Customer Reviews

The outposter

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

 

 

Live on the edge of Human colonization and strange things happen. You get attacked a lot by aliens and your government no longer trys to protect you. Solution: defend yourself. Dickson once again invents a rich tale of survival of the fittest where one individual can influence the survival of the entire Human race. Dickson tells this story in a compact but rich format that draws you in and makes for a memorable story

the earth city is overcrowded and sense most people don't want to leave for the colonies there is the lottery. now certain people important to the running of earth city are exempt and also the military and thier families. so mostly the dregs of society are forceably sent to colonise the systems around earth. the outposters are the govenment force with the responsiblity to run the colonies. because most people don't want to be there they barely survive with help from the earth city, add and alien race more interested in what they can steal than trade for and a space navy taking bribes and afraid to fight and things are desperate. throw in a second generation outposter with the will and a plan to change it all and your have a geat story.

An alien race takes over Earth, but they allow Earth to pretty much still govern itself. There are diplomats who correspond with the alien race. Earth is overpopulated, so the poor are sent to colonize nearby planets/satellites (e.g. mars, moon). The Outposter is one of the government security force assigned to keep the colonists orderly, but he soon abandons his post to join with the resistance movement.

action (as in some fighting) and intruige - and all this from a shady memory of it (i read it maybe 5-6 years ago, around the same time i read Black Steel by Steve Perry)

The book had some interesting elements, and I liked at how quick one could get into it; however, that being said, what I disliked about the book was that it never seemed to go anywhere. The aliens were supposed to be extremely tough, yet the main hero did not seem to have to put up much of a struggle to get where he wanted to. The climax, if ever there was much of one, did not result in anything big. I like a book that doesn't drag on and on about nothing, which in this case Dickson seemed able to get to the point in a quick fashion; however, this book seemed written only with the notion that the author wanted to hurry up and get it done.

When I finshed reading the book, I really felt like I wasted a good two weeks reading, when I could have read something else. Luckily, it only took me about 2 weeks to read, I was in a hurry. It was my fault for being mislead by the cover and the back description. Of course the main guy does not know who to lose in hand to hand combat. Standard hero stuff. Not much on military stuff, which is what I thought it was. It definitely is not.

Dickson is one of those authors whom I refer to as the psycodelic generation.

Many of their novels are literally "far out". The Outposter is one of them.