Customer Reviews

Legacy (Large Print Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am going to open with a brief explanation of my five-star rating system: (1) _Five Stars_: Classical or classical quality. Superior in almost every way.(2) _Four Stars_: Excellent, but just this side of Paradise.(3) _Three Stars_: Solidly Good. Above average. The virtues outweigh the faults. (4) _Two Stars_: Below average, but not a complete time-waster. (5) _One Star_: Poor. Really bad. Read this one only when you're drunk. I spell this system out because I am fully aware that it may not be the same as those of other reviewers.

All of which brings me to my global rating of James H. Schmitz's _Legacy_. It is not a classic. Nor is it unusually excellent. It has its share of faults. The love scenes, which I thought were great stuff when I read them in high school under the original title of _A Tale of Two Clocks_, now seem a bit silly and juvenile. There is a scientist who is too much the gullible, Absent-Minded Professor to be believable. And the notion that the tough, smart villainess will Tell All after being spanked by the heroine strains credulity.

Some readers might argue that Trigger Argee's infatuation with a handsome scoundrel for a third of the novel is a fault as well. I am inclined to be a bit generous here. After all, who among us has not been a Fool for Love at one time or another? Still, it should be noted that later stories featuring Trigger have her less prone to put up with masculine nonsense.

The plot involves some plastic skinned living machines called the plasmoids made in the days of the long-lost Old Galactics. Mankind discovers them on a distant planet, and now there is a race by different factions to get them, experiment with them, and use them. But in the meantime, the plasmoids have begun a series of experiments of their own on humans...

The novel has some nice touches. The portrait of a futuristic university early in the novel is well done and entertaining, if a little sketchy. The plasmoid 113-A, Old Repulsive, is engaging. There is a lot of skulduggery on various space liners. And there is an effective description of a fort taken over by the king plasmoid near the close of the novel:

A small fiery crater appeared. It darkened quickly again. Out of the biggest opening, down near what would have been the foot of the stump if it had been a stump, something long, red, and wormlike wriggled rapidly. It flowed up over the structure's surface to the damaged point and thrust the tip of its front end into the crater. Black material began to flow from the tip. (323-324)

So. Three stars. Solidly good. A reliable space opera with an engaging heroine. Perhaps it should be noted here that James Schmitz in a quiet, unspectacular way did a marvelous job with space opera heroines. His best known are Trigger Argee and Telzey Amberdon. But Nile Etland, Grandma Wannattel, and Reetal Destone deserve mention as well. I suspect that you will like Trigger Argee a lot. Perhaps that is really all that needs to be said.

I fell in love with the stories of James Schmitz when I was a teenager, especially the characters of Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. Now, many years later, I can appreciate Schmitz' going against the grain of his time and writing about strong female characters who aren't sexualized or trivialized as arm-candy. There's also Heslet Quillan, a charming rogue who appreciates competent women as well.

I had read Legacy many years ago, and it's always a pleasure to revisit it. Though I do own it in paperback, I bought the Kindle edition as well. The book was translated well to the Kindle, including front and back cover graphics, but the scanning included the page numbers which interrupted the flow of the text. (I expect to see page numbers in a paper book, but they're visually separated from the text.)

I have frequently given Schmitz books as gifts to younger readers - there's never anything that would be inappropriate for even a young teen, and even in Schmitz' "juvenile" books (most famously, The Witches of Karres), he never talks down to his audience and just tells a cracking-good story with intriguing characters. Highly recommended.

New James H. Schmitz fans beware: This book was also published under the title "A Tale of Two Clocks".

Not bad, but this book revolved mainly around the characters. Not that it's a bad thing to spend time on the characters and their machinations. However there is an underlying mystery that in my opinion was somewhat neglected. I didn't find the resolution to be particularly satisfying, and in fact the mystery itself wasn't laid out in much detail.

It was a pleasant read, and I would recommend it. However I feel that it's just an average SF book.

New James H. Schmitz fans beware: This book was also published under the title "A Tale of Two Clocks".

Legacy is startlingly modern SF considering it's original publication was 1962, under another title. Trigger Argee is no secretary, housewife, feminist or dead weight but a fully equal force to be reckoned with as are all the many females in the story but in a way where such equality is simply taken for granted. The equivalent to the internet is fully realized and although Schmitz seems to be rather less good at longer fiction, he is still a very bright and witty writer. At times he seems to be making up the plot as he goes along since where we're eventually brought seems less than convincing as the solution to a mystery. Still, the dialogue comes off today as bright and smart and one can't help but think that this would make a very good SF movie because of the tech and scenarios it takes for granted. There is no one in the history of SF quite like Trigger Argee, especially in its day. Schmitz stories are always smart and sometimes rise to the level of whimsical artistry as in the short version of "The Witches of Karres" and "The Second Night of Summer". Schmitz was not an author to throw his intellectualism about like a Phillip Dick or Delany but relied on solid fundamentals and one can't help but see echoes of Schmitz in Larry Niven's bright short stories, "The Soft Weapon" and "A Relic of the Empire" published just a few years later. "Legacy" is not the best of Schmitz but on the whole very good SF. This story about mysterious semi-organic artifacts from an alien civilization and the race to monopolize a possible new technology by various factions is a fun read and we never know quite what will happen next.

Old Galactic Gun Girl mission.


While not the precocious super bright type Telzey Amberdon is, this not-kid-either can handle a gun.

Again, a mission for a talent young woman with the skills to suit a mission with strange aliens, disguise, subterfuge, and more.

At stake could be interplanetary war, as the plasmoids are Repulsive.

The Hub is in good hands with the platinum blonde Space Agent babe on the case (with the odd bit of male help of varying use).