Review: “The Highest Treason” by Randall Garrett (1961)
Posted on January 16th, 2008
Great novella and sharp cover image.
This space opera is set roughly a century and a half in the future when the Earth forces are losing a war against an alien warrior civilization. Earth and its colonies have developed a society where equality is prized above all, and as a result institutional advancement is based solely on seniority rather than merit. Initiative and creativity are discouraged while paperwork pushing is rewarded.
Colonel Sebastian MacMaine is a Harrison Bergeron-type character: a capable military strategist that finds himself weighted down by a leaden bureaucracy. As one of the few men able to see that the Earth forces are losing the war due to their self-selected mediocrity, MacMaine finds that he must act when the opportunity arises.
So McMaine learns the alien language from captive prisoners, springs an enemy prisoner-of-war from confinement, hijacks a spaceship, and defects by delivering himself, the spaceship, the crew, and the POW general into enemy hands as a show of good faith.
After a period of confinement and a character reference from the freed general, the ruling alien military council allows MacMaine to take strategic command of a fleet opposing the Earth forces in return for a lucrative salary and retirement.
Macmaine shows that he is a masterful strategist and delivers crushing defeats to the Earth forces opposing him. Not stopping there, he shows that he is even more ruthless than his alien overlords by ordering the entire civilian population of a captured colony (120 million men, women, and children) hanged.
Following that atrocity, MacMaine is quickly branded the worst traitor mankind has ever seen and a large reward is issued for his capture. MacMaine still has a trick or two up his sleeve, however, and escapes his pursuers after leaving a taunting note.
While it may not sound like it from the description, this is really a story about sacrifice and redemption, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you give it a try because it holds up extremely well, comparing favorably with much military space opera of the 1990s.
I have some small complaints, such as the tendency to paint both the alien and Earthmen with respective overly broad brushes, but it doesn’t distract much from the story.
Very highly recommended. Break free of your shackles and get it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
Tags: free science fiction, public domain science fiction, randall garrett, Review, speculative fiction
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