Customer Reviews

Police Your Planet

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

 

 

You're probably used to sf with "clean violence," in which a billion people are killed with the push of a button. In this book, there's very little of that; rather, this novel should be the darling of the Mickey Spillane set. Every two or three pages, someone (usually the protagonist, Bruce Gordon) is attacked with fists, knives, clubs, or guns (not blasters, the old-fashioned type). But this isn't just a crime novel put into space; this is a hard sf novel, and the terraforming of Mars, while not dwelt upon, is central to the story. Give this to your mean, tough brother who beats up sf fans and steals their lunch money. He'll love it...

This was a gift for my son, an adult male who loved to read Del Ray as a boy, so I bought this book as I read about it being one of those 'little known' works of an author, and I am always intrigued and like to read these. So I purchased it for my son, knowing I'd read it later(as I have).

First his feed back was short and sweet, he loved it, it was very much a detective type novel set on Mars. From my perspective, I had to remember this was science fiction, because the story was so good, I'd forget that the action was on Mars.

It reminded me of the movie Outland, which is a western story set on IO, a moon of Jupiter. In this case, its like a film noir, totally - but set on Mars.

So, if you like film noir type novels, or science fiction, than you will love Police Your Planet.

If you love both, than perfect!

Enjoy!

A great story, a great adventure, and lots of action and real men! I forgot that stories could be like this! A great story set on Mars, with a noir like hero that lets no one get in this way, kinda like a wise cracking Clint Eastwood type, just plane lots of fun!

Read it! You wont' put it down, its fantastic!

I don't think this story was ever intended to be taken too seriously. It has the feel of a crime comic book set on Mars. Still, it was fun to read. Certain aspects were predictable. I could pick out the good and bad guys, who'd be loyal and who wouldn't. I could also figure out whether or not the hero would "get the girl". If you are looking for a fun read, rather than the ultimate truth, this is a good one.

A good old fashion story. Could be an old west novel except you are on Mars. Interesting side note: I read this in the early 1980's and again in Kindle version. The Kindle version is slightly different in the ending.
Enjoy.

Although Lester del Rey was one of the leading editors in the history of science fiction, and a good SF author in his own right, this book falls more into the hard-boiled detective genre than science fiction, even if it is set on Mars. The hero is an ex-cop, ex-prize fighter, ex-investigative reporter who is exiled to Mars by earth authorities for digging into sensitive stories. He becomes a policeman on Mars and discovers that Mars is a hotbed of police and governmental corruption. The book is full of fights, all fought with pistols, fists and clubs, not rayguns. There is some science fictional content in the background, involving earth's tangled relationships with its planetary colonies, but the foreground reminded me far more of Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest" than of conventional science fiction; del Rey seems to have been interested in protesting the extreme police corruption found in many American cities in the 1950s, and using a science fiction background as cover. Nonetheless, this is a fast, exciting read, even if not a true SF classic.