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beetective's review against another edition
1.0
First Reading Review (19.05.19)
This book broke me. I could not go on. It forced my hand and I didn’t want to play. The reason why? I was lost. Utterly and completely lost. There are too many characters to remember and the only one I could remember was the girl character because she was a female, but Gallun got rid of her in chapter 2. The rest are NINE indistinguishable guy characters whose names blend together until they are all big buff white young dudes. I could not tell who was talking or doing what. And that was just the first two and a half chapters! This book throws you into the world and expects you to know what it’s talking about. It does no explaining. I had no idea what all the technical mumbo jumbo was about nor what it looked like, I thought they were in a spaceship but apparently, they each have their own individual pods??? I think, at least. Every moment I prayed for it to be over because even though it's 157 pages long, it felt like 500. For my own sanity, I placed this back in my bag and refuse to revisit this mess.
Second Reading Review (18.10.22)
Years later, I have returned to try and give The Planet Strappers another chance. To this day, it had been the only book I had ever DNFed, and let me tell you, I had sat through some stinkers.
This time around, I managed to grasp more of what the book had been describing, and its characters overall. Instead of only remembering Eileen, I clung to Ramos the repairman, Mitch the
horticulturist, Gimp the underdog, and George the supposed ‘leader’ of The Bunch. Why did I remember them? Well, both Mitch and Ramos wasn’t a cardboard cut-out young white man like the others, Gimp is disabled (having a bum leg), and George was stated to be the leader so I paid attention to that. Eileen is self-explanatory. It doesn’t matter though, as most of The Bunch don't much for most of the story or are even particularly mentioned. I could see that as a good thing –
there was no way I was going to remember over twelve individuals people that hardly distinguished themselves from the other. I was glad that as the chapters went on, it only really focused on one of The Bunch – Nelson (or am I mixing his name up with another again?). I was also glad that the characters I could remember popped into the story every once and a while – Eileen becomes a space popstar, Ramos a cyborg adventurer, Mitch finds a new happy life living in the wilderness of Venus (Again, might have gotten the planet wrong). Gimp is the most successful of all, him going off to do…something. I don’t think it really specifies, but it was surprising to see that both the disabled characters (Ramos had become a quadriplegic at that point) were the most successful of The Bunch, something I didn’t expect from a 60s novel. I actually think it would have been better for Ramos to be the main character, I grew a liking to him over the novel. The concept of a quadriplegic cyborg adventurer and a space popstar romance is very interesting to me – but like most of what happens in this story, it’s never much explored, and Ramos is left wandering the cosmos by himself.
A lot of the concepts that The Planet Strappers throws around are actually, very riveting – but again, are hardly explored thoroughly. They are more so snippets in the story. There was the space hub crashing into Earth and the inhabitants scrounging at it for parts, dipped in horror elements with nelson being trapped at an excavation site unable to escape or call for help. Psychological aspects like Nelson floating in space for months on end with Ramos due to a space hijacking was engaging – but again, hardly touched upon. It’s not enough to make me regret DNfing it on my first reading, but I can say it did change my view somewhat about the book. Only a little.
The ending was also a lot sweeter than I was expecting, the romance between Nelson and Nancy nice to read. It’s too bad that it’s still bogged down by how lost I was most of time when it came to technical sci-fi stuff – I really only had a thin grasp on what was going on as it never really explains anything, but that’s probably just the norm for the time. For such a tiny book, it was such a slog to get through. I could hardly read a chapter a day, or even really half a chapter. The only thing keeping me going was my curiosity to see if I should have really been so harsh in the first place. For the most part, the answer is yes.
Rating: 2/10
This book broke me. I could not go on. It forced my hand and I didn’t want to play. The reason why? I was lost. Utterly and completely lost. There are too many characters to remember and the only one I could remember was the girl character because she was a female, but Gallun got rid of her in chapter 2. The rest are NINE indistinguishable guy characters whose names blend together until they are all big buff white young dudes. I could not tell who was talking or doing what. And that was just the first two and a half chapters! This book throws you into the world and expects you to know what it’s talking about. It does no explaining. I had no idea what all the technical mumbo jumbo was about nor what it looked like, I thought they were in a spaceship but apparently, they each have their own individual pods??? I think, at least. Every moment I prayed for it to be over because even though it's 157 pages long, it felt like 500. For my own sanity, I placed this back in my bag and refuse to revisit this mess.
