Alpha Centauri or Die! by Leigh Brackett

Here we have another of the fruits of my harvest of the used bookstore in Creston, Iowa, a copy of the 1976 Ace paperback of Leigh Brackett's 1963 novel Alpha Centauri or Die!, Ace 01770.  I can't say I like the cover illustration very much, but I love the title font, with the tall narrow vertical letters and the over-sized, perfectly circular round letters.  Where do I find out the name of this font so I can use it on my resume, last will and testament, rental agreements and all important correspondence?

My copy of Alpha Centauri or Die! was previously owned by a Dennis Kragel, who inscribed his name on the book in at least four places.  As well as Mr. Kragel's name, on the very first page of the book we see an odd ink stamp, showing a happy child and the letter "A."  I want to believe that Mr. Kragel had a vast science fiction library and had a set of stamps, A, B, C, D and F, that he used to record a grade for each book.  Or maybe Mr. Kragel had a teacher at school who awarded "A" students with paperback books?  Awesome! 

So, I already love the hell out of this book as a physical artifact.  But is it worth reading?

Yes!  Alpha Centauri or Die! is a fun adventure story that makes you say, "Of course George Lucas wanted this chick to write a Star Wars movie!"  People are shooting, space ships are exploding, a boarding party breaks into a robot ship that is about to launch a nuclear missile at the defenseless vessel their families are in, a woman is using her telepathic powers, aliens are using their teleportation powers.  (My spell check wants to read a story about aliens using their deportation powers.)

Alpha Centauri or Die! is also a rhetorical attack on burdensome government regulations that trade liberty for security, that eliminate risk and instability but also stifle the human spirit and human progress.  Mankind has explored and settled the solar system, and is on the brink of developing a means of exploring interstellar space, when the voters, tired of the boom and bust economic cycle and of interstellar warfare, put the government in charge of the economy.  Now all production and all population is subject to government planning, it is illegal to own a firearm, the government tells you where you are allowed to live, and people aren't allowed to travel through space.  If the government thinks a person or goods should travel from one planet to another, it is done by a robot space ship under government control.  Friedrich Hayek, where are you when we need you?    

Our hero is Kirby, who spent his early career in space before all the "Stabilization Acts" were passed.  Kirby is an Earthman living on Mars with his second wife, a Martian woman, Shari, who has telepathic powers.  You can believe those telepathic powers come in handy when Kirby is trying to escape the authorities.  The authorities are after him because Kirby and his buddies still dream of sailing the void, and they have been refurbishing an illegal starship in a secluded part of the Martian desert!

Employing their illegally owned firearms, Kirby, Shari, and comrades fight their way off Mars in their illegal ship and head for Alpha Centauri.  Many of the men have brought their wives along, and these women aren't thrilled to learn that it will take five years to reach Alpha Centauri.  Some of them want to go back to Mars - they were perfectly happy living under the cradle-to-grave welfare state!  In Trader to the Stars Poul Anderson took the line that most people aren't really committed to freedom and independence, that most people are willing, or eager, to be coddled and sheltered by the government, and Brackett seems to be taking the same line here, but with an added gender element.  More than once she suggests that it is men far more than women who are keen on taking risks and going on adventures, and so chafe under government restrictions.  Kirby himself has several crises of conscience over the course of the book - was he right to lead these people into danger in the name of freedom, is he just a selfish fanatic who refuses to admit when he is wrong?    

The final third of the 147 page book takes place on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, where Kirby and company meet benevolent aliens who help protect them from pursuing government drone ships.  These aliens do have a deus ex machina element to them (how else will Kirby fight off a space navy which has the resources of the entire solar system at its disposal?) but Brackett also seems to be presenting these aliens as a foil for humankind.  The Alpha Centaurans are super-powerful but also absolutely unambitious and even decadent, and Kirby suggests that the human race, because it has to work for its achievements, has actually been dealt a better hand by fate.

I can't resist the temptation to compare Alpha Centauri or Die! with James Blish's And All the Stars a Stage, which I read just a few days ago.  Both novels are about people who leave behind a socialistic society to be the first of their race to explore the stars, and both vocally espouse traditional ideas about gender roles.  Blish's book is probably more "ambitious" and "sciencefictiony" with its science and economics lectures and its speculations about the origins of Earth religious myths.  But Brackett's book is better written when it comes to pacing and characters.  And All the Stars a Stage feels cold and slow, and pessimistic, while Alpha Centauri or Die! is quick and passionate, and optimistic about humanity's ability to accomplish great things.  (Brackett's optimism is a mature one that doesn't pretend change, progress, and adventure doesn't entail sacrifice and risk.)  Brackett also tries to portray love relationships, between Kirby and Shari, between the other adventurous men and their (perhaps not so adventurous) wives, between the mothers and their children, and even between the telepathic Shari and the Alpha Centaurans.  I remember the human relationships in Blish's And All the Stars a Stage being uninteresting or actually demeaning.   

