Customer Reviews

King David's Spaceship

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It is a real shame to see this book out of print. Janissaries by the same author seems to have been a popular book, and for those who liked that, they should definately give this a look. It combines similar themes of modern military knowledge with ancient military situations, but without the hardware available to Tran's mercenaries. It is set in the same universe as the Mote in God's Eye, at almost exactly the same time, which gives it an interesting context for those who follow this author. However, the plotline has almost nothing to do with Moties. Rather it is the case of a world at roughly industrial revolution level which is faced with the prospect of forceable reunification into the human empire. They discover that the only way to retain any kind of autonomy is to show that they can independently launch a spaceship. People from their world are forbidden to travel to any "higher" level planet, but are allowed to travel to planets classified as being in a primitive state. They send a team, led by one of their soldiers to another planet which is in a state of medieval technology, but where a galactic library survives. In the process of recovering vital information, they are forced to mobilise the local population to defeat the equivalent of a Mongol horde. An interesting military situation, mixed in with all sorts of historical and science fiction elements. It deserves wider attention, and certainly to be available in print. Thank God I already have a copy!

I liked this novel a lot. It is set in the same universe as "The Mote in God's Eye" and takes place contemporaneously with that novel's story. In this one, the Empire of Man has discovered a colony world of humans that had been bombed back into a technological level about equivalent to Earth in 1900 or so. The Empire's technology is obviously centuries ahead of the colony's, and the Empire has strict rules about how such backward colonies, which lack space travel, are to be assimilated into the Empire. The plan involves bringing in favored persons from the Empire and more or less supplanting the local aristocrats with a new nobility. The locals are expected to submit or else.

The ruling folk on the colony get wind of this plan, which the Empire is concealing from them, and hatch a scheme of their own to avoid being subjigated. More would be telling, but this is actually an engaging and imaginative tale that I have returned to and enjoyed several times.

As always, Pournelle does a great job describing ground warfare with ancient weapons (pikes and spears, mostly) and the characterizations in this novel are pretty good. I enjoyed this one more than "The Mote in God's Eye" and I highly recommended it to anyone who enjoys a good military-political science fiction novel.

Colonel Nathan MacKinnie is bitter about the world. The Imperial Navy has propped up the Havenite government and wiped out MacKinnie's resistance killing the woman he loves while doing so. When King David of Haven asks for MacKinnie's assistance, he has decidedly mixed feelings. Still, the choices available for a retired colonel in a losing army are limited.

With help from the Imperial Navy and Imperial merchants, MacKinnie and a small group of associates leave Prince Samual's World to journey to Makassar, an even less advanced planet which happens to contain an ancient First Empire library. If MacKinney can learn enough, Prince Samual's World stands a chance to become a full member of the Empire rather than simply another colony world.

KING DAVID'S SPACESHIP is an intriguing 'fish out of water' story. MacKinnie and his collegues are from a low-technology world by the standards of the Empire, but have far more advanced technologies than those available on Makassar. Unfortunately, they are forbidden to use these technologies, and Makassar is bound and determined not to let anyone have access to the library, which they regard as a holy place. Somehow MacKinnie must take what he knows and dominate the Makassar civilization--without Imperial soldiers learning anything about it. His military background gives him hope, but what can he do against the tens of thousands of barbarians threatening the ancient temple city?

KING DAVID'S SPACESHIP is set in the motie world created by Pournelle and his frequent collaborator Larry Niven, but can be read without any knowledge of the excellent MOTE IN GOD'S EYE novel.

It's great to see this novel back in print.

King David's Spaceship... NOT about the Biblical King David! It's a fascinating story that includes medieval, early 20th century, and far future cultures and their technologies. Its main characters we come to know and care deeply about in the course of the story. Their use of early 20th-century knowledge in a medieval world is as interesting as the relationship of their world to the far-future technology of the stellar empire that their world wants to join. There is a brief reference to contemporary events in Pournelle's "Mote in God's Eye" novel, but other than that, the stories are independent.

I first found the book in my local library, but enjoyed it so much I bought it from Amazon as a gift for someone else.

King David's Spaceship (1980) is an SF novel in the Alderson Drive series. It takes place about the same time as the events in The Mote in God's Eye.

Prince Samuel's World has recovered greatly from the Succession Wars. Now they have been rediscovered by the Second Empire. The Imperials have allied with the Kingdom of Haven to reunify the various polities into a world government.

