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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An enjoyable sci-fi adventure with some dated elements,
By
This review is from: The Deathworms of Kratos (Mass Market Paperback)
Humanity in the year 2071 is straining at the limits of terrestrial and solar sustainability. With billions of people placing a demand on Earth's finite resources, an outlet is needed. Robot probes have identified planets in other systems capable of supporting human life. But before they can be colonized they must be proven - a high-risk prospect. Enter the Expendables: a group of highly talented criminals and misfits who combine technical expertise in their chosen fields with checkered pasts. Led by James Conrad, a former commander in the United Nations Space Service, they are sent out to explore Kratos, the first viable planet discovered by the probes. Yet not only must the team determine the planets viability as a colony for humans, they must also answer an additional question - just who or what left the large ruts scarring the planet's surface?
Edmund Cooper (who published this novel under the pen name "Richard Avery") was a British author whose wide-ranging oeuvre included a number of science fiction novels. This book was the first of a four-book series that he wrote in the mid-1970s in which his team would face various challenges on an Earth-like world. In many ways this is the best of the quartet, as Cooper couples his pulp action here with pages spent laying out his premise and developing his characters into distinct figures rather than leaving them as interchangeable cardboard cutouts. His themes of sustainability and resource deprivation, a growing concern in the years in which he wrote this, gives his book an air of prescience for readers today, helping to separate it from similar sci-fi novels of its ilk. Yet these strengths sit uncomfortably with dialogue and situations that can seem somewhat racist and sexist to readers today. Cooper's fans have credited him for populating his crew with a diverse group of people, yet the novel seems dated with the degree to which they oftentimes dwell on their racial backgrounds. No character embodies this better than Kurt Kwango. The team ecologist, he is credited with being the smartest member of the group and is often at the heart of the action (he's not even the first character to die). Yet he seems obsessed with race to a degree more befitting someone of the 20th century than Cooper's supposedly more enlightened future. It's a problem that detracts from what it otherwise an enjoyable sci-fi adventure, making it more a product of its time than one that, like many of the best works of the genre, rises above it to become a truly timeless work.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Sci Fi Pulp !!,
This review is from: The Deathworms of Kratos (Mass Market Paperback)
The Deathworms of Kratos: The Expendables No.1 (1975) by Edmund Cooper writing as Richard Avery - 191 pages - rating: 8.0/10
Don't let the silly title fool you. The Deathworms of Kratos was great. A team of 7 men and women with varied notorious backgrounds and skills travel 17 light years to the first potentially habitable planet discovered by earthbound astronomers. It is classic pulp science fiction at its best. Characters that you will enjoy and a writing style that will draw you in despite its straightforward delivery. Books like this are the reason I started reading science fiction in the first place. If you enjoy classic, old style Science Fiction by authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edmund Hamilton, Poul Anderson, Barrington J. Bayley, EE Smith, Jack Williamson and Murray Leinster then you will love The Deathworms of Kratos. Keep in mind, the other review listed here (by Shantell) was by someone who didnt do her research before selecting this novel. Thus she gave it one star. She was perhaps hoping for a weird, complicated, in depth examination of the human soul within the context of some gender bending futuristic societal structure ... blah blah blah. Yes, some people like that stuff, dont ask me why. I dont. Claus Kellermann 2006 March 28 Sci_Fi_Researcher@yahoo.com
5.0 out of 5 stars
only 4 in the series,
By susan souva (new york) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Deathworms Of Kratos (the Expendables, #1) (Mass Market Paperback)
there are only 4 books in the expendable series. I have had all 4 for years..read them over and over again..They are people who do not wish to live , so go explore other planets and if they die so what..But they have enhanced body parts,or some are just to smart..Whatever the combo is great sci fi..Worth the price..wish i could find hardback copies.
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