Jonathan Palfrey

This is an odd book about an odd man: a science-fiction story starring a tall, bald, overweight vegetarian, a beer-drinker and cat-lover, who doesn't much like the company of humans, and speaks in an oddly formal and pedantic manner. He's highly intelligent but eccentric, and determined to play by the rules—at least, whatever he conceives to be the rules of any situation.Initially he's an unsuccessful interstellar trader, a role that doesn't suit him well. At the end of the first chapter, he acquires a new role that seems to suit him better, and it continues for the rest of the book.The stories in the book are somewhat interesting and entertaining, but I think the main entertainment here is in the character of Haviland Tuf, the protagonist, and in his quaint way of speaking. If I met the man, hypothetically, I don't suppose I'd actively like him: he doesn't tend to like other people and doesn't usually care what they think of him. But I quite enjoy reading about him. He's literally extraordinary. I could readily read another book about him, but as far as I know this is the only one.It certainly deserves at least three stars, perhaps four, but I'm not sure about that, so for the time being I'll leave it at three. This is, incidentally, the only fiction I've read by George R. R. Martin: the Game of Thrones saga doesn't appeal to me, from what I've heard about it, and I've neither read it nor seen it on screen.I've read that, in writing this book, Martin was trying to imitate [a:Jack Vance 5376 Jack Vance https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1207604643p2/5376.jpg], and indeed Haviland Tuf seems like a character that Vance might have created.

This was Niven's first novel and rather oddly remains my favourite of the ones he wrote by himself. It's a short novel; there are stories not much shorter than this that are sold as novellas, these days.

Niven's ability to come up with imaginative concepts and tie them all together persuasively is already in place even at this early stage, and here he invents various alien species, in particular the thrintun, but also the tnuctipun and the bandersnatchi.

Some of his aliens (the Pak, the kzinti, the puppeteers) became an enduring part of his world and appeared in multiple books, but the thrintun and the tnuctipun became extinct as a result of the war between them two billion years ago. One thrint turns up in this story, having survived in a stasis field, and it would be possible and not surprising for others to have done so; but perhaps Niven couldn't think of a new twist to put on such a story.

Thanks to their own peculiar characteristics, the bandersnatchi survived the war and the two billion years and continue to exist on various planets, although they're of limited interest. They're occasionally mentioned in other Niven stories.

Niven isn't good at human characterization, and his aliens tend to be his most appealing characters. In this story too, Kzanol the thrint is the character who makes the most impression on the reader. His humans are usually just Niven wearing different hats. However, in this first novel he was at least trying to Do Characterization, so he gives us carefully distinct physical descriptions of each character, some of whom even have slight traces of distinct personality.

I think there are only two women with speaking parts here, both of whom are wives of someone more important, and definitely minor characters. Women are better represented from his second novel onwards.

I enjoy reading about the thrintun, I think because they're basically so human, despite being alien monsters. Mentally, they're what humans would have become if we'd developed their kind of telepathic power during our prehistory. Kzanol has the body of an alien monster and the mind of a human slob; but, in describing him from his own point of view, Niven actually makes us feel sympathy at times for this unlovable character.

The story falls roughly into two halves: the first half on Earth and the second half in the outer reaches of the solar system. Both halves are entertainingly supplemented by flashbacks from Kzanol's memory; however, on the whole I enjoy the first half more. The second half has its moments, and the plot remains gripping, but most of the characters are divided between various different spacecraft, which gives it a rather dry feel.

At least in his youth, Niven seemed most relaxed and playful at the beginning of a book, when he introduced the situation and the characters. Later on, he has to think his way towards an ending, he concentrates, and becomes more serious.

My main conceptual criticism of the story is that the telepathic power of the thrintun seems implausible. OK, a thrint can get into someone's head by telepathy and control him by mental power; though being able to do this to a being of a different species from a different planet seems already somewhat implausible. What's much more implausible is being able to control an unlimited number of beings simultaneously. An “amplifier helmet” wouldn't suffice. Power is a secondary issue here: this is primarily an issue of control and multitasking. We regard a juggler's ability to keep a few inanimate balls in the air as an accomplishment.

Like any collection of unrelated stories, this is a mixed bag.

