The Alien Princess Book Reviews

In one of my favourite local bookstores for some retail therapy after a hard week, I was attracted to Sheri S. Tepper’s 1989 novel Grass by an icon of a fearsome, spiny beast embossed onto its moss-green cover. Within the novel’s 450 pages, I found the alien creature at the centre of a complex meditation on ecology, religion, and duty, supported by compelling characters and a tightly-crafted plot. I give it an 8.5/10.

A deadly plague is sweeping through the universe under an intergalactic techno-Catholic regime known as Sanctity, who forbids acknowledgment of its existence. Former Olympic equestrian Marjorie and her husband Rigo, on a secret mission to find a cure, are sent to the supposedly plague-free prairie planet Grass as ambassadors. Upon arrival, they witness a traditional Grassian Hunt and are introduced to the alien featured on the cover: a Hippae, a horselike animal with deadly spikes which force its riders into a frozen posture. Soon Rigo and their daughter Stella are fascinated with the Hunt, while Marjorie and her son Tony investigate the ruins of an alien city in pursuit of a clue to the cure. When Stella disappears during a Hunt, Marjorie plunges into the dangerous wild grasses to save her and uncovers a shocking truth that touches everything: the Hippae, the plague, and even God.

This novel was an excellent read. There were so many elements at play, but nothing felt out of place or random. It has the kind of worldbuilding that I find really satisfying, where every element is in service of the plot. The Catholic focus was a bit of a surprise, as it was not mentioned in the back cover summary, but definitely a welcome one. I love sci-fi that explores religion and spirituality, and Grass absolutely hit that spot for me.

The writing style was natural and evocative, with well-paced and vivid action scenes. I especially enjoyed the way the novel opened with a scene of a Hunt from the Grassian elites’ perspective. It was incredibly intriguing because the Hippae (or mounts, as they call them) and their hounds weren’t described, so the reader has to wait to experience the alienness of the Hippae with Marjorie and her family. The characters, too, were interesting and believable. The characterization has a timelessness about it; I kept mistakenly thinking while reading the novel that it was published later, perhaps in the early 2000s. The plague plotline reads as especially modern in our post-covid present.

The second half of the book is where most of my issues with the text lie. True to Catholic form, the narrative insists upon the inherent danger in sexual desire, punishing female characters with a brain-wipe or death for acting on their desires. Stella, who snuck into a hunt to get close to the son of an aristocratic family she was attracted to, is paired off by the end in a lovingly modest relationship with a monk and is expecting a baby by him. This relationship came out of absolutely nowhere, except for a couple mentions of the monk, Rilibee, being attracted to Stella on the rescue mission. I find it hard to picture the stubborn, passionate Stella of the first half of the novel settling down to raise a family when she’s just out of her teens. Part of the novel’s sexual politics is the idea that sexual assault is a death sentence: the girls who disappear during the Hunt resurface feral and unsocialized, their brains wiped clean. It is heavily implied they are raped by the Hippae. The survivors’ established identities and personhood are eliminated, leaving just a shell. Stella is able to be re-taught her lost knowledge and regain a sense of identity, but the other two girls are beyond saving. Stella’s character arc is the fantasy of the slut who learns her lesson, who dies from her own sin and is reborn as a sexually moral woman by the grace of a benevolent religious figure.

I also felt that the novel’s end tied up the plague plotline a little too easily – the finding of the cure kind of came out of nowhere in the final chapters, with no real foreshadowing or clues that the reader could put together as the solution was revealed.

The spiritual elements of the novel really came into play in the second half as well, which I quite enjoyed. Its exploration of alien biology thru the lens of Catholic doctrine is a combination I would never have thought feasible, yet it was a fascinating contribution to the story’s themes. I particularly liked a passage wherein the characters discuss the possibility of alien original sin (249-252) and Marjorie’s contact with the divine (353-355) while knocked out in the swamp forest. These spiritual elements rounded out the novel’s dissection of duty and goodness, leaving me with satisfying concepts to mull over after I’d turned the last page.

