Reviews

Another Girl, Another Planet by Lou Antonelli

elisala's review

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1.0

Bof bof bof.
C'est une sympathique uchronie, bien amenée, l'air de rien, et qui se tient. On y ajoute un début de réflexion pas inintéressant sur l'homme vs. la machine.
Mais comme c'est mal écrit! Et comme le personnage principal n'est pas réaliste! Genre le mec déboule et il résout tout en 3 jours! Trop fort! Ça mérite des points d'exclamation à répétition, oui!
Les dialogues sonnent faux, les expressions faciales sont décrites à l'envi (entendre: beaucoup trop), la quantité de personnes qui froncent des sourcils dans ce livre, vous avez pas idée!
Et vas-y que je te décris dans le détail les équipements de sécurité distribués ou pas à chacun - mais qu'est-ce qu'on s'en fout! Pourquoi se sentir obligé de préciser que parce que le héros porte des lunettes de vue il n'a pas besoin de porter des lunettes de protection? Non seulement c'est faux, mais en plus par deux fois dans un même livre? Pourquoi? Aaaaaah...
Bon et puis c'est tout imprégné d'un sexisme bien gerbant - les femmes décrites par la qualité et la quantité de leur maquillage, la sexualité féminine inexistante en dehors de l'homme, pffff.
Et par là-dessus, de la religion qui déboule d'on ne sait où, avec même un pater écrit texto dans le livre. Pourquoi. Pour.quoi? Tout en disant que le héros n'est pas très religieux. Moui moui moui.
Bref, la sympathie de l'uchronie a fait assez vite place à l'irritation du grand n'importe quoi...

ineffablebob's review

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4.0

Another Girl, Another Planet is written with the golden age science fiction nerd in mind. Which I resemble closely enough to have enjoyed the trip.

The setting is the early 1980s in an alternate history where the post-WWII world didn't turn into a Cold War, but rather a cooperative expansion into space. The United States and the Soviet Union worked together to go into space, creating space stations and settling on both the Moon and Mars. Famous science fiction personalities show up as leaders rather than writers - most notably Robert Heinlein returning to the US Navy and taking a leadership role in space settlement, and Isaac Asimov creating positronic robots instead of writing stories about them. Antonelli drops all kinds of references to famous people who ended up playing different roles, from Jimmy Carter in the space service to Meg Foster as the star of Alien.

The story is a mix of mystery, political intrigue, and exploration of sociology in the alternate timeline. The main character gets sent to Mars to fill an administrative vacuum, and gets more excitement than anticipated. There's a lot of tangents to the main story, largely having to do with how life works in the Mars colony and the interaction of the various people and robots there. I fairly regularly found myself wondering when Antonelli would start to tie things together, but the roundabout style didn't bother me since I was enjoying the ride.

If I have a complaint about Another Girl, Another Planet, it's that the last couple of chapters seemed unnecessary. I think the idea was to put a twist on the end of the story, but I'd rather have left that part unexplained. I'm purposely being a little vague to avoid spoiler territory but it'll be pretty obvious to anyone who finishes the book. In any event, it's a fairly minor issue - you can always just choose to focus on the rest of the book.

Anyone who has enjoyed either golden-age science fiction or alternate history stories should definitely pick up Another Girl, Another Planet. Even better if, like me, you're a fan of both.

brianrenaud's review

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3.0

Ok-ish alternate history mystery/detective SF. I thought the plot twists were reasonably interesting although not that well realized. I couldn't tell whether the author's writing style was intentionally a homage to the "golden era" stories of the 40s, or if that's just the way he writes. Either way, it didn't do much for me. I probably would have liked this book a lot more in my mid-late teens.
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