sonja@genie.UUCP (Sonja Bock) (07/13/85)
Black Star Rising
Frederik Pohl
Ballantine Books 1985
Perhaps Ballantine does Pohl an injustice on the dustcover by announcing "Black
Star Rising" as "An Astounding New Novel". Science fiction has been around too
long to count on "astoundingness". Pohl, however, needs none of this advance
work. The terms innovative, ironic, and humorous have always been applicable
where Pohl was involved, especially while in collaboration with the late, great
C.M. Kornbluth. "Black Star Rising" is no exception.
Picture an Earth, some two centuries hence, where the US and USSR have done
themselves in with characteristic efficiency, leaving the remains to China and
India who annex the discombobulated Western World in a bloodless coup, dividing
the spoils with the same assurance as Spain and Portugal in earlier times. Pic-
ture Han Chinese tourists snapping pix of the quaint peasants on an Alabaman
agricultural collective.
Imagine the consternation of the Chinese when a space vessel not recognizable as
anything earthlike threatens annihilation if negotiations are not made with any
other than the President of the United States. Unfortunatly, this position has
been extinct for a good century.
The characters here are good. One standard anti-hero, young, ambitious and
easily led; one confident, jaded and yet vulnerable older woman; one confident,
sloganized and yet vulnerable younger woman, and one multiple personality who is
exactly that. The objective is to save the world with the dubious aid of
alien-worlders who love a good fight more than anything.
A very entertaining read, this book contrasts with some others recently pub-
lished in that it presents war as something noble only in nostalgia and childish
in practice.