DDYER@USC-ISIB@sri-unix.UUCP (09/09/83)
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER@USC-ISIB> VOYAGE FROM YESTERYEAR James P. Hogan This is the best S.F. I've read in several months. Evaluated strictly as writing, it is very good; well plotted, good characterization, believable technology consistantly applied, and it has something to say. The plot deals with an encounter between a human colony on Alpha Centauri, which had been orphaned by an atomic war on Earth, and a rescue mission from the Earth, bent on protecting the colonists from two other rescue missions following a few years behind. Needless to say, the colonists dont want to be rescued. The colonists have evolved an extreme (utopian) anarchist society. The conflict of this mode of organization with the authoritarian, bureaucratic, and military tendancies of the rescuers provides most of the grist for the plot. The message is that anarchy works. Hogan does get preachy at times (shades of Heinlein!) in the process of selling his wares. I couldn't completely suspend disbelief for the extreme case presented, but it's food for thought, and the prosletizing doesn't get in the way too often. -------