Of the stories, I particularly like and periodically reread “Odd” and “Stitch in Time”, which are both rather poignant little time-travel stories. In the first case, an accidental time-jump seems to have a beneficial effect; in the second case, its effect is unfortunate in at least one way, although the overall balance of effects is hard to assess (a common problem).

“Random Quest” is a somewhat similar story, although the jump is sideways in time, rather than forwards: it's an alternative-world story. I like it a little less, but I also reread it.

“A Long Spoon” is a light-hearted fantasy story, mildly amusing, with a little twist at the end.

“Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?” is a tedious story that may have seemed more original when it was written than it does now.

And finally we have the title story, the novella called “Consider Her Ways”, which I usually avoid because I find it repulsive. It's about a future world with no men, only women; but that's not inherently repulsive. I think it's repulsive because Wyndham (a male writer, born in 1903) deliberately made it so. Sigh.

With this story, we leave introductions behind and make a start on some serious business; although this story can still be seen as a preparation for the next one.

Murderbot goes on a mission on its own initiative to gather evidence against GrayCris. During the mission, it gets involved with another group of vulnerable humans whom it feels obliged to protect.

I've come to the conclusion that this is the Murderbot story that I like least. The quality of writing is up to the usual standard, and the action is quite exciting, but the underlying plot is not very interesting, the human characters are just names, or little more than names, and there's less humour than usual.

I reread it only because it's part of the series, and another chunk of Murderbot's life. It's not a story that I actively enjoy.

Pullman writes quite well, he has a good imagination, and some of his imagery is memorable. But his imagination seems to me undisciplined: there's not just one fantasy element here but many, a stack of different weirdnesses piled untidily on top of each other. As a general rule, I disapprove of fantasy that runs riot like that. Even Terry Pratchett has more discipline, and he writes comic fantasy in which it doesn't matter so much.

Pullman's characterization is good only when he concentrates. His main characters, Will and Lyra, are quite convincingly drawn and I came to care about them, but the other characters in the book, even quite important ones, are only sketched and don't exist in any depth.

Although Will and Lyra are juveniles, this is a very serious adult story in which seriously bad things happen. It doesn't make comfortable reading, and I'm really surprised that it became so popular.

I should perhaps mention that Pullman appears to be virulently anti-Christian. This isn't a particular problem for me as I'm fairly anti-religious myself, but I was a bit startled by the strength of his feelings.

When I finished this trilogy, I was disgusted with the ending.

On a cosmic level, the right side wins. But, on a personal level, it seems that all the characters end up dead, unhappy, or no better off than they'd been at the start; and Will and Lyra in particular seem doomed to live unhappily ever after.When you write fantasy, particularly with the sort of wide-open licence Pullman gives himself, you can have any sort of ending you want. If he gives us an ending no better than that, it's because that's the sort of ending he wants, which indicates that he and I are thoroughly incompatible. I don't expect I'll ever read any of his other books, because plainly he has no intention of delivering the kind of book I want to read.There are rarely happy endings in real life; but we experience real life whether we like it or not. We read fiction by choice, and I choose not to read fiction that allows me to emerge at the end feeling dismal and let down. Fiction is entertainment; if I'm not agreeably entertained, I don't come back for more.It's admittedly difficult to imagine an ending for Will and Lyra of the form “... and so they lived happily ever after.” Neither of them was suited to be written off in such a quiet and peaceful way. Any happy ending for them would really require several more books to be written about their subsequent adventures. Indeed, even with the ending as written, I suspect that they got up to many unreported adventures after the end of the story.The really unpleasant thing is that they were condemned to do so separately. Pullman contrived that they eventually fell in love with each other and were then almost immediately required (for bizarre reasons of cosmic expediency) never to see each other again. It might even have been preferable if one or both of them had died.

I was reminded of the story of John Lennon's first meeting with Yoko Ono. He was at an avant-garde art exhibition, and one of the exhibits involved climbing up a ladder and peering through a magnifying glass at something. When he did so, what he saw was “Yes”. He was pleased that the message turned out to be positive, and sought to meet the artist.

With Pullman, I felt that I spent quite a long and weary time climbing the ladder, looked through the magnifying glass, and saw “No”. I feel no desire to meet the artist.

I had my own copies of these books, but I later got rid of them. This is not the sort of thing I want to reread.