In this novel, Nathan McKinnie is a former colonel in the army of Orleans. His regiment -- the Wolves -- received the dubious benefits of the Imperial Navy's alliance with Haven. The death toll amounted to two battalions and his beloved. But he received a pension from Haven to compensate for the loss of his commission and personnel.

Hal Stark is Nathan's batman, lead noncom and now his personal servant. They are living in a rundown boarding house near the waterfront. Yet they go uptown to drink.

Shipmaster MacLean of the Royal Merchant Service is qualified on both sail and motor vessels. At least that is his story. But he is most probably from the Royal Haven Navy.

Academician Longway is from Prince Samuel University. He studies social organization and primitive cultures as well as ancient history.

Scholar-Bachelor Kleinst is Longway's assistant. He is supposedly a historian, but is actually a physicist.

Mary Graham is a university graduate. Women students at the university are few and far between, so Mary has been allowed to study many different subjects for her degree.

Malcolm Dougal is the head of the Haven Royal Secret Police. He has been gathering information on the Second Empire since before their alliance with Haven. He has found that the Empire is probably going to colonize Prince Samuel's World.

In this story, McKinnie and Start are drinking in the Blue Bottle while three Imperial Navy lieutenants are buying drinks for the house. Of course, they are recruiting young men for their ship. But they are also getting rather noisy.

During the evening, Lieutenant Jefferson mentions an Old Empire library on Makassar, among other remarks. Nathan pays little attention, for his thoughts are on the events that led to his surrender to Haven. At the end of the evening, Dougal introduces himself and invites them out for a drink, but McKinnie refuses and heads back to the boarding house.

On the way, McKinnie and Start are abducted by the Secret Police and conveyed to the palace for a meeting with Dougal. Malcolm tells Nathan about the situation with the Second Empire. Then he asks Nathan to help them on a special mission to Makassar, the nearest inhabited world.

When McKinnie agrees, he is introduced to MacLean, Longway, Kleinst and Graham. They will constitute the core of an attempt to retrieve data from the library on Makassar. Dougal provides two guards for the mission and gives permission for McKinnie to recruit several more from his Wolves.

The cover for their task is a trade mission to the other planet. Two members of the Imperial Trade Association provide transportation to the planet and some related information. An Imperial Navy Midshipman will accompany them to Makassar.

The voyage is an amazement to the Prince Samuel party. Everything is new, exciting and sometimes frightening. On the way, they learn the language of Makassar.

This tale takes McKinnie and his group twelve light years to Makassar around the Eye of the Needle. When they arrive, however, there is nothing worth buying in Jikar, the landing port. Then they find that the ITA is leaving the planet in three days. They refuse to leave after so little time and, instead, make arrangements to be picked up in a year.

Naturally, McKinnie is pleased that the ITA merchants will be leaving them alone with enough time to complete their real mission. But there is another problem. The city is besieged by Maris -- the local nomads -- on land and blockaded by pirates at sea. McKinnie decides to take the sea route.

This work is an expanded version of a story first published in Astounding in 1972 and then released by DAW in 1973 as A Spaceship for the King. Thus it preceded The Mote in God's Eye. The earlier version was somewhat revised and additional words were appended in a new ending for this novel.

McKinnie and his party face combat over and over again on Makassar. First the pirates outside Jikar and then the Maris outside Batav. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Pournelle fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of military combat, less advanced cultures, and a bit of romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

The Empire has returned to Prince Samuel's World. The Empire is helping the government of Haven conquer the rest of the planet so the world has a single government and can be brought into the Empire. But Haven has discovered that, unless it can build a spaceship in the few years left to it, and secretly, it will become a mere colony world, with the natives treated like dirt and the colonists ruling the roost. But Haven has technology equivalent to only about 1900. With the Empire's unwitting help, they send a desperate expedition to a primitive world, seeking information contained in a First Empire library. If they can return with knowledge, then there might be a chance . . .

This is a quite good page turner by Pournelle, set simultaneously with the Motie incident (though there is only casual mention of it in "Spaceship". But it is a very good read, and I can't imagine why it is not in print.

This story takes place in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium universe. After a great interstellar war the human colonies lost the technology to travel between the stars. Finally one colony recovers and sets about rebuilding a single human empire, whether the other colonies want to join or not.

King David's Space ship starts out on Prince Samual's World. These colonists were able to keep some knowledge of science. When the story starts they are some where between an 1850 to 1900 level of technology. The planet is fractured with several governments jostling for power. The Empire helps King David start to reunite the planet.

One of King David's spy realizes that Prince Samual's World will be ruled by those of the empire, unless they can re-develop enough technology to launch a craft into space. By being a "space going" colony they will still be bought into the Empire, but with a higher status and allowed more self government.