Overall, I found Sheri S. Tepper’s Grass (1989) to be an incredibly enjoyable read. Its absorbing worldbuilding, well-paced plot, realistic characters, and fascinating themes garner it an 8.5, well worth staying on my bookshelf.

Work Cited
Tepper, Shari S. Grass. Bantam Books, 1989.

For my girlfriend’s 23rd birthday, I took her to the Toronto Botanical Gardens. The gardens are a sprawling oasis of green at the edge of the hot, dirty city, offering a lush variety of flora both native and not. After we’d drunk in our fill of brightly coloured flowers, charming plots of crops, winding mossy pathways, and peaceful streams, we wandered into the gift shop. It was here that I picked up Nadina Galle’s The Nature of our Cities. Subtitled Harnessing the Power of the Natural World to Survive a Changing Planet, the book offers technological solutions to the ongoing climate crisis that aim to work with nature, not against it. I give it a 6/10.

An ecological engineer and self-proclaimed Internet of Nature (IoN) scientist, Galle takes her readers on an immersive journey to pinpoint the benefits of urban naturalism utilizing cutting-edge technology. Beginning with a harrowing “what-if” scenario as a prologue, she exposes the climate change-induced dangers that we will face if we fail to meaningfully incorporate nature into our cities. In a vivid narrative voice, she recounts tales of conservation technology research, both her own and that of people she’s interviewed for the book. Nine chapters, each flowing seamlessly into the next, identify eight areas in need of technological intervention: urban forests, extreme heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, nature blindness, eco-therapy, devaluation of nature, and fostering youth interest in conservation. Among the solutions Galle’s interviewees are innovating include laser-powered sensors to collect urban tree data, community-based heat mapping and wildfire tracking apps, prescribed-fire robots, AI-powered satellite wildfire-risk detectors, cloud-computing smart ponds, cybertaxonomy apps, and immersive art exhibits where you hold conversations with trees. The book concludes with a hopeful epilogue, an inverse of its despairing prologue, encouraging readers to envision a greener future aided by technology.

I enjoyed this book primarily because it introduced me to an incredible range of ways the latest technology can be applied to nature conservation. As Galle points out, many people, whether consciously or subconsciously, hold the view that nature and technology are diametrical opposites forever in contention. In order to move forward into a greener future, we need to contest this view by disrupting it with material, data-based solutions. A problem that many of her interviewees ran into was the difficulty of convincing those in power (those holding the purse-strings) that nature is worth caring for. By utilizing technology to quantify exactly how nature is beneficial to humans, we give nature advocates the tools they need to affect real change.

However, Galle writes in a perspective that is far too Western and capitalist for my tastes. Climate change solutions are primarily discussed with respect to Western European and North American cities, other areas of the world only referred to for comparison. Certain technological “solutions,” such as the prescribed-burning robot mentioned above, are intended to be mass-produced, the sourcing of resources for its construction never discussed. As we know, the Earth is one massive interconnected system, and ecologically-exploitative resource extraction operations which most technologies rely upon will exacerbate the exact problems these products are created to solve. Galle speaks of the interconnectedness of nature and humanity many times, but she writes as if only Western Europe and North America participate in the system.

Galle’s narrative voice is captivating, using everyday vocabulary and vivid descriptions to draw her readers in. However, the verb tenses in the book are not consistent at all, which bothered me to no end. Galle seems to like to write her “narrative” or “storytelling” sections in present tense, but most of the rest of the book is written in past tense. It was extremely jarring to be switching between the two constantly, sometimes even in the same paragraph or sentence. It’s an unfortunate flaw of the writing that I can see deterring many readers.

