Customer Reviews

The Solarians

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Norman Spinrad is one of the long-term masters of science fiction, and this was his very ambitious debut novel from 1966. Here we see big ideas already developing, but Spinrad's ambition was unfocused, and this book creaks under its own weight. The story gets off to a pretty lousy start, in the middle of an over-described but under-conceived space battle with faceless alien enemies called the Duglaari. Spinrad tries to instill real science into his fiction, but accomplishes little more than made-up terms like "lasecannon" or "smell-organ." However, the middle of the novel gets more interesting, as Spinrad drops the pretensions of military sci-fi for pretty intriguing human speculation. We learn that in this distant future, humans have spread throughout the galaxy but are being slowly exterminated by the Duglaari, an alien race that are wonderfully and creatively inhuman. The bizarre society of the Duglaari is probably the most eye-popping aspect of this book. Meanwhile, the people who stayed behind on Earth isolated themselves from their fellow humans, and evolved into a new society called the Solarians, with all human potential realized. The Solarians have now reemerged with a humanistic plan to defeat the coldly logical Duglaari.

These are all bodacious concepts for a debut novel by a young writer, and Spinrad offered some pretty strong philosophy on the nature of humanity and man's potential, while exploring the differences between the righteous Solarians and the directionless humans of the rest of the galaxy. But this is where the ambition of the novel started to become a liability. There are many holes in Spinrad's conception of the Solarians, especially in the short amount of time in which they've evolved, and the implausibly of the social upheavals that got them to this point. Then the end of the novel degenerates into increasingly ridiculous political and military machinations, which get more and more hyperbolic and sensationalistic. We are rewarded with an avalanche of over-enthusiastic big thoughts on humanity's future, which are the thinnest possible result of Spinrad's earlier philosophical explorations. In the end, you can appreciate the ambitious big ideas of this novel, but you can only hope that Spinrad would develop more focus and conciseness as he went forward. And he did. [~doomsdayer520~]

I have liked Norm Spinrad for many years, especially after fondly reading his off beat short stories such as Carcinoma Angels. He's not well known but this early effort is a wonderful read. He anticipates many advances we now take for granted. I bought an original paperwork in a half-price bookstore the other day and am flying through this sci fi adventure space opera story about a future battle with against the alien Doogs. Wish Hollywood would read this stuff and make movies out of it rather than crap like Riddick and 5th Element, or Star Wars for that matter.

Life has been going along happily for most people. Then, a seriously bad alien menace appears, and they have no hope of stopping it.

Their only hope lies with the Solarions, and no-one has had contact with these people for hundreds of years. One man has to contact them. Once accomplished, the Solarians have a plan, but the people are not sure that their plan isn't worse than what will happen already.