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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Consistently re-readable YA science fiction,
By Dr. van der Linden (Williamstown, NJ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Four-Day Planet (Kindle Edition)
Typical of the many short novels (about 57,000 words) created for serial magazine publication during the reign of the "pulps," Four-Day Planet is a relative rarity in the corpus of the late H. Beam Piper, as it apparently first saw print as a stand-alone hardcover uttered by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1961, and was re-published in 1979 as an Ace Double paperback, together with the same author's Lone Star Planet.This novel qualifies in the "Young Adult" category for a number of reasons, not least of which is the first-person voice of its 17-year-old protagonist, Walter Boyd, who presents himself (with due irony) to the reader "As the star - and only - reporter of the greatest - and only - paper on the planet," the extremely hardscrabble and only marginally habitable colony world of Fenris. The novel begins: "I went through the gateway, towing my equipment in a contragravity hamper over my head. As usual, I was wondering what it would take, short of a revolution, to get the city of Port Sandor as clean and tidy and well lighted as the spaceport area. I knew Dad's editorials and my sarcastic news stories wouldn't do it. We'd been trying long enough. "The two girls in bikinis in front of me pushed on, still gabbling about the fight one of them had had with her boy friend, and I closed up behind the half dozen monster-hunters in long trousers, ankle boots and short boat-jackets, with big knives on their belts. They must have all been from the same crew, because they weren't arguing about whose ship was fastest, had the toughest skipper, and made the most money. They were talking about the price of tallow-wax, and they seemed to have picked up a rumor that it was going to be cut another ten centisols a pound. I eavesdropped shamelessly, but it was the same rumor I'd picked up, myself, a little earlier." With all due deference to a previous reviewer, if he conceives this to be "space opera" transferable with a bit of cut-and-paste to the Old West, he's talking through his Stetson. Pardner. Other "YA" qualifiers include the fact that the story is very much a coming-of-age tale for the protagonist despite the fact that he considers himself already to be doing a man-sized job as a newspaper reporter, and - especially de rigeur for the '50s and '60s - there is no romantic interest to clutter up the plot. Walt walks knowingly through his sparsely populated but technologically advanced homeworld into a situation that's been simmering on the edge of a boil for most of his life, cynically aware of local misgovernment and organized crime, and Piper uses his protagonist's viewpoint skillfully, credibly, and transparently to get the reader involved in the culture, economy, and daily life of Port Sandor and the hostile climate of Fenris without too much in the way of "expostulatory lumps." to break the flow. As in most good YA fiction (and effectively all SF) published in the 1950s and early 1960s, plot is paramount, and Piper proves that he can move it along briskly, engaging the reader and keeping him eyeballs-on. Characters may not develop, but there certainly are characters to catch the attention, and those characters are most certainly exposed as the story proceeds. In the process, Piper dishes up scientifictional concepts galore, treating vat-grown foodstuffs ("carniculture"), interstellar travel, and antigravity ("contragravity") technology as casually as we consider automated milking machines, international air travel, and the internal combustion engine. He makes it happen seamlessly, in the best Heinleinian tradition. As an element in Piper's "Federation" series of stories and novels (see Federation and The Federation Series by H. Beam Piper (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)), Four Day Planet is an excellent "drop yourself in the water" introduction to the writer's imaginative power and craftsmanship.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Corruption in space,
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This review is from: Four-Day Planet (Kindle Edition)
The following description was probably originally the blurb on the back cover of the book:"Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he's being cheated of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution." Local mobsters control the marketing of the only export of the planet, and the local government too. They've been defrauding the producers, and everyone knew it, but nobody stood up to them until they finally just got too greedy -- then things start to happen. It's pure space opera -- it could equally well be the story of the villainous rancher who controls all the water in the valley, or the railroad that controls the only way to get the farmers' wheat to market. And it's almost all plot and little characterization. But it's well done for what it is, and as long as you don't expect too much you'll probably enjoy it, so I give it 4 stars. Originally published in 1961.
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