I picked up The Nature of our Cities because these days I’m becoming increasingly interested in what an ideal green city could look like. A core tension that exists at the heart of green cities is that the city is an innovation of industrial capitalism, nature’s true enemy. While Galle’s argument that we need to incorporate nature into the capitalist system may be convincing for some, it’s insufficient to my mind. Without acknowledging the inherent harm capitalism perpetuates against nature, we will be forever stuck at downstream solutions for climate change. For our attitudes toward nature to change, so too do we have to change our entire system.

This is obviously a lot of very hard work, the fruits of which we will probably not see in our lifetime. But just as planting a sapling requires faith that one day it will become a towering tree, attempting to disrupt and dismantle the capitalist system requires faith in the future. This is a lesson we can all take from nature, who with her exponentially-increasing extreme weather events is trying desperately to raise the alarm bell. The Nature of our Cities is an incredible resource for a short-term response to these cries, but to truly understand what they mean, an intersectional, anti-capitalist approach is needed.

In conclusion, Nadina Galle’s The Nature of our Cities (2024) is a fascinating, if flawed, look into the consequences of climate change and its possible solutions. It’s staying on my bookshelf for the technology, but its Western-centred, capitalist approach and inconsistent verb tenses grant it no higher than a 6/10.

Work Cited
Galle, Nadina. The Nature of our Cities: Harnessing the Power of the Natural World to Survive a Changing Planet. Mariner Books, 2024.

When I saw Leonard Nimoy’s 1975 memoir I am not Spock advertised on my favourite local bookstore’s Instagram account, I rushed over determined to snag it, whatever the price. Having just now months later gotten around to reading it, I can say that $75 was definitely well spent. Only 135 pages, I am not Spock is a delightful short read, filled with amusing and interesting anecdotes about the making of Star Trek, the character of Mr. Spock, and Nimoy’s acting career. I give it a 9/10.

In I am not Spock, Nimoy grapples with the challenges to his identity that the superstardom of Mr. Spock presented. As the face of one of the most iconic television characters in history, he struggled with doubt over his own worth as an actor outside of the Spock role. In clever dialogue sequences between himself and Spock, he reveals how the character took on the role of his inner critic. Of course, the logical Vulcan was impossible to refute.

Nevertheless, the relationship between the two was a symbiotic one. From the early days of shooting Star Trek to his encounters with fans to his work in other artistic endeavors, Nimoy recounts with wit and grace all that Mr. Spock has done for him, good and bad. The memoir also delves into philosophical waters as Nimoy muses about the impact of Star Trek and Mr. Spock, on varied topics ranging from sexuality to existentialism. I am not Spock is a wonderful memoir for not only fans of Star Trek, but for those interested in pop culture and TV history.

I found this book particularly interesting because it was published in 1975, between the end of the original Star Trek series and the beginning of the original series of movies. Nimoy writes as though his time with Star Trek is over, but the reader knows it is only just beginning. The second half of the book has more of a focus on Nimoy’s work outside of Star Trek, both in acting and other artistic pursuits. I found this very interesting to read about because I only know him in the context of Star Trek. The only thing I disliked about this book, and the reason it loses a point in my rating, is the chauvinistic nature of the writing. Despite Nimoy’s grace in discussing his female fans, he neglects his wife Sandi and secretary Teresa, both of whom were doing work behind the scenes that must have contributed to the Spock character or been relevant to the memoir in some other way. I would have liked to hear more about his wife in particular, but he writes as if she is not an important person in his life at all. Of course, the gendered separation of the work and home spheres was much more pronounced in those days, so to Nimoy, writing about work, it must not have occurred to him to write about his wife other than a few incidental mentions. It’s an unfortunate downside to an otherwise excellent memoir.

In conclusion, Leonard Nimoy’s I am not Spock is a fascinating look into the life and legacy of Nimoy, Spock, and the Star Trek series. Both witty and philosophical, Nimoy takes the reader on a sweeping journey while unaware that around the next bend, the road continues into infinity. With a score of 9/10, it’s staying on my bookshelf.

Work Cited
Nimoy, Leonard. I am not Spock. Buccaneer Books, 1975.

I picked up Aaron Tucker’s Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys (2023) at its launch at Coach House Books in Toronto. I had been invited by a friend, who is a friend of Tucker’s partner, and the launch was also a kind of going-away party for the two of them, as they were moving to Newfoundland. I was already interested in the book as soon as I read the cover’s blurb comparing him to Don DeLillo, but when I heard his reading of it, that sealed the deal. I finished it two days later. Subtitled a Western, the novel is part film retelling, part weird fiction that defamiliarizes my hometown of Toronto while interrogating contemporary white masculinity. I give it an 8.5/10.

The first part of the book is a dialogue between the unnamed male lead and his ex-girlfriend, Melanie. They’re drinking at her apartment late at night and she’s telling him about one of her favourite films, The Searchers, starring John Wayne. Between her descriptions of each scene, they talk about their families, their histories, and each other, using the film as a jumping-off point. As the night wears on, tensions arise. The night eventually ends with the man storming out of Melanie’s apartment, upset because she’s told him he can’t stay the night. The next morning, a mysterious disaster hits the city and Melanie is unreachable.

This first half was very well done. The dialogue between Melanie and her ex was interesting and frequent enough to break up the movie’s retelling so that it never got boring. I think the film could have easily overshadowed the characters here, but Tucker’s character-building was so deftly woven into the film’s retelling that each complemented the other perfectly. The male lead is an interesting iteration of the “everyman” character trope, and this first half built a solid foundation of modern white masculine characterization to pull apart in the second half.

The second part of the book begins with the unnamed male lead waking up to the news that an unknown disaster has hit the city of Toronto. When he tries to contact Melanie, she’s unresponsive, and he immediately fears the worst. As he journeys across the city to find her, Toronto and the Wild West of The Searchers fuse into a surreal, dreamy hyperinflation of the problems of modern white masculinity.

This second half left me feeling conflicted. I found it quite self-centred in that uniquely cishet-white-male way, but unlike in some other weird fiction, here it’s earned. I also found the ending quite abrupt and disappointing; I felt like the weirdness was just getting started and then it got cut off! I could have read 50 more pages of that. The abruptness of its ending, to me, seemed to dodge the implications of that white masculine worldview – more specifically, the white man’s culpability in terrorizing women. Instead, the threat to women is pushed on to some theoretical (often racialized) Other. I kept waiting for it to turn around and reveal the main character to be just as susceptible to perpetrating misogynistic violence as other men, but it never did. I feel this does a disservice to the novel’s themes; if the cloud of toxic fumes hanging over Toronto represents the ever-present corrupting influence of toxic masculinity, we should be shown the full range of its effects in the main character.

Despite my above nitpicks, I really did love this novel. It was such a joy to read about a city I actually know, to go “hey, I know where that is!” every couple pages. The way the city was warped to mirror the film that was discussed in the first half was really cleverly done. I especially loved the part in Allen Gardens. The added layer of knowing the places in the novel made the reading experience a very textured one. Again, I just wish it was longer!

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys. Its strong characterization, well-paced plot, compellingly-explored themes, and vivid imagery garner it an 8.5/10. It’s excellent weird fiction, and definitely staying on my bookshelf.

Work Cited
Tucker, Aaron. Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys. Coach House Books, 2023.

Wilkie Collins’ classic detective novel The Moonstone (1868) was another one of my grad student book sale acquisitions. I had been meaning to read it for quite a while when I picked it up three months ago, so I’m glad I’ve finally gotten around to reading it now. One of the earliest examples of detective fiction, The Moonstone as a mystery is steeped in Victorian England’s social conflicts of class, gender, race, and religion. Narrated from multiple points of view, the mystery is a slow-paced, winding one, but nonetheless intriguing and captivating. It ends satisfyingly, but there were few dramatic twists and I was left wanting in that area. I give it a 7.5/10.

