leeper@ahutb.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (04/12/85)
FAR FRONTIERS (edited by Jerry Pournelle and Jim Baen)
Baen Books, 1985, $2.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
FAR FRONTIERS is planned to be a regularly published anthology of
science fiction and speculative fact. The editors, Jerry Pournelle and Jim
Baen, call it a magazine published in book form. As one might expect with
anything Pournelle has a hand in of late, it has a political philosophy that
shows up explicitly in Pournelle's introductions, implicitly in the choice
of non-fiction articles, and perhaps covertly in the choice of fiction. In
reviewing so politicized a collection, I should let the reader know what my
politics are. I consider myself a moderate liberal, formerly an extreme
liberal, with a growing respect for and interest in some right-wing
political viewpoints. This make right-wing friends think I am left-wing and
VICE VERSA. I now can disagree with just about anyone. While I was
reading, I was disagreeing with Pournelle's right-wing politics, but
enjoying every minute of doing so. I have only a little more respect for
Pournelle than I do for his left-wing mirror image in science fiction,
Harlan Ellison. Pournelle is marginally, and only marginally, less
obnoxious in the ways he chooses to express his politics.
The anthology opens with an editorial by Pournelle--the man who
attempted to politicize the L-5 Society and has been soap-boxing for the
Strategic Defense Initiative at every turn--complaining that the American
Association for the Advancement of Science has been over-politicized with a
left-wing philosophy. He may be right, but coming from him, the complaint
is a bit ironic.
The stories are above average in quality for a science fiction
magazine, though perhaps a bit below average for an anthology where the
editor can pick and choose the best of what has already been published. For
me the most enjoyable story was "Brain Salad" by Norman Spinrad, but then I
enjoy self-referential stories like last year's Hugo-nominated "Geometry of
Narrative" by Hilbert Schenck. David Brin's "The Warm Space" is a passable
imitation of a Larry Niven story, and Larry Niven turns in a story that
smacks of Alan Dean Foster on a good day for Foster. Damon Knight's
"Goodbye, Dr. Ralston" is an enjoyable piece of fluff. Greg Bear's "Through
Road No Whither" tries to be fluff with hidden teeth, but makes it only on
the fluff count. "Lost in Translation" by Dean Ing is an interesting idea
with a muddled execution, while "The Boy from the Moon" shares only the
muddled execution. That leaves Poul Anderson's "Pride," which, like his TAU
ZERO, places uninteresting people at an interesting event.
The articles were more interesting than the fiction. Ben Bova explains
why America stood alone at the U.N.'s committee on the Peaceful Uses of
Space and was voted down 102 to 1 defending the unrestricted flow of
information via direct broadcast satellites. In other words, the U.S. tried
to make it possible for anyone to broadcast anything into anyone's country
and let the listener make up his/her own mind what to believe. If this
really is a right-wing idea, it is certainly one right-wing idea I agree
with. I grew up thinking of freedom of expression as a left-wing ideal. Of
late, there seem to be those who hold the view that this freedom is a means
to supress the down-trodden. If the championing of freedom of expression
moves to the right-wing, I may follow it.
"Future Scenarios for Space Development" appears to be the text for a
lecture G. Harry Stine gave (we are never told to whom). It is a nice
introduction to Gompertz S-curves and why they predict a rosy future for the
world. I have heard the arguments here before, but not as cogently or
expressed as mathematically. I have a minor quibble in that Stine thinks
that the derivative of a Gompertz curve is almost a spike. This would mean
that a human, a corporation, or a society or relatively static, hits its
prime over a short period of time, and then goes static again fairly
quickly. I would expect the prime to be stretched out over a longer period,
with the derivative being a bell-shaped curve, not a spike.
The last article is an exposition by Robert Forward on various concepts
for inter-stellar drives and their relation to the Fermi Paradox, which
asks: if there are so many worlds out there, and such a high probability of
intelligent life on many of them, how come we haven't had company? The
article would have been quite interesting if it had been the first time I
had read it, but much of it was covered in Forward's afterword to RIDING THE
TORCH (which I got at the same time I got FAR FRONTIERS).
This magazine in book form had a fair amount of provocative reading--
certainly more than I expected. The non-fiction was more interesting than
the fiction, and while it contained little that I hadn't heard somewhere
before, it was good to have it together in one piece. There was nothing I
loved in FAR FRONTIERS but the whole, I think, was better than the sum of
its parts. Issue two has already been published and I bought it immediately
on seeing it. That is an unexpected tribute to Pournelle the editor and
perhaps to Pournelle the politician.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!ahutb!leeper
But, on May 1, I become ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper