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melomindy's review against another edition
5.0
This book just felt like classic science fiction in the best way possible. Humans surviving on a totally inhospitable planet, ships that are submarines but spaceships at the same time, weird creatures that are quite dangerous, and add in some civil uprising, and you have an exciting tale.
capellan's review against another edition
2.0
Fairly shallow SF adventure story. The concept of a world with days that last as long as a season on Earth is an interesting one, but not a whole lot really gets done with it. The human conflict is not that engaging - I tend to think a more "man vs the environment" tale (with the environment more fleshed out than "full of killer critters") would have been more interesting.
expendablemudge's review
3.0
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Four-Day Planet . . . where the killing heat of a thousand-hour "day" drives men underground, and the glorious hundred-hour sunset is followed by a thousand-hour night so cold that only an Extreme Environment Suit can preserve the life of anyone caught outside.
Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he's being cheated of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.
My Review: Fenris might not be the Garden Spot of the Galaxy, sort of like the future's equivalent of a "shithole country" in fact, but the men there are a hardy, self-sufficient lot. Yes, I said "men" and made no attempt to be inclusive. H. Beam Piper, the author, was born in 1903 and died of self-inflicted starvation due to absurd, overweening pride in 1964. He was a gun nut. He married once, and was divorced or separated from his wife in short order because he was convinced that she married him for money.
Not a likely feminist icon's profile. His writing and his attitudes show that. Strangely enough, though, there's an admixture of Powerful Woman hints that make me think his was a late-life learned misogyny.
So anyway, this 1961 tale from the Terro-Human Future History of Piper's creation never called to me. I assumed it would be all about the great-man theory of history that libertarians tend to like. It is, in a way; Steve Ravick, the successfully ensconced ruler of the economy on Fenris, is a master manipulator and born gangster, an exceptional man in all the wrong right ways. He lied successfully to the economic engines of Fenris, the workers, telling them how things were terrible and he'd have to fight Those Others just to give them half of what their labor got them before. He did this by cutting them off from any source of information he didn't like and insulting and belittling the one outlet he allows to remain in business. He reminds me of the Koch brothers and their stooge 45. Like, a lot.
What I didn't expect was to feel so nostalgic for the narrator of the story being a journalist. A young lad very eager to seek out The Truth and to be the one who, in H.L. Mencken's memorable definition of a journalist's job, "afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted." As a result he breaks the story of a lifetime. At seventeen! Of course, his dad owns the paper, but he's the one who found, followed, and shaped the story, which is the central trait of a born reporter.
Ultimately, the reason I enjoyed the read was the ending, wherein Right(s) and Reason prevail over caddish, greedy oligarchy. I was amused by the sixty-year-old vision of future technology, but charmed by the sixty-year-old faith in the ability of The People to rebel against unjust, unprincipled rulers. Piper's writing was serviceable, failing to ignite my passion in this book's telling. I was ignited by what was told. In a different political and economic climate I would've been pretty much uninterested in the tale.
Piper tends to lard his story with way too many names...characters we'll never meet have first and last names like one Oscar Fujisawa, the tall, blond Viking action hero of part of the story. Piper wants to make the point that, away from Earth and far into the future, names are just handy labels. Ethnicity is a relic, a distant and fading social construct. I like the idea, at least insofar as it makes plain the social system doesn't discriminate based on superficial qualities, but to give *every* minor character a first and last name with such a heavy significance makes this reader tired.
Still and all, despite low expectations, reading this elderly writer's surprisingly sanguine take on Humanity's future was a tonic. I'm glad I did it, and since the book is a whopping 99¢ on Kindle, I think you would be as well.
The Publisher Says: Four-Day Planet . . . where the killing heat of a thousand-hour "day" drives men underground, and the glorious hundred-hour sunset is followed by a thousand-hour night so cold that only an Extreme Environment Suit can preserve the life of anyone caught outside.
Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he's being cheated of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.
