Customer Reviews

Jem

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Not many authors can "build" a planet in enough detail to make it seem realistic to the reader. If they can, however, their names are often spoken with reverance among SF fans for their brilliance and ingenuity. Herbert, Niven, Robinson, and now Pohl.

But JEM is more than just the detailing of a planet, it is the creation of a civilization, where Earth can no longer support people and so they have to move on and try to start again, only our petty human disagreements get in the way and we almost risk utopia for the sake of being superior to someone else.

There is so much going on in this novel that it's almost impossible to discuss, but Pohl handles everything perfectly, from the charactization of the humans, to the imaginative aliens that inhabit the world of Jem. Yes, there are setbacks, there are fights, and the people almost fail, the black night bearing down on them, but the novel ends with a ray of light, the final few lines certain to resonate long after the novel has been closed (that's a cliche thrown around a lot, but here it is completely applicable.) It's a must for anyone and everyone.

I liked this novel. The new planet Jem and its strange new lifeforms were written very well. Jem orbits a tiny, not-very-hot star the same way our Moon orbits Earth. That is, with one side always light and the opposite side dark. Three sentient species inhabit the planet: mole-like Creepies who live underground in burrows, crab-like Krinpit on the surface, and flying Balloonists who never land. If the story had been more about the interesting animals, I would have enjoyed the book better. I did not like any of the human characters. By the second hundred pages, I was already hoping they would all die. But of course they don't. People on Earth bomb each other to bits and the related factions on Jem almost follow suit, being stopped only by a natural disaster. The resulting civilization is an utopian parody; it reminds me of "Animal Farm". Everything is "freely given" or not given at all. The native sentients of Jem work for the humans because they can't do otherwise after their planet is subdued by humans. It's repulsive, but realistic, to imagine that humans would do no better with a new planet than they have with their first one, even after all their experience and knowledge. I prefer happier fantasies.

Pohl is a much acclaimed writer...but I think much this acclamation is due to his incredible amount of creativity. This is a pretty good book, though I could never get my hands around if it's record of events (as a possible future for our world) is a triumph or a tragedy. The conclusion is almost poignant, but to me it was more bittersweet than anything else: the human race had survived through a major catastrophy (if that's what you want to call it), but what emerged, to me, seemed less than human.

I thought he did an excellent job of weaving politics and ambition with dreamy ideals. Their inherent conflict is very vividly played out. But, for me, the story really dragged in some places. I guess I like more adventure and less political intrigue and manipulation.

Interestingly enough, Pohl never seemed to engage a huge issue which emerged within this story: that of the morality of mankind taking over an alien planet, subjecting that planet and its inhabitants to man's designs and, in effect, destroying all that planet could have been through the normal course of development of the native lifeforms. Is it right for man to take over a planet just because he can? His answer to this seems to justify the enslaving of the native alien life - a stance I'm more than a little uncomfortable with.

Overall, I have a hard time suggesting this to anyone. I was dredging the bottom of my "unread" pile when I picked it up. I'd suggest to anyone that they should hold on to this book as a last resort, something to read when you've already exhausted all other resources.

From the 1950's to the 70's, it seems that a number of science fiction writers published dual books considered essential reading for the field. There's Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, and then Frederik Pohl's Gateway and Man Plus. These novel's cannot be more highly recommended for those that enjoy reading science fiction. For those that enjoyed Pohl's other two mentioned novel's and want to read more by him, Jem would be next in line. It should be noted that this is the end of the line. After Man Plus (1976), Gateway (1977), Jem (1979), is The Blue Event Horizon (1980) which is sub-par and the novels after that, Sunburst, The Cool War, go downhill from there. It's difficult to be tough on Pohl here because Gateway is perhaps my all time favorite novel. Jem is still within Pohl's sphere of his Gateway peak and has enjoyable parts.