Second Reading Review (18.10.22)
Years later, I have returned to try and give The Planet Strappers another chance. To this day, it had been the only book I had ever DNFed, and let me tell you, I had sat through some stinkers.
This time around, I managed to grasp more of what the book had been describing, and its characters overall. Instead of only remembering Eileen, I clung to Ramos the repairman, Mitch the
horticulturist, Gimp the underdog, and George the supposed ‘leader’ of The Bunch. Why did I remember them? Well, both Mitch and Ramos wasn’t a cardboard cut-out young white man like the others, Gimp is disabled (having a bum leg), and George was stated to be the leader so I paid attention to that. Eileen is self-explanatory. It doesn’t matter though, as most of The Bunch don't much for most of the story or are even particularly mentioned. I could see that as a good thing –
there was no way I was going to remember over twelve individuals people that hardly distinguished themselves from the other. I was glad that as the chapters went on, it only really focused on one of The Bunch – Nelson (or am I mixing his name up with another again?). I was also glad that the characters I could remember popped into the story every once and a while – Eileen becomes a space popstar, Ramos a cyborg adventurer, Mitch finds a new happy life living in the wilderness of Venus (Again, might have gotten the planet wrong). Gimp is the most successful of all, him going off to do…something. I don’t think it really specifies, but it was surprising to see that both the disabled characters (Ramos had become a quadriplegic at that point) were the most successful of The Bunch, something I didn’t expect from a 60s novel. I actually think it would have been better for Ramos to be the main character, I grew a liking to him over the novel. The concept of a quadriplegic cyborg adventurer and a space popstar romance is very interesting to me – but like most of what happens in this story, it’s never much explored, and Ramos is left wandering the cosmos by himself.
A lot of the concepts that The Planet Strappers throws around are actually, very riveting – but again, are hardly explored thoroughly. They are more so snippets in the story. There was the space hub crashing into Earth and the inhabitants scrounging at it for parts, dipped in horror elements with nelson being trapped at an excavation site unable to escape or call for help. Psychological aspects like Nelson floating in space for months on end with Ramos due to a space hijacking was engaging – but again, hardly touched upon. It’s not enough to make me regret DNfing it on my first reading, but I can say it did change my view somewhat about the book. Only a little.
The ending was also a lot sweeter than I was expecting, the romance between Nelson and Nancy nice to read. It’s too bad that it’s still bogged down by how lost I was most of time when it came to technical sci-fi stuff – I really only had a thin grasp on what was going on as it never really explains anything, but that’s probably just the norm for the time. For such a tiny book, it was such a slog to get through. I could hardly read a chapter a day, or even really half a chapter. The only thing keeping me going was my curiosity to see if I should have really been so harsh in the first place. For the most part, the answer is yes.
Rating: 2/10
metaphorosis's review against another edition
2.0
reviews.metaphorosis.com
2 stars
A group of young wanna-be astronauts raise funds to get into space, then go their own ways until a threat brings them together again.
I think the only other Gallun I had read previously was a best-of collection, many years back. I quite liked some of the stories, and looked forward to this longer work. Unfortunately, this novel was pretty weak.
Even given the time it was written, and allowing for the simplistic "have spaceuit, will travel" plot, there's just not a lot here. Gallun creates a moderately likeable lead character, but fails to flesh out the rest of the crew - most are two-dimensional stereotypes. Women in particular get short shrift, but that at least goes with the period, as does the thin plot.
The real problem is that there's not much depth to the story or the characters. Things happen, and people do things, but it's not really clear why, or why we should care. All in all, the book feels like a hasty draft. It might have been better off as a short story, and it's possible that Gallun was simply a better writer at that length.
All in all, not really a waste of time, but there are far better options available, including Gallun's shorter work.
sagauthor's review against another edition
4.0
Good old school science fiction. First trip into space.
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