Fiction from the future

Press, 14 April 1979, Page 17

Fiction from the future

Survivor. By Octavia E. Butler. Sidgwick and Jackson. 185 pp. $10.40.

Earth’s first returning spaceship is infected with a devastating viral mutation, destroying civilisation and herding mankind into protective enclaves from the wild humans and mutants. A group of missionaries, whose particular obsession is the purity of the human form, finds a oneway ticket to another planet, taking with them a formerly “wild’ human girl. On their new planet they cooperate with a furry, humanoid, but chameleon-like race which later dominates them with a mutually addictive drug. Another tribe of planetary natives captures the girl, Alanna, withdraws her from addiction, and absorbs her into their tribe. She is recaptured and, with her divided loyalties, sets about saving both the missionaries who adopted her and the alien tribes.

This is an outstanding story which, dare 1 say it, combines both ruthlessness and compassion in a peculiarly feminine story. Most impressive: I will look for more from Octavia Butler. — Chris Neale.

Under a Calculating Star. By John Morressy. Sidgwick and Jackson. 186 pp. $10.40.

Mankind’s stellar Diaspora has come and gone: technology and scientific innovation is lost in a galactic Dark Age. AU that is left are the semilegendary artefacts of a centuries-past Golden Age, including its most lasting achievement — inter-stellar space travel.

The protagonists are both spacegoing privateers, Jorry, the calculating captain, and Axxal, a human mutation noted for exceptional strength and stupidity. While the two are together Axxal’s strength complements Jorry’s resourcefulness, but eventually they part, Jorry to over-reach himself in the grand gesture, Axxal to find in himself more cerebral sufficiency than he expected. This is a story which starts rather like an ersatz “Doc” Smith, but tightens as it goes. A thorough revision of the initial chapters would have greatly improved this particular view of a rather bleak future.—Chris Neale.