Reviews for The Moon-Voyage

The average rating for The Moon-Voyage based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-04 00:00:00 Just Whitfield Rating: 3.5* of five The Publisher Says: Four-Day Planet . . . where the killing heat of a thousand-hour "day" drives men underground, and the glorious hundred-hour sunset is followed by a thousand-hour night so cold that only an Extreme Environment Suit can preserve the life of anyone caught outside. Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he's being cheated of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution. My Review: Fenris might not be the Garden Spot of the Galaxy, sort of like the future's equivalent of a "shithole country" in fact, but the men there are a hardy, self-sufficient lot. Yes, I said "men" and made no attempt to be inclusive. H. Beam Piper, the author, was born in 1903 and died of self-inflicted starvation due to absurd, overweening pride in 1964. He was a gun nut. He married once, and was divorced or separated from his wife in short order because he was convinced that she married him for money. Not a likely feminist icon's profile. His writing and his attitudes show that. Strangely enough, though, there's an admixture of Powerful Woman hints that make me think his was a late-life learned misogyny. So anyway, this 1961 tale from the Terro-Human Future History of Piper's creation never called to me. I assumed it would be all about the great-man theory of history that libertarians tend to like. It is, in a way; Steve Ravick, the successfully ensconced ruler of the economy on Fenris, is a master manipulator and born gangster, an exceptional man in all the wrong right ways. He lied successfully to the economic engines of Fenris, the workers, telling them how things were terrible and he'd have to fight Those Others just to give them half of what their labor got them before. He did this by cutting them off from any source of information he didn't like and insulting and belittling the one outlet he allows to remain in business. He reminds me of the Koch brothers and their stooge 45. Like, a lot. What I didn't expect was to feel so nostalgic for the narrator of the story being a journalist. A young lad very eager to seek out The Truth and to be the one who, in H.L. Mencken's memorable definition of a journalist's job, "afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted." As a result he breaks the story of a lifetime. At seventeen! Of course, his dad owns the paper, but he's the one who found, followed, and shaped the story, which is the central trait of a born reporter. Ultimately, the reason I enjoyed the read was the ending, wherein Right(s) and Reason prevail over caddish, greedy oligarchy. I was amused by the sixty-year-old vision of future technology, but charmed by the sixty-year-old faith in the ability of The People to rebel against unjust, unprincipled rulers. Piper's writing was serviceable, failing to ignite my passion in this book's telling. I was ignited by what was told. In a different political and economic climate I would've been pretty much uninterested in the tale. Piper tends to lard his story with way too many names...characters we'll never meet have first and last names like one Oscar Fujisawa, the tall, blond Viking action hero of part of the story. Piper wants to make the point that, away from Earth and far into the future, names are just handy labels. Ethnicity is a relic, a distant and fading social construct. I like the idea, at least insofar as it makes plain the social system doesn't discriminate based on superficial qualities, but to give *every* minor character a first and last name with such a heavy significance makes this reader tired. Still and all, despite low expectations, reading this elderly writer's surprisingly sanguine take on Humanity's future was a tonic. I'm glad I did it, and since the book is a whopping 99¢ on Kindle, I think you would be as well.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-28 00:00:00 Ken Obrocj If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review. Luminiferous Aether: "Four-Day Planet" by H. Beam Piper "I went through the gateway, towing my equipment in a contragravity hamper over my head. As usual, I was wondering what it would take, short of a revolution, to get the city of Port Sandor as clean and tidy and well lighted as the spaceport area. I knew Dad's editorials and my sarcastic news stories wouldn't do it. We'd been trying long enough. The two girls in bikinis in front of me pushed on, still gabbling about the fight one of them had had with her boy friend [sic], and I closed up behind the half dozen monster-hunters in long trousers, ankle boots and short boat-jackets, with big knives on their belts. They must have all been from the same crew, because they weren't arguing about whose ship was fastest, had the toughest skipper, and made the most money. They were talking about the price of tallow-wax, and they seemed to have picked up a rumor that it was going to be cut another ten centisols a pound. I eavesdropped shamelessly, but it was the same rumor I'd picked up, myself, a little earlier."   In "Four-Day Planet" by H. Beam Piper   I used to read/watch SF and was also always careful to be scandalized at how little regard the genre got until I realized that ... well ... an awful lot of it does suck. Or at least, an awful lot of it is an awful lot like an awful lot else. The same five characters, the same one plot. There's good stuff out there, but the signal to noise ratio is lower than almost any other genre of entertainment or literature. Vast, vast, vast swathes of the stuff is bug-eyed monsters, buzz-cuts with guns, female eye-candy, and explosions: the power fantasies of 15 year old boys, in other words. Okay okay, okay, there's some good stuff -- someone will always point out the celestial Octavia Butler or Ursula Le Guin -- but the fact remains, you need to swim through an ocean of silicone and lasers to get to the good stuff.     If you're into vintage SF, read on.