One of the Empire's men let slip that there is a library on a near by star system which might provide the means to build a space ship. But time is tight. They only have a year or two before the planet should be reunified and then bought into the Empire. Our heroes rush off to Makassar to see what they can learn.

Will they make it?

This is a fun story. It reads well. I had trouble putting it down. If you like classic Science Fiction with military battles and intrigues, then give this a book a try.

This story takes place in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium universe. After a great interstellar war the human colonies lost the technology to travel between the stars. Finally one colony recovers and sets about rebuilding a single human empire, whether the other colonies want to join or not.

King David's Space ship starts out on Prince Samual's World. These colonists were able to keep some knowledge of science. When the story starts they are some where between an 1850 to 1900 level of technology. The planet is fractured with several governments jostling for power. The Empire helps King David start to reunite the planet.

One of King David's spy realizes that Prince Samual's World will be ruled by those of the empire, unless they can re-develop enough technology to launch a craft into space. By being a "space going" colony they will still be bought into the Empire, but with a higher status and allowed more self government.

One of the Empire's men let slip that there is a library on a near by star system which might provide the means to build a space ship. But time is tight. They only have a year or two before the planet should be reunified and then bought into the Empire. Our heroes rush off to Makassar to see what they can learn.

Will they make it?

This is a fun story. It reads well. I had trouble putting it down. If you like classic Science Fiction with military battles and intrigues, then give this a book a try.

See the review "An Interstellar Espionage Mission By Arthur W. Jordin" for details of the book. This book is a page turner. I usually read books 4-10 pages at a time as I have very little free time and steal a few minutes here and there to read. Every time I picked this book up I did not want to put it down. I ended up spending too much time reading.

Much of the book is stereotypes. Great general losing his command due to deus ex machina. Brilliant spitfire woman overcoming rampant sexism to become brilliant generals wife. Brilliant general thrown back into more primitive times to manage the stunning defeat of unstoppable evil armies due to his knowledge of military history.

H. Beam Piper did this with better detail for weapon technology and tactics. Pournelle has good detail, but he does flesh out the characters, the politics, and the cultures better. That makes for a longer book and a more gripping read. Not that the character development is akin to Dostoyevsky, but when someone aids the protagonists you can see why they would do that. Pournelle is not always subtle, the characters take on the task of being a narrator at times but he is not too heavy handed about it.

One thing I did note was that by the time the heroes had gotten to the real start at Makassar, about half of the book had been taken up. Great story telling up to that point. The last half was a bit hurried up. Loose ends were left hanging. The most obvious one was the group of assassins sent to kill the hero, where did they all go? So, the last half is where the action took place and was great reading, but I missed the completeness of the first half. (Yet another book truncated to fit in the prescribed number of pages. Good thing no one told Tolkien what the official book length was.) But to me, this just shows how well the story is written. Even as I noted that there were not enough pages left, my interest never waned. Pournelle cut and trimmed very well.

I am sure Pournelle read Piper, so it would make sense that he could do him one better, but this book is even better than that. It fits into the Motie universe quite well and tells you a bit more about the Empire of Man. Not the very best, but still a five star effort.

This wonderful adventure novel was Pournelle's first science fiction novel and was bought and published by legendary editor, John W. Campbell. It was serialized under the title, "Spaceship for the King," over several issues of "Analog Science Fiction" magazine, beginning in December of 1971. It received its first paperback edition from DAW Books in 1973. "Spaceship for the King" reads very much like the SF adventure stories, "Space Viking" and "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen," H. Beam Piper was writing in the early 1960s. Pournelle has often cited Piper as a major influence, and "Spaceship for the King" certainly shows the Piper touch.

In the late 1970s, Pournelle was asked by Editor David Hartwell to expand the original novels (apprx. 60,000 words) for a new Pocket Book's edition. This was after the success of "The Mote in God's Eye," and at a time when raising book prices meant longer novels, as readers demanded more bang for their bucks. Jerry complied and the result was "King David's Spaceship," which contined all of the vitures of the shorter novel and added a new subplot.

Even some thirty years later, "King David's Spaceship" holds up as one of Pournelle's finest novels, long overshadowed by the Janissaries and Falkenberg eries. It's unfortunate that this book has remained under-the-radar for most Pournelle and SF adventure fans, and thus is out-of-print. I highly recommend the book and suggest you hunt up a hardback edition (still available at very reasonable prices) for your permanent library.