years, and is a few days from going home. He's woken up by his phone in the middle of the night, but finds that he can't answer the caller, the door to his room won't open, the lights and ventilation have been disabled – and a device has been left in his room which will shortly flood the room with deadly radiation. Suffice it to say that he's rescued, so you know the story doesn't end in the first chapter! The phone call that Biron wasn't able to answer is from his acquaintance Sander Jonti, supposedly a private citizen. Once he has a chance to be alone with Biron, Jonti tells him that he, Jonti, is actually a deposed aristocrat from one of the Nebular Kingdoms, now hiding out from the Tyranni due to his involvement in a rebellion that's being organised. He also says that Biron's father has been arrested by the Tyranni, and has either been executed already, or will soon be executed, due to being in a leadership position in that rebellion. It seems logical, therefore, that the attempt on Biron's life is an attempt by the Tyranni to neutralise him. Biron is sceptical about this at first, since he had no idea of his father's political activities. Biron does come across as being apolitical, as well as being not very bright, at least not to start with. This is despite the fact that Biron's father asked him several months previously to try to recover an ancient document from the surviving archives on Earth – a document which Jonti is also after, although no-one seems to know the exact nature of this document. The only clue is that Biron's father said that the document had the potential to destroy both the Tyranni and themselves – but what information could a pre-Space Age document hold that would make it so dangerous? Jonti persuades Biron to travel to the planet of Rhodia with a letter of introduction to the Director there, Hinrik V, in the hope of obtaining sanctuary from him. Hinrik has a reputation for being both an imbecile and a puppet of the Tyranni, but it's hoped that he has enough influence to protect Biron. Unknown to Biron, who is easily manipulated, Jonti regards him him as potentially useful in the future, due to his status – but expendable in the short term. There's a strong undercurrent of realpolitik in this story. Arriving on Rhodia, Biron meets Hinrik, who appears to be almost completely broken by the constant need to appease his Tyranni superiors. He also meets Hinrik's attractive daughter Artemisia, and her uncle Gillbret, a clever scientist and inventor who tries to hide his cleverness from the Tyranni by adopting a cynical attitude to life. Hinrik decides to turn Biron over to the Tyranni, but Artemisia and Gillbrett persuade Biron to help them escape from Rhodia. They both have their reasons for getting away from the royal court – Artemisia is due to be married off to a high-ranking but unattractive Tyranni official, and Gillbrett resents the fact that being a member of the Rhodian royal family means that he's under constant surveillance by the Tyranni, especially as a lot of Gillbrett's research and inventions are banned. They need Biron, because he's been trained to fly a spaceship and they haven't, so they hijack a ship belonging to Aratap, the Tyranni Commissioner who oversees Hinrik and makes sure he toes the Tyranni line. Aratap's an intelligent, somewhat forward-looking individual, who dislikes the devious and sometimes brutal tactics he has to use to do his job. But he's very good at his job, and sets off in pursuit of Biron and the others, with every expectation that they will lead him to the heart of the rebellion. So the three fugitives are on the run from the Tyranni, but where to run to? They don't have any direct connections with the rebellion, and in fact they're a pretty apolitical bunch, each motivated by their own selfish, short-term goals. Biron wants to avenge his father and regain his lands, but doesn't have a clue how to do that. Artemisia wants to avoid an arranged marriage, but doesn't seem to have any real ambitions beyond that. Gillbrett wants to be free of Tyranni oversight, but is sceptical of the rebellion, being as it seems to be run by the traditional aristocracy – he doesn't see how replacing one autocracy with another will benefit the population at large. There is one possibility though – Gillbrett has reason to believe that the Autarch of Lingane might be able to put them in touch with the rebellion. So they head off to Lingane, but what will the Autarch's attitude to them be? This is a much better read than the other half of this double. Even though this is early Asimov and his writing style hadn't fully developed yet, the story flows smoothly and (mostly) logically, the world-building is deft and economical, and he manages to make a group of fairly unlikeable characters interesting. Although there's a rebellion brewing in the background, they've hardly got an ideological bone between them – everyone's got a personal angle to play. This is probably what revolutionary politics is really like. I do believe that this book has probably been abridged slightly (despite what it says on the cover), because a couple of the characters go through a rapid evolution with little to no foreshadowing - you have to bear in mind that the page count of paperback books of this era was usually severely limited. Overall this is quite a satisfactory read. 7/10.
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@Aquitaine24 (11651)
• San Jose, California
10 Mar 23
What planet would you like to settle on?
1 person likes this
• United Kingdom
18 Mar 23
One with good weather, no pollen, no crowds, and plenty of cats.