Starbridge
Jack Williamson and James Gunn
Sidgwick.& Jackson 1978
213 pages
Space opera. This is it, right in the middle. Great thewed soldier of fortune single-handedly (at first) takes on galactic empire and … much ensues. I first read this book many years ago, when fiction and SF were much newer to me, and I recall finding it a rollicking adventure. Now … it still rollicks, but I can see some issues.
The story revolves around Alan Horn and his attempts to avoid capture after the hired killing — for money — of a powerful man. (All but one of the powerful people are men, and the one exception is beautiful and falls for the hero.) (We also meet a Chinese gentleman whose portrayal might not quite gel with the 2010s.)
First, the prose. While here and there it rises to a height sufficient to describe the stunning vistas and galaxy-spanning civilisation that the book tries to evoke, all too often it is passive and flat. “The room was black.” Lots of passive sentences; the action is often inventive enough, but it does not leap off the page.
The book is essentially a long chase as Horn flees and flies and leaps through the tunnels that connect the worlds of the empire of Eron — the titular star bridges that circumvent the speed of light. The story moves fast, travelling through a series of exotic locations. Horn is a standard but sufficiently likeable hero. He is resourceful, lucky, and skilled. He is charismatic, intuitive and brave.
The book would make a decent movie “in the tradition of Starwars” (though of course the book came first).
The book uses a few devices — chapters are separated by what amount to explanatory extracts from the Encyclopaedia Galactica, and bracketing by an prologue and epilogue — and (a point of interest) it explicitly interrogates the idea of free will. Horn is tough, resourceful, strong — yet is he really in charge of his own fate?
So we have a story that is full of action, hits the requisite plot points of an underdog battling a mighty empire, and has a few more thoughtful ideas chucked in to deepen it. It all works pretty well, if (at least in broad terms) without too many surprises. The prose does let the book down. While it is perfectly serviceable, it is flat too often. Most of the metaphors are fine, but the mouse of tension nibbling at the corner of his mind (or whatever it was) did bunt me out of the story.
Good, solid space opera, 1953 style. I enjoyed it at a time when I did not feel like reading something serious.
DSPACE 