Customer Reviews

Code Three

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This is not the complete book. It is only the first three chapters. This book is only 87 pages in length. I bought a complete copy from an online bookseller that is over 270 pages.

This is an expanded version of a 56 page story that appeared in a science fiction magazine, Analog. The story is (legally) available on the Internet in several places, most notably Project Gutenberg and Baen's Webscriptions.

This is a review of the 176 page novelette, with the shown cover, which extends and continues the story. In the future North America, high speed highways link Canada to Mexico through the United States, and vehicles travel in excess of five hundred miles per hour. Color-coded lanes separate the fastest traffic, and it is a crime to set foot on the Thruway. The story follows two Thruway Patrol officers and a feisty paramedic ("Medical-Surgical Officer") who patrol thousands of miles in a single shift.

Although this story is now fifty years old and some of the cultural references may be jarring, many of the same problems we deal with today on the roads are presented --- the speeder, the drunk driver, the rich man with pull trying to get out of a ticket, the man racing to take his pregnant wife to the hospital, the clunker that doesn't belong on the highway . . . except that at such high speeds, spectacular wrecks can and do result. The Thruway Patrol and its specialized patrol vehicles, wreckers, ambulances and jetcopters are there to clean up the mess -- and the author paints a picture of the infrastructure, both technological and human, required to support this feat.

The story almost has the flavor of early cyberpunk -- too much, too fast, flesh and bone weaker than speed and metal, with bureaucracy inadequate to the task of keeping the four separated. But the Thruway Patrol will keep trying to prevent accidents and when they fail, untangle the wreckage.

The mass market paperback is expanded from a short story published in one of the SF magazines published in the 1960's.

Written before the fuel crisis, global warming, and with gas cheap and plentiful. Raphael presents a world that can never be, with car flying down the road, air cushioned, at 600 miles an hour.

The men are handsome and crewcut in coveralls, traveling down the super highway in a tank of a vehicle as big as an eighteen wheeler. The women are doctors, riding in the back of the vehicle, ready to jump to the assistance of a civilian in need.

In many ways this is a perfect example of SF from the late 1950's early 1960's.

This novel is well worth your time and effort to find and read.

Very disappointed to discover less than one-third of the orginal book was included; the print version was 176 pages long. The Kindle version (87 pages) ends at pg 56 of the original. I checked several other Kindle versions with the same results. It's like watching only the 1st quarter of a football game then turning the TV off

Future traffic policing is a 24 hour a day live in your vehicle job for these officers. Their banter is very entertaining.

3.5 out of 5

Future traffic policing is a 24 hour a day live in your vehicle job for these officers. Their banter is very entertaining.

3.5 out of 5