Review: "Final Weapon" by Everett Cole (1955)

Posted on March 4th, 2008

This novella opens with Howard Morely, a conniving, back-stabbing District Leader in a dystopian world of tomorrow. Morely acts as a martinet to those below him and plots against those above him as he leads his district in reconstruction and busy work in the decades following the major war that took place in the 1990s.

The societal picture painted by Cole is mainly gray: for second and third class citizens, life is literally lived underground, at subsistence or lower, and closely monitored in all aspects. The few ruling elite, the first class citizens, enjoy personal freedoms and luxuries and exercise control over the rest, forming the basis for Cole criticism of socialist societies.

Much of the story is spent fleshing out Morely’s character and the lengths to which he will go to increase efficiency in his division until an invention that enables instant thought communication is introduced and the story begins to follow that line to a greater degree.

Morely encourages the production of the device to minimize communication costs, but soon becomes left behind as individuals with greater empathy quickly become skilled at its use. Eventually, the device enables societal changes because individuals find it impossible to oppress each other when they completely understand the viewpoint of those they oppress. Morely, and dinosaurs like him, have difficulty coping with the regime change.

Despite the somewhat grim face of the society shown in the beginning, such as the underground living quarters and the crumbling remnants of civilization, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, this story is overall rather bright and optimistic. I like Cole because he can draw characters and tell a story and even though I sometimes feel his endings fall apart, I’m calling it

Recommended. You can read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: “The Best Made Plans” by Everett B. Cole (1959)

Posted on January 18th, 2008

I’m calling this a novella because it was published in Astounding, but it’s right around 40,000 words so it might have strayed into novel length.

This is set in the same universe as Cole’s shorter Alarm Clock and features the same voice command power as that story. It also mentions the Special Corps in passing.

Don Michaels is a student in the beginning, assumedly high school or the equivalent, and playing the role of hall monitor when he intercedes in what at first seems a minor altercation. Pete, the native lad Don helps out, claims not only to be the rightful claimant to the throne, but that the current Prime Minister, Daniel Stern, has murdered his way into position and is intent on removing all potential claimants, thus the school attack.

Don catches some grief when he won’t change his story of about happened in the hallway, enough so that he is offended and leaves school, which sets off events that lead him to throwing in with Pete against the Prime Minister’s forces. They solicit help from the other native hill clans and begin the process to call a clan enclave to allow a vote on succession.

Don, possessing the voice command gift that works on most of the population, turns out to be a significant ally for Pete. It also helps that Don has a close relationship with the native hill clans, so Pete makes Don a member of his clan and his clan advisor. There are plots and counterplots, but in the end, Don and the Prime Minister of course face off, leading to a grim conclusion.

The feel in the beginning is definitely juvenile yesteryear, but as it proceeds, it begins to show some serious decisions, danger, and even death. The school scenes work well in establishing Don’s moral code and grit, but the Leave it to Beaver aesthetic doesn’t hold up as well as the rest of the story. The Dongen illustrations, while good, are also dated.

Lastly, the psionics ability is more prevalent in this story, which may be why I liked Alarm Clock better. I would read that as an introduction to the ability and this as an expansion.

I rate it Fair to Recommended. So flex your own secret powers and command this story to appear at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats and at Manybooks.net in a couple more.

Tags: free science fiction, public domain science fiction, Review, speculative fiction
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Review: “Alarm Clock” by Everett B. Cole (1961)

Posted on January 13th, 2008

There was recently no review of Alarm Clock on the web, and little information about the author, Everett B. Cole, so I read this novelette knowing it was a crap shoot. Luckily, I rolled a 7 and got a nice payout. I can’t stress enough that discovering this sort of science fiction from the public domain is this blog’s raison d’etre; the idea is to fill a gap and guide readers to enjoyable speculative fiction instead of gambling on unknowns.

In this corker, the main character is Stan Graham, a prison inmate on the planet Kellonia. The planet, one of the first settled in space three hundred years earlier, had slowly slid from a frontier world independence to a fascist prison-dependent corporatism. Stan, on a layover, is seized and tossed into prison on the flimsiest of charges and must fight his way into position to make the positive changes he feels are morally necessary.

Along the way, we find out that he has been put into this position by Special Corps, a hidden agency similar to the Special Corps in the Stainless Steel Rat series but not composed of criminals. In the resolution, a seemingly metaphorical ability manifests literally, which turns out to be the reason why Special Corps placed Stan into the Kellonia crucible.

The excellent ink illustrations are by Van Dongen and capture the sturdy, square-jawed working world well. The few action scenes are, like the main character, modest, and the drawings manage to capture them with a sparse style that adds to, rather than detracts from, the story itself.

I would have liked to have seen a few things done differently. After all, U.S. history shows that when strong powers are given to law enforcement, they are eventually abused until they are pulled back to reach the proper balance. Therefore, I think the whole idea of a “Special Corps” type body with essentially unchecked power is a bad idea in general, although I apparently enjoy reading about the concept in fiction. I also didn’t care for the extraordinary power manifested by Stan that seemed unnecessary to the resolution of the story; I would have much preferred just his wits, fists, and grit instead. But that’s just personal observations and the story works just fine.

This story was very enjoyable and I highly recommend giving it a read.

It is available at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats.

Tags: free science fiction, public domain science fiction, Review, speculative fiction
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