My Review: Fenris might not be the Garden Spot of the Galaxy, sort of like the future's equivalent of a "shithole country" in fact, but the men there are a hardy, self-sufficient lot. Yes, I said "men" and made no attempt to be inclusive. H. Beam Piper, the author, was born in 1903 and died of self-inflicted starvation due to absurd, overweening pride in 1964. He was a gun nut. He married once, and was divorced or separated from his wife in short order because he was convinced that she married him for money.
Not a likely feminist icon's profile. His writing and his attitudes show that. Strangely enough, though, there's an admixture of Powerful Woman hints that make me think his was a late-life learned misogyny.
So anyway, this 1961 tale from the Terro-Human Future History of Piper's creation never called to me. I assumed it would be all about the great-man theory of history that libertarians tend to like. It is, in a way; Steve Ravick, the successfully ensconced ruler of the economy on Fenris, is a master manipulator and born gangster, an exceptional man in all the wrong right ways. He lied successfully to the economic engines of Fenris, the workers, telling them how things were terrible and he'd have to fight Those Others just to give them half of what their labor got them before. He did this by cutting them off from any source of information he didn't like and insulting and belittling the one outlet he allows to remain in business. He reminds me of the Koch brothers and their stooge 45. Like, a lot.
What I didn't expect was to feel so nostalgic for the narrator of the story being a journalist. A young lad very eager to seek out The Truth and to be the one who, in H.L. Mencken's memorable definition of a journalist's job, "afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted." As a result he breaks the story of a lifetime. At seventeen! Of course, his dad owns the paper, but he's the one who found, followed, and shaped the story, which is the central trait of a born reporter.
Ultimately, the reason I enjoyed the read was the ending, wherein Right(s) and Reason prevail over caddish, greedy oligarchy. I was amused by the sixty-year-old vision of future technology, but charmed by the sixty-year-old faith in the ability of The People to rebel against unjust, unprincipled rulers. Piper's writing was serviceable, failing to ignite my passion in this book's telling. I was ignited by what was told. In a different political and economic climate I would've been pretty much uninterested in the tale.
Piper tends to lard his story with way too many names...characters we'll never meet have first and last names like one Oscar Fujisawa, the tall, blond Viking action hero of part of the story. Piper wants to make the point that, away from Earth and far into the future, names are just handy labels. Ethnicity is a relic, a distant and fading social construct. I like the idea, at least insofar as it makes plain the social system doesn't discriminate based on superficial qualities, but to give *every* minor character a first and last name with such a heavy significance makes this reader tired.
Still and all, despite low expectations, reading this elderly writer's surprisingly sanguine take on Humanity's future was a tonic. I'm glad I did it, and since the book is a whopping 99¢ on Kindle, I think you would be as well.
bzedan's review
5.0
Kid reporter! Mixed up in an uprising against a despot! Oh past future, you and your science-y vision of the newspaper world, with easily portable film cameras that relay back to the paper offices, and laser and UV plate engraving, to be cut out and hand pasted up. Mind you, two years after I worked hand paste up for the yearbook, I was using computers to lay out the school paper—while simultaneously taking an advanced graphics course that taught hand paste up. Sidebar: the word in the industry is that the current generation of journalism majors graduating are going to have to be re-taught, because they're learning what isn't used any more and the industry doesn't know what it needs yet. Awkward.
But the story. Allusions to Moby Dick, which I've now so read. The introduction to how Piper sees ethnicity in the future, incredibly mixed in unpredictable ways (there's a guy with a very Japanese name who is very Scottish looking, as a small example). Generally impressed by how well Piper can handle non-Terra kind of worlds in believable ways. Said planet goes through four day and night rotations in about one Terran year. Crazy weather stuff.
But the story. Allusions to Moby Dick, which I've now so read. The introduction to how Piper sees ethnicity in the future, incredibly mixed in unpredictable ways (there's a guy with a very Japanese name who is very Scottish looking, as a small example). Generally impressed by how well Piper can handle non-Terra kind of worlds in believable ways. Said planet goes through four day and night rotations in about one Terran year. Crazy weather stuff.
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