Fri 11 Sep 2015
An SF Space Opera Review: GARY ALAN RUSE – Death Hunt on a Dying Planet.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[4] Comments
GARY ALAN RUSE – Death Hunt on a Dying Planet. Signet paperback original; 1st printing, October 1988.
I picked this one up to read on the basis of not the author’s name, a fairly unknown one, even in science fiction circles, but the title and the cover, both of which promised something that I was looking for at the time.
Namely, a good old fashioned space opera. It was exactly what I got. Marinda Donelson, a scientist on a colony ship to an alien planet is awakened 700 years after the rest of the passengers and crew have landed, and she finds herself the intense object of interest between two opposing parties. First, the University, based on a moon orbiting another planet, and CorSec, the present rulers of Coreworld, nearly decimated by plague and war and famine.
You know. The usual. Marinda is rescued by a psybot named Roddi and a cyborg by the name of Vandal, but the three of them are soon forced to crash-land on Coreworld and make their way through all kinds of danger, evading mutants, monstrous war machines and the minions of CorSec, most prominently personified by Razer, a sworn enemy of Vandal.
Also on the ground are a group of other psybots with all kind of powers who are working incognito for the University. Their task: join forces with Marinda and the others, making their way through all kind of danger, evading mutants and all of the above. Giving them a huge assist, however, is a itinerant master of legerdemain (human) named Dr. Arcanus.
I needn’t tell you more (but there is more, just under 400 pages of more, with a very neat tidying up at the end and just a hint of more adventures to come, which however never happened). To me, this read like a attempt to channel Edgar Rice Burroughs with the added bonus of more than a dash of video game stratagems and firepower. Lots of firepower.
As for the writing itself, if I’d have read this when I was sixteen, I’d have thought it was the best book I’d ever read. I didn’t think so now, but as I said up above, it was exactly what I was looking for when I was looking, and I enjoyed it.
September 11th, 2015 at 11:38 pm
Space opera can range from the sublime to the ridiculous and sometimes you would rather err on the side of Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, and C.L. Moore and go for high style, romance, and exotic.
It’s not that I don’t love serious SF or even more serious space opera, among my favorite writers today are the late Iain Banks, Alistair Reynolds, and Peter Hamilton, but sometimes you want wanton destruction and shades of John Carter, Eric John Stark, Lensmen, Skylark, and the Legion of Space.
There is a fourteen year old Flash Gordon fan inside who demands an occasional sacrifice. Who am I to deny him?
September 12th, 2015 at 5:21 am
Space Opera can be really fine when the author respects the genre and his readers… and has fun with it at the same time!
September 12th, 2015 at 12:16 pm
Back when I was a teenager both Hamilton and Brackett were big favorites of mine. I also liked Jack Williamson, but not as much as the other two. But I never did care for Doc Smith’s stories. Even then I think I wanted the characters to be human, not superhuman stick figures.
As it happened I attended a fan convention in Detroit in 1969 (a Triple Fan Fair) at which both Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett were both guests of honor. They were very approachable I think, since they always had crowds of fans round them, but I just didn’t have the nerve to go up say hello and tell them how much I enjoyed their work, a regret I still have to this day.
September 12th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
I see that I omitted to say that both the title and front cover of Ruse’s book lived completely up to their billing.