Customer Reviews

Contact and Commune

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Both Contact and Commune and Converse and Conflict are in fact part of the novel Forge of the Elders. A third book in this artificially created trilogy was never published by Warner Books. It is the Concluding third of FotE. While I would not discourage anyone from buying these truncated books, I would urge you to buy Forge of the Elderseither in dead tree or kindle versions, otherwise you will be frustrated by the absence of the concluding third of the story.
A.X. Perez

First the space expedition sets down on 5023 Eris to claim the asteroid only to find somebody else was already there. But those that are already there are not human. Nor do they wish to give up the asteroid. And while Earth demands the expedition kick them out it is unlikely that will happen - the beings are from an alternate series of Earths and have technology that could be up to 200 million years ahead of the United World Soviet.
Now, add a couple of murders and shake well.
L. Neil Smith's works can get very heavy when he decides to debate and lecture instead of tell a tale. In his book he tells a tale, a interesting one, in which he keeps the setting just that, a setting in the background, that colors the story and molds the characters reactions, but doesn't hit us like a hammer. I liked the cover - unlike many sci-fi books the cover shows a real event in the novel and is one of the reasons I grabbed it.

L. Neil Smith was recommended to me as a great Sci-Fi author who injects a libertarian subtext to his work. The first book I was able to get my hands on was Pallas, a great read with succulent libertarian flavor. Contact And Commune was the second, and is officially The Worst Book I Ever Finished.

To be fair, Contact And Commune was written more than twenty years ago. Perhaps Mr Smith's work has vastly improved, and I intend to read more, based on my positive experience with Pallas. But enough qualification, let's get to the reason I forced myself to finish: the review.

Contact And Commune is a mess. It's a mishmash of great ideas and stupefyingly boring dialogue, of likable aliens and cliched humans, of an asteroid with a gooey Earth-like center and why didn't they just go to Mars?

The USA has been absorbed into the United World Soviet. The entire world has sunk into a grim, gray, industrial Communism. To cheer up the proletariat, a space mission is launched to ... well, some undistinguished asteroid. It's like using Excalibur to crack walnuts - but Communists are not renowned for making a lot of economic sense.

Turns out this asteroid is inhabited. It's actually a spaceship! Or a time machine. Or an inter-dimensional conveyance. It's never really explained. The intelligent creatures on board are evolved from lower orders of Earth life - flowers, insects, multi-tentacled deep-sea snails - everything but humans.

One of the humans is murdered. one of the "aliens" goes missing. An interminable investigation follows. There is an Atlantis angle. There is a professional military officer who goes comatose, then lunatic, when she sees the "aliens". There is a surprise ending so implausible that I would have gone back to read the clues again if I had cared.

This book reads as if a talented sci-fi writer outlined it, and hired a hack pulp romance grinder to fill it out. The dialogue is stilted and embarrassing. The situations are contrived. The characters are mostly uninteresting, unlikeable, and unbelievable. Even the parts that could have showcased the author's Libertarian arguments are instead crouched in pseudo-religious lectures that I mostly skimmed.

Frankly, I skimmed the last quarter of the book, once I figured out that Contact And Commune is a journey to nowhere. The aliens never revealed why they came (or came back, or sideways) that I noticed, and if they did, that part of the plot was never developed. According to another review on Amazon, this is the first part of a trilogy, and those questions are answered later.

Me, I'll pass. While I intend to take another ride with L. Neil Smith, it won't be anywhere near the world of Contact And Commune.