A pair of old science fiction books came to hand the other day — two novels with similar central themes. Over the years I've enjoyed reading each of these stories more than once. I looked into them again in hopes of finding some characteristic passages to quote.

But (perhaps fortunately) they don't seem easily excerptable. Maybe that's part of their magic? Each possesses a solid style, strong action, and sharp ideas. Each also has plot holes huge enough for an asteroid to comfortably cruise through. Setting all that aside (along with some pedestrian prose and thin characterization) both books are charming in distinctive ways. They are:

• Sleeping Planet by William R. Burkett, Jr., serialized in Analog in 1964, a few years before I started reading that 'zine. Virtually everybody on Earth is rendered unconscious by an alien invasion's secret weapon; only a handful of unaffected humans are left to respond. The climax happens hundreds of pages before the end, but who cares? It's a romp for the good guys....
• Protector by Larry Niven, which first appeared in 1967 in a shorter form in Galaxy magazine. What if people were merely the juvenile stage of a far smarter and deadlier species — stuck forever short of transformation into meta-adulthood? Then one person is pushed across that threshold into hyper-genius, barely before an oncoming assault by interstellar hordes. Can s/he save the Solar System? Much darker than the other book, less fun, more provocative....

The parallel core concepts in these novels reminds me of one of the most engaging early video games: Defender, in which a player flies around a tiny world attempting to rescue 10 little people from alien attackers. Two-dimensional, to be sure, but with a (cylindrical) twist, and at least a minimal excuse for shoot-em-up action....

(cf. Omamori (2012-03-09), ...) - TopicLiterature - 2002-05-27

(correlates: CorpsOfMockers, LeverAge, BlindLake, ...)