Review: “Victory” by Lester Del Rey (1955)
Posted on January 14th, 2008
This story was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1955. Going by the word count, it looks like it should be called a novella rather than a short story. Illustrations are by Rogers.
I love me some Lester Del Rey! I don’t claim to have read too much of his work, but I have enjoyed most of what I’ve read. This story was no exception, but it’s not my favorite.
The tale opens with Captain Duke O’Neill returning from commanding the winning forces in the hard fighting between Earth’s alien allies (Meloans) and alien enemies. O’Neill is bitter about Earth’s failure to support its allies and quickly finds that the allied victory was Pyrrhic, leaving his adopted planet, Meloa, devastated. In fact, things are so bad his Meloan girlfriend tries to knife him for dinner, arguing that because they are different species, it’s not really cannibalism.
Realizing after that that Meloa holds no future for him, O’Neill returns to Earth to reenlist for the Outer Planet wars. Flannery, an ex-soldier and Foreign Office muckety-muck, attempts to recruit the war-hero for the Foreign Office, but O’Neill rejects the offer, eschewing Earth’s demonstrated cowardice in its refusal to support its alien allies.
On Earth, O’Neill finds he is now too old to enlist but begins to figure that all is not quite what it seems when he notices some odd things, such as the newspapers printing stories almost in real time when news should be days or weeks behind because of interstellar lag. He also recalls Flannery’s correct prediction about what would happen in the Outer Planet wars and decides to do a little digging at the local library.
After catching up on the news he missed over the last five or so years, O’Neill approaches Flannery to fill in the gaps. Flannery does, in mind-blowing fashion, and is finally successful in recruiting O’Neill to the Foreign Office, which, at least for the future of the Earth, suddenly appears to be the most important organization in government.
Del Rey’s characterization of the obstinate O’Neill is good, but I expected a little more flexibility from someone who became famous for his creative style of warfare. On the other hand, Del Rey was trying to make him a bitter opponent of the pacifist Earth policy and succeeded well.
The ending was a bit whirlwind and I confess I’m not sure I followed it completely, so I’ll have to give it a re-read. It wound up satisfactorily on the character level, but I’m still not sure I buy the political dynamics even within the context of the story. Lastly, some of the clues that O’Neill noticed should have made it obvious to the whole Earth population that something was going on behind the scenes: when a newspaper reports interstellar events as quickly as planetary events in a world where news takes days or weeks to travel, others would have noticed.
All in all a decent story with good characterization, so it’s recommended. You can find it at Project Gutenberg in some formats and Manybooks.net in more.
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