The Victorian tendency to provide exorbitant amounts of backstory and context has never been better exemplified than in this book, in my experience. The narrative opens with the story of the titular gemstone’s theft from its sacred place in India as spoils of war, “extracted from a family paper”. Then, we are jumped to 50 years later, when its possessor dies and it falls into the hands of Rachel Varinger, a beautiful young heiress, as a gift for her eighteenth birthday. By the next morning the priceless diamond has been stolen, and the investigation begins. This first part is narrated by Gabriel Betteredge, the household’s obsequious Robinson Crusoe-obsessed Steward.

I really liked this first half because of the narrative voice, it was so unique and there were many funny moments and snarky quips. Even though there was a lot of backstory infodumping going on, the old man’s rambling tendencies allowed the infodumping to be broken up by active scenes, keeping the narrative at a steady pace. After Betteredge passes the narrative over to Miss Clack, the novel began to drag a bit for me. Miss Clack’s narrative voice was annoying, and the other male characters’ narrative voices who took over after her were simply run-of-the-mill, nothing special to note. I do, however, really love the concept of this novel as an in-universe document, and the multiple narrative voices add a nice layer to that. The only other thing to note as a weak point in the novel is its reliance on letter-writing in the second half. It got very repetitive and boring, reading about characters writing and reading endless letters that described the action, instead of being immersed in the action itself.

Collins described the book as an “attempt made […] to trace the influence of character on circumstances,” and that can certainly be seen in the richness and complexity of the characters; the twistiness of the plot is directly shaped by their secrets, lies, hopes, fears, temperaments, and worldviews. It is very much like an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery in this respect, but without being confined to one location: the novel sprawls across England, touching on mainland Europe and, of course, India.

As I read through the novel, I found myself thinking the story could be ingeniously adapted into a 1940s noir tale because of the rigidity of the gender roles in both periods. The novel has a lot to say about Victorian gender roles and performance. It also comments heavily on class and Christianity, as mentioned above. It would be fascinating to do an in-depth reading on intersectionality in this text.

Overall, I quite enjoyed The Moonstone. It returned me to one of my favourite fictional worlds, the detective’s Victorian England. It has inspired me to get back to writing mystery, which is surely the mark of a good mystery novel. With a rating of 7.5/10, it’s staying on my bookshelf.

Work Cited
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1993.

I picked up Gabriel García Márquez’s 1975 novel The Autumn of The Patriarch (trans. by Gregory Rabassa) at a grad student book sale purely on the merit that I recognized the author’s name from somewhere. I cannot recall where I’ve heard of Márquez before, but I had heard he was a good author, and that rumour was certainly confirmed upon reading this novel. The Autumn of The Patriarch is a winding, lyrical, hypnotic experimental novel that paints a vivid portrait of a nearly immortal Caribbean dictator, his corrupt and despicable actions, and the vivacity of his vulnerable nation. I give an 8/10.

The novel is only 250 pages long, but it feels much longer because there are no paragraph breaks, and indeed, hardly any sentence breaks. I would say it is very comparable to Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies, especially in its musings on mortality and old age, but much more sensory, with lush and vivid language. Due to its near-absence of sentence breaks, the novel gallops along at a breathless pace that I found myself being sucked into every time I picked it up; I read it feverishly in the space of about a week. It has very interesting musings on the nature of power, of happiness, masculinity and femininity, and colonialism. It’s definitely worth a second read to see how all these things fit together – for instance cows are clearly a very important symbol, but I’m not sure of what.

The only downside to this novel is the sheer volume of rape and violence against women. While this is to be expected from a novel about a monstrous dictator, the depictions of sexual assault were incredibly distasteful at parts and that really took me out of the novel’s spell. I wouldn’t say the novel fetishizes rape, but it does certainly downplay its horror and brutality. The victims are often portrayed as having pity and tenderness towards their attacker, and that really turns my stomach.

