Customer Reviews

This World Is Taboo

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_This World is Taboo_ is one of Murray Leinster's Med Service yarns. It originally appeared in _Amazing_ in 1960 under the title "Pariah Planet." It received little critical attention when it first appeared, and what little it got was lukewarm. I believe that it deserves a better fate; it is one of the top half dozen novels that Leinster wrote. It has one characteristic that makes it stand out a bit from the other stories in the Med Service series: There is an understated romance between Calhoun and the heroine, and there is even a tone of regret when the heroine marries somebody else at the end. The man whom she marries is certainly not the equal of Calhoun.

I have sometimes wondered whether Leinster (who hailed from Virginia) named his hero after John C. Calhoun, the great nineteenth century statesman from South Carolina. One of Calhoun's contemporaries once described him as a "cast iron man," similar to a massive machine. The nickname stuck. Leinster's Calhoun may also seem to be something of an iron man; but in _This World is Taboo_, there is a touch of humanity that shines through like a ghost in the machine.