Review: "By Proxy" by Randall Garrett (1960)

Posted on March 1st, 2008

Randall Garrett stories are comfort food, the meatloaf and mashed potatoes of free fiction. Sure, if you have a bad day you can always come home, knock back a fifth of Jim Beam and kick the dog, but what does that get you? A hangover and a pissed-off dog. Next time you need a cocktail, try a Randall Garrett Old-Fashioned.

This novelette is thankfully missing psionics and while there are one or two light-hearted lines, Garrett’s atrocious punning also skips its appearance. At its heart, it is really just a slow-boiled adventure/mystery/suspense tale that happens to have a scientific invention at the center. The story could likely have been told with a different type of discovery and still worked.

Terrence Elshawe is a newspaper reporter assigned to the upcoming launch of Malcolm Porter’s homemade spaceship. Porter has just recently been released from prison after serving three years of a five year sentence for launching an unauthorized rocket.

Porter’s defense at his trial had been that he hadn’t launched a rocket, but that his craft had used a new anti-gravity technology. Unfortunately, the military had obliterated the ship when it shot it down, so he could not prove his claim, and after the government’s physics experts discounted his anti-gravity theory to the jury, he was easily convicted.

Following his release, Porter pulled the old gang together and developed another ship and is now set to launch. Elshawe is sent to cover the story, but finds multiple government players out to put a stop to it, including threatening Porter’s parole.

Egotistical Porter is unswayed, and continues preparations. Meanwhile, Elshawe begins investigating a quiet character on Porter’s team and finds out some interesting information about him. Eventually, there is a launch, and Elshawe, an on-the-scene-witness, finds himself in front of  a congressional committee hoping he can keep certain secrets.

Overall, it was interesting enough and focused more on the psychology of a couple individuals involved than it did on pot-boiling suspense or mystery. Like I said, comfort food.

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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