Review: "Blind Man’s Lantern" by Allen K. Lang (1962)

Posted on February 20th, 2008

I have to be honest, this is the first Amish science fiction novelette I can recall reading. I recall an Amish presence in Scalzi’s The Last Colony and I think there were some Amish in Murray Leinster’s The Pirates of Ersatz, but this is the first to focus on them as far as I know.

I’ve said before with my review of The Destroyers that I’m not much into reading tales of farmers. I can firmly state that that position goes double for tales of Amish farmers. Here, an Amish couple are sent to help colonize a world inhabited mainly by Hausa colonists. I think the Amish were needed for their back-to-soil-techniques which had been lost. How the hell they can dig up Amish in the future, but can’t find Hausa on the agrarian planet who remembers how to farm is beyond me.

Frankly, I could not finish this story. I skimmed to get the gist, which was that the Amish moved in, had a barn-raising (of course), made nice with the local muckety-muck, and then angered said muckety-muck with a farming faux-pas that offended his religious sensibilities.

The Amish figured out the problem, which turned out to be humorous only if you are an Amish farmer in the future on a planet inhabited by Islamic fundamentals, and everything turned out just grand. I found this story

Excruciating and I want those minutes of my life back. But maybe you’ll have a better time of it. You can read it online here or dig your own hole at Project Gutenberg to find it in a couple formats or in more at Manybooks.net

Tags: Review
Filed under Free Stuff, Lang, Allen K., Review, Science Fiction & Fantasy (SFF) |

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