The novel consists of trinities. There are the three Bloc's on earth: the Food Bloc, the Fuel Bloc, and the People Bloc, derisively called by each other as the Fats, the Greasies, and the Peep's, respectively. These Bloc's have some unlikely constituents. The Food Bloc for instance consists of the United States, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union. England is the enemy as it is within the Fuel Bloc. If it takes a moment to consider why England would be, it was due to their North Atlantic oil fields. I don't know how productive these oil fields are today, but this was written back in the 70's. And the People Bloc consists of what can be expected: countries like China and Pakistan. Pohl doesn't completely ignore real world politics as China has political pull within other Blocs. However to consider that the United States and the former Soviet Union are buddy-buddies and that the English and Scot's are the vicious enemies is stretching the imagination quite a bit. The political divisions then were between democratic and totalitarian countries. Yes, the US will team up with the Soviet Union against an immediate threat like Nazi Germany, but against England or Norway?... for their oil fields? How about Nazi Germany and Jew's teaming against the Ukraine for their wheat fields? It's been whitewashed by many about the brutalities of the Soviet Union. Many people have an image of Russian's as happy round faced people slapping each other on the back as they invite you into their homes for a friendly shot of vodka around a table seated with a large family and group of close friends as opposed to a country that carried out the systematic murder of 20 million people, of the Red Army as it swept through Europe occupying countries before them (or `liberated' as leftists would say), or the mass rapes of the women of East Germany or elsewhere. Are there mass rapes of the women of France from WWII?, does a significant part of the Italian populace look suspiciously like Iowan corn farmers?, are there mass graves being discovered in the forests of Norway because the US didn't like their brand of socialist-democracy or, heck, for their gold?, like the mass graves found in Poland of those killed by the Soviets.

The other trinity are the three sentient races discovered on the planet called Jem. These races occupy different ecosystems of the planet. The Creepies live underground, the Krinpit are huge 400 lb crablike creatures that live on the surface, and the Balloonists live aloft in the atmosphere. Another stretch of the imagination occurs when Pohl suggests that colonists and scientists would indiscriminately murder several sentient species on another planet to study their anatomy. So obviously this book is an allegory of the powers of the 70's to form alliances with the Third World. So was it `right' for the US to interfere in the politics of small countries to prevent them from being communist puppet nations of the Soviet Union. Or is Pohl suggesting here that a coed in Nebraska, or a housewife in Seattle, or a fisherman in Maine would want to burn down the embassies of, and bring the downfall of, for instance, the Danish government because a Danish cartoonist depicted Americans as fat, hamburger eating sloths?

OK, so those are what I see as problems and naiveté of the novel. The good points are in references to slavery or serfdom. All adults know, or should know, that yes one has to work for a living. There's a saying that goes: those that don't work, don't eat. Ok, simple enough. But it's one thing to have a society where one has a choice to become an engineer, doctor, lawyer, librarian, waiter, actress, compared to a society where one has no other choice than to become an underground miner. It's your free choice... or starve. Or that you have to work in a mine and then will be inoculated with the antidote against the disease that was injected in your body, or you're `free' to die from that disease. Here it sounds as if Pohl is almost criticizing Communism, in an Animal Farm sort-of-way, where heck there were `free' elections... you're `free' to vote for the one Communist candidate that's on the election ballot.

Jem follows the style of several SF books that investigate the interactions of humans with alien sentient races, such as Robert Forward's Dragon Egg, James Hogan's Code of the Life-Maker, or Niven & Pournelle's Footfall, and show the perspective from the alien's point of view with names that have hyphens or apostrophes in them. Pohl gives a fair amount of perspective from the Balloonists, some from the Krinpit's and scant from the Creepies.

I'm not sure if the title Jem itself is supposed to be relevant. Jem is short for the planets official name N-OA Bes-bes Geminorum 8426. However since the novel is about Utopia or the loss of a potential Utopia, the book title is also obviously referencing a glittering precious stone, a `gem'. However, Pohl begins the word with the letter "J". So does JEM stand for something else?, is it some sort of acronym: J.E.M.? (Pohl uses several acronyms in his book: HMG, ERW, GORR, without defining them), there's three letters in the word, probably referencing the trinities in the novel. There are no obvious answers here.

The major downpoint of the novel is that it rambles on; is not quite cohesive. Although not a huge novel at 312 pages, it seems it could have used some editing and paring down. After the novel is finished, the good points are the reflections on serfdom, a good treatise on a mechanism used in many other novels that write about planets in a federation that downslide in technology or culture as that federation falls, and as a cautionary tale of how settling a new land/planet with great potential can be botched up.