Overall, this novel was an incredibly addicting read and it’s staying on my bookshelf. I love experimental fiction and this really hit all the right notes for me, except the sexual assault, garnering it an 8/10.

Work Cited
García Márquez, Gabriel. The Autumn of The Patriarch. Avon Books, 1976.

I found this gem of a space noir, Harry Harrison’s 1961 novel The Stainless Steel Rat, in the sci-fi and fantasy room of a local bookstore, and it caught my eye because the title was so goofy-sounding. It’s actually part of a 3-novel volume called The Adventures of The Stainless Steel Rat, and it was shelved alongside many other books in the Stainless Steel Rat series. I’ll have to go back and buy some more after I finish this trilogy. The Stainless Steel Rat is a fun, campy tale about an interstellar outlaw who’s been recruited to the side of the law. It was a joy to read, with a quippy, noir-inspired narrative voice and seamless, fascinating worldbuilding. I give it an 8/10.

The novel opens with our narrator, the Stainless Steel Rat, James “Slippery Jim” diGriz, ending a successful con job when the cops catch up with him and escaping successfully to a different planet. However, then he makes a mistake: instead of laying low, he immediately robs a bank and is promptly caught and arrested by the Special Corps. Rather than throwing him in jail, however, they recruit him to track down other criminals, other stainless steel rats that have slipped through the cracks. His first assignment is to investigate the construction of a possible battleship. He uncovers the plot and catches the perpetrators, a man named Pepe and a woman named Angelina, but makes another mistake: underestimating Angelina, he lets her go, only to then find out she was the mastermind behind the whole plot. The rest of the novel follows The Rat as he becomes steadily more obsessed with Angelina, tracking her down across the galaxy, slowly falling in love, and trying to decipher her cold, calculating eyes and refined taste for murder.

I really enjoyed reading this novel. The Rat is an incredibly unique and memorable character: brash and overconfident, a chameleon of crime, a proud outlaw. Angelina was also a very fun character; the only thing I didn’t enjoy about her was her odd backstory (growing up ugly and then having many cosmetic surgeries to alter her appearance until she was unrecognizable) and the fact that it was never discussed again after it was revealed. The novel also ended on a somewhat abrupt note, never wrapping up the political revolution plot on the planet Freiburbad that it had been exploring.

I also really loved the worldbuilding. One thing I love about reading older science fiction is seeing futuristic technology imagined through the lens of the technology that was available at the time of writing. There are different classes of little helper robots, telegrams transmitted via psychic waves (“psigrams”), a computer-like instrument called a “thinkbox”, injections that change your psychology, and much more. I’m excited to see more of this world when I read more books in the series.

Overall, I enjoyed The Stainless Steel Rat and it’s definitely staying on my bookshelf. More reviews to come when I read the rest of the series, but for now, I give the first book an 8/10.

Work Cited
Harrison, Harry. The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat. “The Stainless Steel Rat.” Berkley Books, 1961.

Umberto Eco’s 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum promised a lot on its back cover when I found it browsing a grad student book sale: “an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force”; “an intellectual adventure story”. I found it did not live up to its exciting back cover summary, dragging its heels through the murky history of cults, the occult, and secret organizations. I give it a 6.5/10.

The novel begins, of course, at the end, with our main character, Casaubon, contemplating the Pendulum: Foucault’s Pendulum. (I am still not sure why Foucault is associated with it.) The Pendulum is the only fixed point in the universe, the hidden thing at the centre around which everything revolves. It is apparently very important, and it is also revealed that our main character is hiding from Someone, laying in wait for them in this big technological museum. Promising. Then we cut to a few days earlier. Belbo, Casaubon’s friend and colleague at a publishing house, calls him in a panic saying that They are after him, and, while he’s on the phone They get him. Very promising.

