Collision course

Reading sci-fi from the 1960s can be strange. On the one hand, so many ideas of exploration, social commentary, and discovery are there and fun to see. It's interesting to see how ideas have passed through books, TV, movies, and culture broadly in the intervening 60 years. However, the ultimate cultural lens of the 60's remains, and so you have odd juxtapositions of exploration and discovery with rather unimaginative ideas of race/color, manifest destiny, etc.

Silverberg here plays with the idea of manifest destiny by drawing humans in contact with a similar species of alien that hold the same belief. The manifestations of xenophobia that our protagonists have presents primarily as color-based racism (referring the aliens by their color, “bluefaces” “greenfaces”) which made me cringe. The stratification of color-based division in the aliens (Norglans) and the presentation of what the colors mean is deeply rooted in color-based race systems in the United States, which feels a bit unimaginative. One could say that this is a commentary on our historical race system - but there is no thoughtful commentary to be had. If anything, the author vaguely reinforces old tropes and stereotypes by having the characters remark on the apparent physical differences of the aliens and remark on specialized breeding to purpose. Now, perhaps this is well and good for this alien society — but writing in the 1960s, it felt a little trite.

Additionally, there is a similarity to the other ‘old' sci-fi I read last year - The Star Fox, by Paol Anderson. That is, a book about Manly Men doing Manly Things. Manly Learned Men (the sociologist), Manly Religious Men (the linguist), Manly Pilot/Military Stand In Men (the pilots), Manly Diplomats (the diplomat), Manly Rulers (the technarch). There isn't much difference between the characters - they are Manly Men with Big Hands, all standing “a little over six feet tall” with “rock-hard” faces. There are, in fact, no women at all in this book. Only two women are ever mentioned, the two ex-wives of our main character, the Sociologist. Women get a passing glance at existence when our characters appear stranded and one bloke says “it wouldn't be so bad with some women, but 9 men?”

As a point of order, our Sociologist practices some pretty surface level sociology. Clearly, he has taken a 1960's era appropriate sociology undergraduate course. I don't think he's done much more.

The actual prose is good, certainly nothing to complain about; dated a bit. The plot is simplistic and is “resolved” if it can be called such by a deux ex machina the size of the Andromeda galaxy. The climax results in all of the Manly Men engaging in some Manly Moping until the book comes to a close, with the Manliest of Men doing his Manly Best to hold back a sob in front of our protagonist. God forbid a man shed tears, though it must be said they could be shed for better reasons.