Customer Reviews

The Earth War (Pyramid SF, F-886)

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_The Earth War_ by Mack Reynolds was a two part serial in _Analog_ in 1963 under the title "Frigid Fracas". It is the second novel in a series about Joe Mauser. The first was _Mercenary from Tomorrow_ (as "Mercenary," _Analog_, 1962). The third was _Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes_ (_Analog_, 1964). The fourth was was _The Fracas Factor_ (1978).

I read and reread this novel with enthusiasm when I was in high school and college. Now, I'm afraid that I find that it creaks a bit at the joints. Part of the problem is the slangy style. Today expressions like "getting shellacked" (5), being "in the dill" (24), "all that curd" (23), "the situation has pickled" (47), and "What the Zen!" (72) don't sound as great as they did back in the sixties.

As for the story itself... The Cold War has cooled down to the Frigid Fracas. Disputes between nations, corporations, and management versus labor are settled by mercenaries in gladiatorial contests in which no weapons developed after 1900 can be used. Proles take the drug trank and watch the bread and circuses on their Tellies. Both the United States and Russia have solidified into rigid caste societies in which there is almost no upward mobility.

Most of the action centers around Joe Mauser, a mercenary who manages to upset the apple cart of the _status quo_. As you might expect, there are a number of fights, battle scenes, and (near the end) a duel. Reynolds handles these action sequences well. But I was most affected by a scene in which Mauser was offstage. Freddy Soligen, a cynical Telly news reporter, comes home one day to find that his none-too-bright son has enlisted in the infantry. He has done it because his father's reporting has made military life "the most exciting thing in the world" (78). It is a wry scenario of irony and poetic justice. But we do not laugh, for Freddy's son is about to pay a terrible price. We never hear of him again.

The novel is packed with lectures and speeches by various characters on such things as the sordid history of games and circuses in ancient Rome, military tactics, union corruption, the realism of expecting Communism to function in an agricultural society, the proper role of violence, and whether lower class members should mind their place. I don't think that it would be giving too much away to say that Major Mauser's career takes a lot of unexpected twists, turns, rises and falls and that the Russians aren't exactly like everyone thought they would be. Read the novel for the action and ideas. Try to ignore the slang.