Review: "Watch the Sky" by James Schmitz (1962)

Posted on February 15th, 2008

This novelette has more turns in it than a driving test. As the story opens, seemingly dutiful grand-nephew Phil Boles is visiting his elderly grand-aunt to check on her. It becomes apparent that Boles, the backwater planet Roye’s union leader, is not quite as dutiful as he seems and has an ulterior motive in his visit.

There is a long-term war being waged against the alien Geest and Boles has a plan to clone a Geest war relic collected by his grand-uncle off-planet in order to plant the weapon somewhere on Roye where it will be discovered. Boles’ rationale is that once the weapon is discovered, Earth will massively fortify the military base on the planet and Boles’ personal fortunes will rise as a result of the influx of personnel.

The plan goes awry and some of Boles’ Earth confederates are caught and sent to Roye, not surprising considering that Roye is a Botany Bay destination where Earth undesirables are discreetly shipped.

Boles, wondering whether his former confederates are planning to do him in, has his own surprise in store for them, one that is bigger than Boles, his former confederates, and the whole planet of Roye. This story kept me guessing about Boles and I’m rating it as:

Very good/Recommended. You can plant and read it online here or hatch your own plot and download it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Filed under Free Stuff, Review, Schmitz, James, Science Fiction & Fantasy (SFF) |

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