Monday, July 24, 2017

Tales from the Bargain BIn - Or how I learned to stop worrying and hate "Forge of the Elders"

We're going to try something new today, faithful blog readers. (OK, reader).  We assume that most other book reviewers carefully read each book  and turn their reviews in after they've read the book. Maybe they wait a few hours to digest what they've read.  Maybe they take notes on the book's plot and themes while their reading. That way they know that their not getting plot details wrong when they sit down to right.

But not all book are created equal. That are some books that are so bad, so painful to read that they simply don't deserve the same level of thought one would put into a review of the classics of literature like The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, and of course,  I Was A White Trash Zombie.  Some books need a taking down by some one who not only doesn't remember the details right but doesn't actually care. That's why I'm giving you a new column called "Tales from the Bargain Bin", a review of terrible books that I bought on the cheap and read some years ago. Because these books really do deserve it...

So to start with we're going to start with libertarian SF writer's, L Neil Smith's novel/manifesto Forge of the Elders. Now, I must admit that I don't share Smith's politics and I worried time that my hatred for this book had something to do with this. Then, I read the Illuminatus trilogy which advocates for anarchy and AE Van Vogt's The Mind Cage which appears to come out in favor of monarchy and dictatorship and I liked both of them. So it's not the shaky politics that I found revolting about Forge of the Elders.

But, let's start with what's good about the book. It has a nice cover. A really, really nice cover. Painted with rich colors, lots off detail, shows the characters, gives the reader an idea of the book's plot. They just don't make covers like that anymore.

Now to the things that are not so good namely, the plot, the characters, the writing.  The plot is set in the far future where America has been taken over by the Soviet Union. (Which is actually pretty prescient come to think of it).  A group of political undesirables are assigned to a space mission to harvest the resources of an asteroid to help sustain the soviet state.

Unfortunately, mostly for the reader, the asteroid is occupied by a group of humans and animal people from a parallel universe.  These animal people are led by the titular Elders, a group of giant libertarian squids.  Among the asteroid dwellers is our hero,  the human Eichra Oran (I don't know if I'm spelling that correctly and I don't care), one of those Randian Ubermensch types who is so perfect and heroic that you kind of find yourself rooting for the villains.

Here's a summary of the story:

CREWMAN: I have doubts about the Communist system but I am afraid to voice them.

EZRA ORTAN: Libertarianism is awesome. You should be a libertarian. Have I mentioned that I am a libertarian today? Libertarian.

TALKING DOG SIDEKICK: I'm a talking dog sidekick.

EVERY MAJOR FEMALE CHARACTER: Oh, Edrard Onan, you're so manly. I must sleep with you.

SHIP'S MORALE OFFICER: I'm a hardline communist. I hate you,  Eckhardt Oman. However, the fact that I am clearly a moron who is not qualified to run an Arby's should make it obvious that I am not the main antagonist and will see the error of my way at the end of the book.

EVIL RUSSIAN CYBORG TRILOBITE MAN: I am the main antagonist. I'm poorly explained and literally come out of nowhere.

READER: Could- could this book be about the Evil Russian Cyborg Trilobite Man instead?

So, yeah, there you have it a book hundreds of a pages long whose only selling point is a character who literally only show up in the last few chapters.  All the rest of the book is basically indistinguishable from reading a political pamphlet passed out by an unhinged man. In fact, reading the pamphlet might actually be less of a waste of your time.