| Article: 353
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews #24: Tom Godwin
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 08 Sep 93 11:50:06 GMT
Belated Reviews #24: Tom Godwin
I've been concentrating primarily on major authors and primarily on
novels, but Tom Godwin gets in largely on the strength of a single short
story. (Good as it must feel to produce a story that has a lasting
impact, it must be miserable to then keep writing for another quarter of a
century without ever living up to that one story.) Aside from his stories,
Godwin also wrote three novels, two of which I enjoyed far out of proportion
to their literary merits.
"The Cold Equations" (****) is the story for which Tom Godwin is best known.
It should be understood, at least in part, as a reaction to a subgenre of
'problem' stories, which typically got solved by the protagonist's pulling
a scientific or technological rabbit out of a hat. The day would be saved
when the hero realized that energy could be stored as angular momentum or
that wheels don't have to be round (okay, so this came later, sue me) or
whatever else the plot required. So Godwin wrote a story in which there
was no rabbit -- just hard choices.
(A frequent complaint about the story is that the situation is highly
artificial -- in particular, that spaceships are allowed unrealistically
low margins of error. I don't see this as an interesting objection:
Analogous situations arise in the real world frequently enough. The
artificiality just allows the writer to get to the meat of the short story
without getting bogged down in setting up the problem.)
It's a powerful story -- a bit overwritten, but still worth seeking out --
and has been anthologized frequently. (My own copies of the story are in
Asimov's "The Great SF Stories" of 1954 and in Dikty's "5 Tales from
Tomorrow", which consists of selections from "The Best Science Fiction
Stories and Novels: 1955".)
"Space Prison" (***) was Tom Godwin's first novel. The three stars are a
compromise between four, for how much I enjoyed it, back when, and two, for
the plot holes I generally ignore and the writing that isn't equal to the
author's vision. The space prison of the title is Ragnarok, a planet which
likely helped inspire Harrison's "Deathworld" a couple of years later -- a
planet of high gravity, impossible temperature extremes, murderous wildlife,
and no usable resources. The expedition that discovered it wrote it off as
uninhabitable after the sixth expedition member was killed. It is near
Ragnarok that a colony mission is intercepted by enemies, and it is on
Ragnarok that about half the colonists are left to die. Most do so in short
order. The book covers the two-century history of this involuntary colony,
as it survives and finally adapts and thrives.
"The Space Barbarians" (**) is a sequel to "Space Prison". The interception
of the colony ship was the opening shot in a war that is still going on
two centuries later, and which Earth is losing -- until the survivors of
Ragnarok appear on the scene. (The space technology is such that their
high-gravity adaptation is tactically decisive.) At the start of this book,
three years have passed and the war that Earth spent two centuries losing is
over. It can be hard to be grateful under such circumstances, and when
disaster strikes Ragnarok, the survivors find themselves on their own. I
first encountered this space opera in my teens, and enjoyed it more than
"Space Prison", but it hasn't held up as well.
Paperback editions of "Space Prison" and "The Space Barbarians" show up
periodically in used book stores. Godwin's third novel, "Beyond Another
Star" (*), is a disappointment.
%A Godwin, Tom
%T The Cold Equations
%T Space Prison
%T The Space Barbarians
Standard introduction and disclaimer for Belated Reviews follows.
Belated Reviews cover science fiction and fantasy of earlier decades.
They're for newer readers who have wondered about the older titles on the
shelves, or who are interested in what sf/f was like in its younger days.
The emphasis is on helping interested readers identify books to try first,
not on discussing the books in depth.
A general caveat is in order: Most of the classics of yesteryear have not
aged well. If you didn't encounter them back when, or in your early teens,
they will probably not give you the unforced pleasure they gave their
original audiences. You may find yourself having to make allowances for
writing you consider shallow or politics you consider regressive. When I
name specific titles, I'll often rate them using the following scale:
**** Recommended.
*** An old favorite that hasn't aged well, and wouldn't get a good
reception if it were written today. Enjoyable on its own terms.
** A solid book, worth reading if you like the author's works.
* Nothing special.
Additional disclaimers: Authors are not chosen for review in any particular
order. The reviews don't attempt to be comprehensive. No distinction is
made between books which are still in print and books which are not.
-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com
The surface of the strange, forbidden planet was roughly textured and green,
much like cottage cheese gets way after the date on the lid says it is all
right to buy it. - Scott Jones
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