Conference noted::sf

1196.0. "Mack Reynolds" by VERGA::KLAES (Quo vadimus?) Wed Nov 24 1993 00:44

Article: 443
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews PS#29: Mack Reynolds
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 24 Nov 93 00:47:28 GMT
 
		Belated Reviews PS#29:  Mack Reynolds
 
Mack Reynolds wrote a great deal of speculative fiction.  Most of his
speculation was not directed at science and technology, however, but at
politics and sociology.  He had ideas about what made a society tick --
and how that might change in the future -- and used his fiction to work
those ideas through.  He was sometimes successful -- remarkably successful,
given the subject matter, I suppose -- at not converting his books into
soapboxes.  This may be because he found the speculation itself too much fun.
 
His novels -- many of the best date from the early and mid sixties -- are
more consistent in their vision of society lagging in its adjustment to
advancing technology.  In his most optimistic novels, people adjust to a
world of plenty; in his more pessimistic ones, much of the population is
unemployed and disenfranchised, despite the fact that there are no material
shortages beyond those which are self-induced.  The political side of his 
writing varies more in detail.  In general, the enemy is seen as a combatable
tendency of people to accumulate -- and then maintain -- power.
 
Reynolds's writing was never particularly good.  Clever, yes, and
imaginative, but don't look for characters you'll care about or plots that
will keep you riveted to your seat.  (I know, but "riveted to your couch"
sounds ridiculous.)  Don't look for novels that are free of exposition,
either, though that tendency is given freer rein in some books than in
others.  Among the ones I most enjoyed:
 
"Time Gladiator" (***) displays many of the characteristics I identified
as typical.  In the twenty-first century, technology-created reality has
been codified in a rigid class system:  The large Lower class is unemployed
for life, and kept happy with bread and circuses in the oldest tradition.
Middle class includes most of those who actually have what to do, and
Upper class is occupied by entrenched descendents of corporate leaders,
major politicians, union leaders, etc.  There is some mobility between
classes, but not much.  Against this background is a world whose alignments
are not much different from those of the nineteen-sixties, with America,
Europe, and the East Bloc being the major players.  
 
Since weapons have gotten *too* good, however, disputes are settled by
low-tech armed combat.  Dennis Land is a professor of Etruscan archeology
who takes up gladiatorial combat as a byproduct of his research, and finds
himself pressured into pursuing it more seriously than he'd intended.
When an international crisis threatens to overturn the status quo, he
finds himself drafted.  (This provides the adventure story which is the
vehicle Reynolds uses to portray this possible future.)  Reynolds set other
novels in this same future, most notably "Mercenary from Tomorrow" (**).
 
"Planetary Agent X" (***) is the first (and best) of what became a series
of novels and stories.  The United Planets of this future is one in which
tolerance of political diversity is taken to an extreme.  Every far-fetched
political theory seems to have found itself its own planet -- in some cases
the politics just happened and the theory came later -- and the only reason
most planets join the United Planets is because it guarantees their freedom
from interference from other planets.  
 
Ronny Bronston is the newest probationary agent of Section G, which is
charged with enforcing the non-interference clause.  His first assignment
is to track down someone codenamed Tommy Paine:  *Somebody* has been
flouting the non-interference laws with a vengeance, demonstrating a
genius for seeking out societies' weak points and using them to bring down
existing orders.  As Bronston follows Paine's trail of havoc (giving us a
chance to see part of the variety of societies in the UP) he begins to
realize what might lie behind Paine's endeavors.
 
"The Rival Rigellians" (***) is placed in a future in which thousands
of planets were colonized and allowed to lapse into barbarism.  Now, a
thousand years later, a ship from Earth has come from to the Rigel system
to bring its two settled planets into modern civilization.  The Pedagogue
is the first of what will be a fleet of such ships, and the crew's knowledge
of social engineering is purely theoretical.  When the team splits on the
best way to effect the desired change, they decide to actually split:  Half
go to one planet and set out to unite it militarily and introduce change
through fiat and central authority.  The others go to the second planet
and introduce change through competition and mercantilism.
 
Ah, you recognize a straw man when you see one.  Well, you're wrong; this 
isn't a tract in which one approach works and one fails.  Both approaches 
do quite well -- albeit at considerable human cost.  Nor do the social 
technicians come out unscathed, as they learn the allure of power.  It's 
a pity Reynolds *wasn't* a more skilled author, because there's the germ 
here of a much better novel than he wrote.
 
"Blackman's Burden" (***) is one of Reynolds's earlier novels, and his
ideas are played out much closer to home, in a time much closer to ours.
The time is the near future and the place is Africa.  In a reaction to
centuries of largely-botched colonialism, the rest of the world has chosen
to leave Africa pretty much on its own.  Aside from some modernization
efforts from by the Reunited Nations and aside from the efforts of various
charitable organizations -- some altruistically motivated, others not --
and aside from the presence of agents pursuing the interests of their
several home countries, and...  
 
In "Blackman's Burden", and in its sequels "Border, Breed Nor Birth" (***)
and "The Best Ye Breed" (**), a small team of those interlopers decides
that what the Sahel *really* needs is not minor charities or piddling
interventions, but political union and modernization.  Needless to say,
almost nobody agrees.  It's an interesting book -- a knowledgeable view of
Africa combined with a cynical view of the human condition.  There is
a short-story epilogue to this trilogy, titled "Black Sheep Astray" (***).
  
Reynolds's strength was in his political and social world-building, but
I've tried to identify the novels I thought did the best jobs of telling a
decent story, as well.  An interesting but exposition-heavy effort is the
overly optimistic "Looking Backward From the Year 2000" (**).  An amusing,
largely satirical, one is "Tomorrow Might Be Different" (**+), in which
an American team manufactures a religion which they hope will convince
Russians to stop trouncing them in the world's markets.  If you find that
you enjoy his writing, there's a lot more where these came from.
 
%A  Reynolds, Mack
%T  Time Gladiator
%T  Planetary Agent X
%T  The Rival Rigellians
%T  Blackman's Burden
 
=============================================================================
 
The postscripts to Belated Reviews cover authors of earlier decades who
didn't fit into the original format -- whether because the author seemed
an inappropriate subject, or because I was unfamiliar with too much of the
author's work, or whatever -- or sometimes just isolated works of such
authors.  The emphasis will continue to be on guiding newer readers
towards books or authors worth trying out, rather than on discussing them
comprehensively or in depth.  I'll retain the rating scheme of ****
(recommended), *** (an old favorite that hasn't aged well), ** (a solid
lesser work), and * (nothing special). 
 
-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com
 
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity." -- W.B. Yeats