leeper@ahutb.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (03/27/85)
RIDING THE TORCH by Norman Spinrad
Bluejay, 1985, $6.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Hoy Cow! I just got my hands on a new Bluejay book. The book
is Norman Spinrad's RIDING THE TORCH. It goes for $6.95. The story
is 144 pages long, padded out with MUCHO blank pages and internal
illustrations. There probably are no more than 100 pages of story.
With all these vacation pages, you'd think the work pages are pretty
full of text, huh? No way, Jose. Admittedly this is a trade
paperback so the pages are bigger, but there is a one inch margin at
the bottom of a page, another one up the sides, three quarters of an
inch at the top. If Fermat had had margins like that mathematicians
everywhere would be working on the Goldbach conjecture! Ah, but the
text itself. With all that margin, they must have fine print, right?
Nope. It's all set in Flight-to-the-Mushroom-Planet pica. Even with
inflated movie ticket prices, it is now much cheaper to see ten
minutes of film than to read ten minutes of book. Now admittedly
there is an afterword by one Jim Frenkel, who just happens to be the
publisher, and another afterword by Dr. Robert Forward but even so,
that's not what you buy the book for.
Tom Kidd's internal art is not his best work and at times is a
long way from his best work. It isn't helped by the fact that often
the illustrations are on inappropriate pages. As an illustration for
the story his cover is much better, but then, that may be why it's on
the cover, or being on the cover may be why it's good.
Now I may not be the world's best person to review the story
itself. Spinrad is heavily into writing style, and frankly, I prefer
ideas. I'd rather read a story by Forward with an afterword by
Spinrad than the other way around. Ah, but 'twas not to be. Spinrad
sets his story on a fleet of generation ships, but he does not seem
to show any great understanding of what life might be like on a
generation ship--again, he is a man more of style than of ideas. The
main character is sort of an interior decorator and artist and as
such may well be one of the least interesting people in the fleet.
After the story Forward tells the reader about Bussard engines and
the Fermi Paradox. Spinrad might understand both concepts, but in
the story they seem to be used without being really understood.
Forward's afterword (!) might fit as well after TAU ZERO. There are
probably more science fictional ideas in Forward's short afterword
than in Spinrad's story.
Spinrad's tale concludes with a sort of story within a story
within a story of a discussion between God and the Devil discussing
man. It's the best part of the novella, but it mostly serves to
remind us how much better George Bernard Shaw was at this sort of
thing.
RIDING THE TORCH is probably NOT the best way a science fiction
fan can spend $6.95.