A clever sequence of trying to break into Belbo’s computer, Abulafia, takes us back to the very beginning of this whole ordeal. From here the novel follows Casaubon as a young man, studying the history of the Templars, witnessing revolutions and spiritual orgies across two continents, and slowly being drawn into the trap that is the Garamond publishing press. With Belbo and another editor, Diotallevi, they begin to scam conspiracy-obsessed occult types, until they, too, become infected with the need to see everything fit together in a Pattern.

I really enjoyed this first half for the most part. There were, however, quite a few boring paragraphs of history that I skimmed. My favourite part was when Casaubon was in Brazil, it was really interesting to see the political issues of the time in a country whose history I don’t know much about. Also, I liked Amparo, his girlfriend at that point, I thought she was a very compelling character.

After this first half, the novel really began to drag. There were many more meandering paragraphs of history that I skimmed, and sometimes I couldn’t tell if it was real history or not. There was also a bigger focus on Belbo and his relationship with a woman named Lorenza, partially told through his diary entries in the form of surreal, inventive historical fiction. I liked these parts, but the main plot was taking far too long to get to the reason why They got Belbo and what was going to happen to him. When we finally got to it, it was appropriately intense but without any real provocation. The novel capped off with some sage wisdom (summarizing its message) from Casaubon while awaiting his own fate at the hands of Them.

While I thought the story was kind of clunky and boring at parts, I really enjoyed the writing style. There were many interesting and beautiful turns of phrases; its philosophizing wandered through religion, science, and magic and tied them all together with ease. There is a particular passage I like – (pgs 300-304) – that links spirituality and the body in the best way. I also thought Belbo’s musings about what it means to be an artist, a writer, a creator, and his own perceived failure to live up to that made a very compelling philosophical undercurrent.

Overall, I mostly enjoyed this book. I’m glad I read it, and it’s staying on my bookshelf. But it was too slow, confusing, and dull at parts to warrant a higher rating than a 6.5/10.

Work Cited
Eco, Umberto. Foucault’s Pendulum. Ballantine Books, 1988.

I found this pulpy little number, Norman Spinrad’s 1966 novel The Solarians, at my favourite local bookstore (along with The Void Captain’s Tale by the same author, review to come). The Solarians is a dramatic space adventure reminiscent of a Star Trek episode, so it perfectly suited my tastes. There were a few tasteless and sexist moments, as well as an overbearing heteronormativity – but that’s old sci fi, that’s just how it is. I give it a 7/10.

Our protagonist, Fleet Commander Jay Palmer, is fighting a losing battle against the Duglaari empire, who are slowly exterminating the human race as they colonize the galaxy. For centuries, humanity’s only hope has been the Solarians, a group of humans who split from the rest of the Human Confederation with the promise they would return some day to save them all from the Duglaari. That day comes when Palmer is meeting with the High Marshal, and the strange delegation takes an immediate interest in him. The delegates from Sol – a group of six: three men, three women – explain their plan to surrender to the Duglaari, and the unfortunate Palmer is assigned to the mission to keep an eye on these suspicious strangers.

Thus begins a steadily paced though predictable space drama where the conflict between Palmer’s suspicion of the Solarians and his desire to be a part of their Group underpins every tactical move. The Solarians are foreign and strange, and powerful, too – some able to read minds and perform telekinesis – but they are also open, accepting, and affectionate. Palmer's steady emotional beats of distrust and longing lead up to a sensational final battle.

The novel had some very fun sci-fi concepts, like a musical instrument that plays scents, or a cocktail that makes you feel like you went through a whole night’s binge in twenty minutes. The idea of the Group, as well, I found quite progressive, even if the whole “free love” concept was undermined by heteronormativity. It is very much Of Its Era; its philosophy of “one man can change the course of history” is very OG Star Trek.

Overall, I did really enjoy The Solarians and it's staying on my bookshelf. However, its sexism and heteronormativity grant it no higher than a 7/10.

Work Cited
Spinrad, Norman. The Solarians. Paperback Library, 1966.