The theoretical Tuvela, totally self-confident, certainly would be willing to talk to the aliens at this point, press the psychological advantage she'd gained. On the other hand, the Tuvela presumably would know what to do if it turned out she'd stepped into a Parahuan trap. Nile wasn't sure she would know what to do.Back in August of 2019, when it was still safe to walk the streets without a hazmat suit, I purchased the 1968 Ace Science Fiction Special edition of James H. Schmitz's The Demon Breed with its fun cover by Leo and Diane Dillon at Second Story Books. Schmitz has some important fans; in the past I have linked to Mercedes Lackey's passionate praise of Schmitz and account of her own introduction to science fiction, and on the back of this book are blurbs from John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding and Analog, Jack Vance, author of the Cugel books, the Demon Princes novels, and many other entertaining works, and Andre Norton, who reminds us that she has done research on otters. I've enjoyed several things by Schmitz myself, so I'm looking forward to The Demon Breed, which appeared in serialized form in Analog the same year the paperback edition came out, under the title The Tuvela.
The story starts en medias res. In the first chapter we meet Ticos Cay, a scientist, who is being interrogated under torture by sinister amphibian aliens, the Parahuan. The setting is the planet Nandy-Cline, a relatively lightly settled planet on the edge of the space empire so many of Schmitz's stories are set in, The Federation of the Hub. The hostile aliens are well-drawn, Schmitz ably making them interesting with a minimum of verbiage. We also meet Nile Etland, a young woman scientist born on Nandy-Cline who was one of Ticos Cay's students when she was at university on some other planet. She is flying around in an aircar with a seven-foot-tall talking otter, looking for Ticos.
My copy, front... |
Periodically over 18 months Nile has radioed Ticos to learn his location and then visited him to bring him supplies and collect his valuable research. But he has stopped answering her calls and so as the story proper begins, she is searching for him.
...and back. |
Nile negotiates with the Parahuan invaders, and achieves success--the undecided elites join the conservative faction in deciding to scotch the operation to conquer Nandy-Cline. But the Voice of Action breaks all the rules and launches a mutiny, murdering many of the leaders of the expedition and taking it over. Nile and the giant otter have to spring Ticos, fight their way out of the alien base, signal for help, and then, after a few more humans and otters arrive, they engage in sabotage that cripples the Parahuan space ships and convinces the amphibians to flee. The novel ends with a somewhat superfluous scene on the Parahuan home world in which the elites of that cruel race discuss their next move and decide that Nile's success indicates that they should hold off on attacking the Federation of the Hub for the foreseeable future.
The Demon Breed is a pretty traditional SF story--human scientists defeat alien invaders via their superior knowledge of science and through quick thinking (and by shooting them with ray guns.) Schmitz does a good job with all the traditional SF elements--the gadgets, the monsters (and there are many) the aliens, and the talk of various longevity treatments are quite good--and the thriller elements--the sneaking and fighting and chasing--are also entertaining.
When I write about SF stories I often talk about the work's political or social bent--lots of SF writers have a philosophical theory or a political and social program and use their work to describe the way they think the world works or the way they think it should work, to comment on relationships between men and women or parents and children or the state and the populace, or to trumpet the potential benefits or warn of the potential dangers of technology. Beyond the subtle feminism of having a woman take the lead in the commando/guerrilla aspects of the story, and the story's casual science-and-technology-are-awesome vibe, there is relatively little social and political jazz going on in The Demon Breed. An exception is a discussion between Nile and Ticos about the form and style of the Federation government, which is a federal system in which the central government is pretty hands off and lets the many local governments under it solve their own problems as they see fit--Ticos suggests that this level of diversity and freedom, and the resulting inter-human competition, keeps the human race strong and adaptable and thus ready to face any external non-human threat that may arise.
The Demon Breed is a very good action-adventure piece, and I recommend it, in particular to people who like an adventure story and find the political and social commentary of so much SF to be irritating or distracting.
1979 and 2001 depictions of Nile Etland and her giant otter comrades |
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