From rec.arts.sf-reviews Thu Oct 10 09:55:51 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: A WORLD LOST by James B. Johnson Message-ID: <6833@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 8 Oct 91 17:10:45 GMT Sender: djdaneh@PacBell.COM Lines: 65 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com A WORLD LOST by James B. Johnson A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper I recently reviewed S. C. Sykes's RED GENESIS and said it was being compared to some of Heinlein's work. Well, if Sykes is writing neo-Heinlein adult novels, Johnson is writing neo-Heinlein juveniles. Yes, our hero Rusty is supposedly 29 years old, but he acts about half that. (And, no, Rusty does not have a dog named Rin Tin Tin.) He is a spacer at a time when spacers are the outcasts of humanity and arrives home after a trip only to discover that "home" isn't there any more. There is not some mere Wolfeian concept--the whole planet and its sun are gone. So Rusty starts wending his way through a Laumerian bureaucracy to try to get help in finding his planet. As a juvenile, this book probably passes muster. The strange dietary habits of our hero, centering around peanut butter, seem aimed far more at an adolescent crowd than a group of adult readers. There are all the stock elements: boy has girlfriend back home to whom he's been engaged since childhood, boy meets beautiful female secret agent, boy and secret agent fight the system to solve the mystery (using boy's spaceship with intelligent talking computer), etc. All the "etc." is predictable too. The science, however, leaves a lot to be desired, even in a juvenile. The Plex Net, a network of matter transmission booths that have all but totally replaced classic (albeit faster-than-light) space travel, is never convincingly explained. On page 35, we find out Rusty is on a planet "a few hundred thousand miles in circumference." This is (conservatively) ten times the circumference of Earth and hence one thousand times the volume. Assuming the same average density, therefore, the gravity would be a hundred times that of Earth (he's ten times further from the center) and, when you add to that the atmospheric pressure you are likely to find, Rusty would be a smudge on the ground. To get Earth's gravity you would need a totally impossible average density. (Conveniently, Saturn has a circumference of slightly more than 200,000 miles, putting it right in the ballpark. Even with the lowest average density of any planet the solar system, Saturn masses 95 times that of earth.) A more serious objection--in terms of what I want young people to learn--is in how Rusty evaluates people. On seeing one up-until-now ambiguous character happily playing with his niece, Rusty says (as first- person narrator), "People with these kinds of values were not inimical to us and the galaxy. Or so I hoped." Even with that qualifier, Johnson seems to have forgotten the lessons of history: "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." Many of the Nazi war criminals had very happy, loving home lives. Okay, maybe all this is overanalytical. As a time-killing book or a juvenile this is okay, but I still can't really recommend it. %T A WORLD LOST %A James B. Johnson %C New York %D August 1991 %I DAW %O paperback, US$4.50 %G ISBN 0-88677-498-5 %P 316pp __________ * HAMLET, Act I, Scene 5 Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From archive (archive) From: duane@anasaz.UUCP (Duane Morse) Organization: Anasazi, Inc., Phoenix, Az. Subject: TREKMASTER by James B. Johnson (mild spoiler) Date: 23 Apr 88 19:48:55 GMT Time: many hundreds of years in the future Place: Bear Ridge, an earth-like planet Introduction: Bear Ridge is a "lost colony" which has recently been rediscovered. Sharon Gold is the Federation representative on the planet who will recommend whether Bear Ridge or a sister planet becomes the newest Federation council member. Bear Ridge's monarch, T.J. Shepherd, wants the membership in order to catapult the planet back into the mainstream of technology. Many on the planet fear that Shepherd is moving too fast. And what do the Webbines, native intelligent beings, think about all of this? Main storylines: assassination plots, friendships, learning about and experiencing the "Trek", Webbine involvement. SF elements: interstellar Federation, alien life forms. Critique: This is a very enjoyable book. It is written from the perspective of the main characters, all of whom are interesting in themselves. There are a number of interweaving conflicts which keep the pace rather brisk throughout. First there are Shepherd's machinations to win the coveted seat on the Federation council. Then there's Shepherd's son, who doesn't agree with his father on very many things. And there's Shepherd's capable bodyguard/jester; what's his story? The monarch of the sister planet is behind a number of disruptions; and if that were not enough, there's local unrest, both due to conflicts between the church and the state and as an aftermath of recent wars. Adding spice to all of this is the question of the Webbines and the "Trek", the latter being a hazardous expedition to visit a small Webbine colony, a journey required of propective monarchs and fatal to most. Rating: 3.5 out of 4.0 - a real keeper. -- Duane Morse ...!noao!mcdsun!nud!anasaz!duane (602) 861-7609