Customer Reviews

Black Star Rising

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Written between Pohl's Heechee Rendezvous (1984) and his widely known satirical Merchant's War (1986), one would expect Black Star Rising (1985) to retain some aspects of his former greatness, as in the popular Man Plus and Gateway. However, he seems to have led himself astray with this one-off novel like he did with another one-off novel in the 1980s- Syzygy. Both flopped.

Black Star Rising has a noble start: `It's the late twenty-first century. The USA and USSR have destroyed each other in a catastrophic nuclear exchange, and China now rules the Americans.' The reader is introduced to a Caucasian workforce in Alabama who are restricted to the farm in which they work. Castor has discovered a human head in the rice fields and is called to the city to deliver his testimony. He becomes embroiled with the Han-descended Police Inspector, the many-minded Professor and the affairs dealing with a mysterious object approaching Earth. The start is fairly good and lays a great foundation for a prospectively good novel...

... but inevitably the novel must continue. Behind this dignified steed of a novel's start there only follows a long trail of steaming horse apples. Once the `American Cabinet' arrives on alien soil (World), the plot quickly loses steam with many pages of doubletalk terminology and a bizarre, out-of-the-blue plot twist with its ridiculous self-contained history. What follows is a sexual romp for a small cast of characters parallel to the politicking of people from Earth and the people of World. There are no bombshells dropped in plot (steady as she goes), there is no character enrichment (like a placid lake of boredom) and even the ending receives a shrug of `whatever.' One more additional observance includes the annoying overuse of the word `fool' and the exclamation point in the internal bickering of the Professor.

This is the eleventh Pohl book I've read and it's the fifth book of his I've sold away (along with Man Plus, Years of the City, Beyond the Blue Horizon and Syzygy). Unless you really like Pohl's work, I'd suggest avoiding this one-off novel and sticking to his more serial works and, maybe, short stories.

This was one of the first sci-fi's I read as a child, and it whet my voracity for the genre. The scenario was plausible at the time of its writing (1980's), and depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which Communist China and India are the world powers. An unexpected plot twist juxtaposes an idealized remnant of American civilization with the reality of the post-war Earth.

This book is humorous as other Pohl novels (although this is a bit more light-hearted as well). The novel takes place in a nearish-future world, where the US and Russia pretty much left each other defenseless after years of warring; because they no longer had defense, and other countries were affected too, the densely populated China and India took over the world easily (in a non-ridiculous kind of way).

Thus the stage is set; I don't feel like just ripping of the back of the book's summary so I'll just say this: Pohl's humorous touch adds spice to this Sci-fi novel with an interesting look on the future. The back cover said it's also an important message to mankind, but I don't know... judge for yourself, if you can find this book at a used bookseller. Four stars, because I don't want to give it a "perfect rating."

In the dystopia of Black Star Rising, China and India stepped in to save a world ravaged by the nuclear war began by the Soviet Union and the US. While the survivors in the US feel resentment that their saviours occupied the land, the Chinese feel that the "Yankees" can no longer be trusted to hold power in the world. It is against this backdrop that a mysterious spaceship appears in space, propelling a young ethnically American peasant into sudden prominence and a raft of difficult choices.

Pohl is one of the most prolific and long-producing authors in science fiction. Black Star Rising is not part of one of his larger series, but is an interesting digression which is informed by the favorite Pohl themes as well as by the concerns of 1985, in which it was written. It should satisfy his fans and appeal to readers new to his work.

This was one of the first sci-fi's I read as a child, and it whet my voracity for the genre. The scenario was plausible at the time of its writing (1980's), and depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which Communist China and India are the world powers. An unexpected plot twist juxtaposes an idealized remnant of American civilization with the reality of the post-war Earth.