32. Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama

The problem I have with Arthur C. Clarke's and, to a much lesser degree, Asimov's brands of science fiction is that they often paint such a clean image of the future: vibrant democracies, happy people, great technology etc. Don't get me wrong, their books are not all happiness but, in comparison to other science fiction works they describe a more successful future.

After a number of asteroids either hit the earth or come too close for comfort the residents of earth and the human residents of the other colonized planets in the solar system decide to deploy a high tech early warning system to keep track of all the nearby asteroids. This early warning system detects Rama (which is an arbitrary name based on much the same system as, for example, we have today for hurricanes) a previously uncatalogued asteroid that has just entered the solar system and is on a path to go past many of the planets and shoot around the sun and out of the solar system.

Intrigued by this newcomer, the authorities send a manned space craft to land on the asteroid and to study it in more detail. Upon landing on Rama the astronauts discover that it is not an asteroid at all, rather it is a cylindrical space ship that is about 50KM long and some 8KM wide and is spinning from end to end. They manage to get inside the cylinder and discover a marvelously complicated but uninhabited world which they set about to explore.

Clarke's strength as a writer has always been his imaginative, believable and detailed view on future technologies, this book is a great example of the execution of his strengths. He describes the landscape, technology, mystery and atmosphere in breathtaking and yet accessible detail. His weakness as a writer, in my view, is that he cannot marry the tech with an interesting story involving the human actors in the book. It's like watching a movie with awesome technology but with cheesy lines and acting. He leaves a number of fascinating story lines just hanging: the entire mission to Rama is governed by a sub-committee of the now inter-planetary UN which has all sorts of diplomatic intrigue associated with it but Clarke doesn't really deal with that at all; similarly at one point, the renegade colonists on Mercury, launch a missile directed at Rama which is disarmed by the astronauts sent to Rama but Clarke doesn't deal with how the people from Mercury react to this affront.

You should read this book for the tech but not the story line.

31. Victor Canning, A Forest of Eyes

This is the second Canning novel that I have read after being introduced to them by the great Olman. This book is excellent and very different than the first VC book that I read which was more like a posh Desmond Bagley book. This one is set in 1950s Yugoslavia soon after Tito has cemented his power and just as he is beginning to show that he is not prepared to blindly follow Stalin's lead. The book is filled with underhanded criticism of Tito, Stalin and communism to the point that at one point I thought that this must be a propaganda book.

It is difficult to review spy fiction because one gives away so much during the course of the review but I will say what I can. The book is set in Dubrovnik where Raikes and Hudson, two engineers working for a British firm, are taking a short holiday while they wait for the Yugoslav Minister of Interior to return from a trip to Russia and sign a contract that they had given his office. The two of them have two weeks on their hand so they head south as special guests of the Yugoslav government. Dubrovnik is a great setting for a spy story with its cliff side geography, historic buildings and winding alley ways.

Canning's book is very well written, rarely slow and a great piece of spy fiction. I urge you all to pick it up.

30. Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, They'd Rather Be Right

The world is in a down swing and heading towards its end. The government's stifling control of opinions has killed off all innovation and left the masses stupid and resentful of the 'brains,' and the intelligentsia tightly controlled by the government so that, unknown to them, they are unable to think of any original ideas. A telepath called Joe Carter starts changing all that. Through his telepathic skills and using his position as secretary to a military project being developed at a university, he lifts the shround of opinion control and helps a group of scientists develop Bossy: a female machine that makes people young again by removing the different psychological inhibitions and restrictions that have built up over time but only so long as the person's mind is receptive to change.

The government's discovery of Bossy makes Joe and its two leading scientists take flight to avoid capture and certain jail time. They first hide out in San Francisco's skid row where they rebuild Bossy and run one person through the system which transforms their 70 year old ugly landlord to an 18 year old beautiful, intelligent blonde. News of this transformation leaks out and a super rich benefactor who is too rich and powerful to be subject to the government's control takes Bossy, Joe and the scientists into his trust.

The remainder of the story is about the fight between all the different parts of the government for control of Bossy, how the group fights back and the ultimate fate of Bossy and society. This is a pretty superficial story with a few high points but not too many (it won the Hugo award in 1957 and it has been widely acclaimed as the worst book to win a Hugo!).

29. Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel

Asimov wrote a four part trilogy (I know...) of science fiction-detective fusion centered around Lije Bailey. This is the fist book of the series.

Many many years ago humans began colonizing nearby planets. At first, the colonists, known as Spcaers, and the earthmen were on friendly terms but as the Spacers adapted to their new environment and developed new cultural mores a certain friction built up between the two. The author alludes to, but never details, this friction culminating in some kind of war between the two groups which left the earthmen in the losers camp and in a position of inferiority to the Spacers.

The Spacer worlds were homogenous, somewhat fearful, societies which embraced technology. Consequently their weapons were much more powerful than the earthmen's weapons and their usage of robots in their society was much more prevalent than the earthmen's usage of the robots.

Earth developed in a very different way. The remaining residents of earth shunned further colonization; after seeing the Spacer societies' mores the population began to aggregate under a few massive domed cities. New York, for example, became one city that stretched from Boston down to Washington, DC with a small Spacer city, called Spacetown, sitting adjacent to it. As the earth's population grew its food supplies dwindled to the point that most people ate cubes of high protein food not real food.

The earth was run by a united nations like political body and each person was classified in levels, almost a caste system. A low classification meant that you could not even have an appartment whereas a higher classification got you an appartment and special food rations. There was also a strong Medievalist political force which advocated outdoor living, farming and far less use of robots in general society. Asimov portrays these Medievalists as rabble rousers who were out of touch with reality. They did not understand that living outside would be harmful to the population (he never says why) and that farming wouldn't yield nearly enough food to feed the billions of people living on earth.

The book opens with the murder of a prominent Spacer robot designer in Spacetown. Lije Bailey is paired up with an advanced humanoid Spacer robot to solve the crime.

The story is all about Lije: his issues with working with a robot, his personal life with his wife, his inner fears, his secret Medievalist tendencies and how he overcomes them and, finally, how he solves the crime and convinces humanity that in order to save itself it needs to begin colonizing new planets and introducing robots into its culture. I can't get into too many details without blowing the story but suffice it say that it was a cool book worth reading.