Alpha Centauri or Die! is a good adventure story, a solid piece of entertainment I'm happy to recommend to SF fans.

The Star Dwellers and And All the Stars a Stage by James Blish

Years ago I read James Blish's VOR and The Star Dwellers and didn't care for either one.  I remember nothing about VOR (a giant overheated alien lands on Earth?) but I have my February 18, 2007 Amazon review to refresh my memory about The Star Dwellers (text below edited to rectify error regarding publication date):

I bought the 1970 Berkley paperback of this 1961 novel for its lovely red/purple cover. The novel, which is short by today's standards, 128 pages, is weak. The plot consists of an interesting trip through space to meet some interesting aliens, but also some boring diplomacy which Blish tries to make more interesting by piling on lots of silly melodramatic moments, including what amounts to a courtroom scene in which the star witness climbs out of his sickbed to provide crucial testimony. Worst of all the first half of the book consists of stereotypical cardboard characters sitting around yakking away.

You might like this if you are interested in pacifistic SF in which aliens have to keep us violent humans in line, or were wondering about James Blish's theories on education, popular music and censorship, but otherwise I have to advise that you steer clear.

This week I gave Blish another shot, reading his And All the Stars a Stage, a 1971 novel (revised from a 1960 magazine version, published in two parts), in its 1974 Avon printing.

Jorn Birn lives in a society dominated by women and plagued by severe (male) unemployment.  It wasn't always this way; a few hundred years ago the invention of an efficient energy source, easy birth control, and a means to select the sex of babies prior to birth, has lead to a population in which there are far more men than women.  Nowadays women have harems of male husbands, gay men are conspicuously "out" and conspicuously more successful in business than straight men, and many men live on the dole in government housing, clad in government-issued clothes.  Women have all the big government offices, and the executive of the world is "The Matriarch."

By dint of passing a bunch of mental and physical tests, Jorn becomes an astronaut in the new program to launch the first interstellar ship.  He's lucky to land this job, because even before the ship is finished it is learned that the sun will go nova soon, and all life on the planet will be extinct in five or six years!  Less than one person out of ten million is going to fit in the spaceships the Matriarch's government begins feverishly building.   

We achieve blast off on page 80 of this 191 page book, Jorn and co leaving the screaming mobs behind to be burned to a cinder by solar radiation.  For months the overcrowded ships hunt the galaxy for a suitable landing place.  Feminists may bristle to learn that, once away from the planetary surface, men begin to reassert their natural role as leaders.  The characters, and the omniscient narrator, assert that women make poor mathematicians, engineers, and composers of serious music.  On page 111 Jorn and friends land on a planet, but are defeated by the native wildlife.  Years, then decades, go by without finding a colonizable world.  Finally, when most of the characters are dead and Jorn is an elderly arthritic man, the ship lands on the ancient Earth, year 3900 B.C.  In what I guess is an expression of religious faith on the part of Blish we are told that Jorn's people and the Earth people are built on the same "Model" and can interbreed.  Alien genes enter the Earth gene pool, and alien myths based on Jorn's adventures enter Earth legend and religion.

And All the Stars a Stage is not very good.  It reads more like a dry history of a major historical event, told from a bird's eye view, than an adventure story or drama about individuals.  There are boring science and economics lectures.  Odd and interesting details are introduced and then abandoned; the idea that homosexuals form a powerful class within the matriarchal society is mentioned once and then forgotten, for example.  Back on the home planet most men had little laboratory-grown semi-parasitic pets called familiars that look like two foot long snakes or worms and live inside the men's clothes.  (Maybe these are a symbolic representation of masturbation... it seems that married men give up their familiars.  It also seems like the familiar is the prototype of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.)  Blish makes a big deal about these familiars, and then doesn't mention them for 100 pages until dramatically one of them becomes central to the story for a few pages.  (It grows to huge size and has to be killed with a flamethrower.) 

It is not clear what And All the Stars a Stage is "about," what it is trying to be.  It is not a fast paced adventure story, or a detailed depiction of an alien society, or a study or satire of gender roles, though it has half-baked aspects of all those SF templates.  Blish's pedestrian writing style doesn't elevate the material, and the whole thing feels flat.     

I'm on the fence over this one; it is not offensively bad (female mathematicians and composers may disagree on that score), just limp, with interesting flickers here and there.  I guess I'll be awarding it the famous "barely acceptable" rating.  Don't be surprised if it takes me another seven years to get back to James Blish's oeuvre.