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A review by trike
Space Prison by Godwin Tom Godwin, Tom Godwin
3.0
I read this because the recent novel [b:Semiosis|35018907|Semiosis (Semiosis Duology, #1)|Sue Burke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1494613337i/35018907._SY75_.jpg|56303145] reminded me of it. The weird thing is that I don’t recall having read this. I must’ve just seen the synopsis at some point and remembered that.
The two books are remarkably similar: colonists are stranded on an inhospitable world not of their choosing, where they must combat the elements, 1.5 gravity, and semi-intelligent natives in order to overcome adversity, eventually battling aliens, and the story is told over a period of about 160 years in successive generations during which brutal things happen. It makes me wonder if Burke read this book and accidentally regurgitated it years later.
The primary difference is that in Semiosis the humans do it to themselves, while here the humans are taken captive by hostile aliens and stranded to die. Despite the fact this was written in 1958 and has that era’s white male privilege all over it, I much preferred this book. The women aren’t wallflowers by any means — in fact, two of the strongest and most courageous characters are women. But they never rise to leadership positions, mostly because that just wasn’t done in the 1950s. It would be easy to simply substitute one of the male tribal leaders with a woman... which is exactly what Burke did with Semiosis.
This book is kind of thin on character but moves at a brisk clip. It’s implausible the way much older SF is, but we have 60 years of scientific and technological advances under our belt today, so some of that is excusable. After all, when Godwin wrote this, TV had only existed for about 8 years.
It’s available for free at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22549?msg=welcome_stranger
The two books are remarkably similar: colonists are stranded on an inhospitable world not of their choosing, where they must combat the elements, 1.5 gravity, and semi-intelligent natives in order to overcome adversity, eventually battling aliens, and the story is told over a period of about 160 years in successive generations during which brutal things happen. It makes me wonder if Burke read this book and accidentally regurgitated it years later.
The primary difference is that in Semiosis the humans do it to themselves, while here the humans are taken captive by hostile aliens and stranded to die. Despite the fact this was written in 1958 and has that era’s white male privilege all over it, I much preferred this book. The women aren’t wallflowers by any means — in fact, two of the strongest and most courageous characters are women. But they never rise to leadership positions, mostly because that just wasn’t done in the 1950s. It would be easy to simply substitute one of the male tribal leaders with a woman... which is exactly what Burke did with Semiosis.
This book is kind of thin on character but moves at a brisk clip. It’s implausible the way much older SF is, but we have 60 years of scientific and technological advances under our belt today, so some of that is excusable. After all, when Godwin wrote this, TV had only existed for about 8 years.
It’s available for free at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22549?msg=welcome_stranger