Walt Richmond (1922–1977)

review of
Nick Kamin's Earthrim & Walt & Leigh Richmond's Phoenix Ship
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 4, 2016

This isn't one of my favorite Ace Doubles, the writing's a little too forced or amateurish or something, but I chose to read it b/c half of it us by the Richmonds who I only recently discovered & found 'interesting' 'despite-themselves' (sortof). The previous bk by them that I read & reviewed is called The Lost Millenium & you can read my review of it here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/477512-whatever-pt-6-000-000-000 . I found that one to be epic & imaginative but somewhat 'crackpot' in a post-Velikovsky/Scinetology kinda way.

Having the flipside be by someone w/ the last name of "Kamin" added extra interest since the only other person I've known of w/ that name was my friend Franz Kamin about whom I made a movie called "DEPOT (wherein resides the UNDEAD of Franz Kamin)". I'm curious about whether there's a familial connection but I've done nothing to check for one (until now). Nope, according to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, "Pseudonym of US writer Robert John Antonick" ( http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/kamin_nick ). Too bad. Franz's life covered roughly the same timespan: May 25, 1941 – April 11, 2010. Maybe there's still a connection somewhere.

Anyway, I found both novels to be somewhat generic SF of the type that wd've probably led to my becoming disinterested in SF long ago before I became reinterested. Earthrim was written (or, at least, copyrighted) in 1969 & it has that dystopic wartorn insanity vibe to it that so many of us remember from the Vietnam War that we were hoping wd go away after that mess was 'over' but, no, war is still a constant.

The reader learns early on that the main character, Standard, is a secret agent, for what purpose we don't know yet:

""Oh, Lordy," Standard moaned. He could see he was getting nowhere this way, but his instincts were welling up to a dangerous level. Now that was not particularly smart, because the last thing he could afford to do would be to make a big antisocial scene and get labeled as an Unstable by Policontrol. That would really be cute. A secret agent running around with a social stigma and a listing with the area psychologist." - p 7

"He squinted at the menu card, annoyed that the breakfast list had already been removed. The choice was on the sparse side: fried soya mash or cellumeat. He pushed his credit plaque into the menu box and punched the mask selection.

"Clunk, went the vendor. Standard peered at it. Nothing came out. No fried mash. No returned credit plaque." - p 12

Dysfunction frustration. Well, life in the US hasn't gotten to the point where the Average Joe's eating options are some kind of fake meat slush doled out by a vending machine but I'm sure many of us can relate to the dysfunctional whatever scenario. Ever put yr debit card into an ATM at nite when you need some cash for, say, a cab ride home & had the ATM eat it? & then had to walk home for entirely too many miles thru 'enemy territory'? Well, maybe not, & maybe that's a pretty trivial '1st world' problem anyway but things like that can grind a person down if they happen too often, if they start to feel like the norm. & what about this "Policontrol" anyway? We might not have it in the US yet but it seems like a pretty good description of what the Saigon police were like during the war when General Loan was the head honcho supported by the US:

"The legal limitations were meaningless to Policontrol, because Policontrol rarely bothered to take its cases to court. Legal entanglements ceased to exist when Policontrol handled a case. Policontrol did away with all those little inconsequential matters, like warrants, arrests, trials and the like. It did away with its suspects just as efficiently, too." - p 17

Like General Loan executing the alleged Viet Cong by shooting him in the head out on the street in broad daylight. Talk about impunity! SO, to me, this novel is sortof metaphorically about US political intervention in Viet Nam, or, at least, the way-the-world-was-back-then. Here's the context:

""I was just a kid before the war. Were things really any different then? Tell me more about them, Mike."

""Things weren't all that different. People worked, people argued, people dropped over. They had put the second colony on the moon and were starting to go out to Mars, and that was pretty exciting. When they said they planned to go public on the Mars colony in five years, I remember thinking that's where I wanted to go. But then the war broke out and everything came to a stop. So I enlisted and got shipped over to Australia. Got busted up a little, but it didn't seem to matter very much. Everything else seemed to be going to hell anyway."" - p 28

Standard's enemy is a being called "Rim" who's exerting psychic power over the world.

"Rim was too smart to make any sweeping changes as he was growing. But there were indications already.

"Even Condliffe did not know what was happening, or how, or why. But it was a slowing-down process. The birth rate was declining rapidly, in all opposition to the post-war feelings to rejuvenate the country. People were maturing later. Infancy lasted until four or five. Teenagers were not reaching puberty until their late teens. Nothing that the Bureau of Statistics could put its finger on, but something was there, insidious, creeping, sapping the vitality from an entire country.

"And it would spread until it was global. A contagion, a disease that was putting the brakes on life itself." - pp 53-54

The story proceeds using the common device of flashing back & forth between various times in the protagonist's life. By Chapter V the reader is finally into Standard's wartime experiences:

"The war had been coming for two decades, seething and boiling in southern Asia. It had ignited in northern China; then, while the attention had been drawn, broken through the Indonesian islands, expanding in volume.

"It was no pushbutton war. Australia learned that when the northern coast became a holocaust within a week under the onslaught of the first wave.

"The rise of nationalism that had overtaken the seventies had immobilized SEATO years before and before the alliance could realign, the battle of the mid mountains had been fought and lost. Two-thirds of Australia fell with more than half its population under occupation." - p 62

Standard gets captured during the war & the reader gets a taste of what the Asian side of the battle is all about:

"["]The entire freedom-loving world will rejoice and will begin a new calendar. That is what is important."

""Until I start rejoicing, what day is today by the old-fashioned decadent figuring?" He had long since learned not to take Lin Sang too seriously in his conversational moods and often questioned whether Lin Sang himself took the whole glorious revolution very seriously.

""If I told you that this was the Year of the Ox , would that have any meaning for you?"

""Not much. How about telling me in respect to the year of Our Lord?"

""Since I do not recognize your 'lord' that would be difficult and meaningless to me. We are struggling to create a new world in which all men can obtain their true nobility and democracy without the oppression of lords and serfdom. How can I tell you what year this is of your lord, when you have no understanding of the Year of the Ox?"" - p 72

How often do people think about the significance of the dating system that measures their life & about the differences in these systems between cultures? No often enuf IMO.

& what about this "Rim" character? One of his 'puppets' or followers explains & Standard replies in a way that seems somewhat out-of-character in its knowledge base:

""The rim of the cup, of course. It doesn't do anything to the water, it only puts a definite limit on the cup. Rim doesn't interfere with people unless they're disrupting the social fabric. Then Rim would stop those people for their own good.""

[..]

"Standard sucked on his tooth. "A topologist would disagree with you about a rim defining the limits of a cup. He'd say it was only a part of the cup's surface and not a limiting mode."

""Well, maybe that's what a topologist would say, but what does he know about people?"" - p 86

My own perception of the current age is that we're forced into things that're purported to be for 'our own good' but we don't get to choose what WE think is for our own good. The (Not)Affordable Health Care Act exemplifies this. Anyway, it's weird to me that the author. 'Kamin', has the generally not-particularly-intellectual character, Standard, reference topology b/c that was a favorite subject of Franz Kamin's.

Standard's s fugitive. He appears to die. A Policontroller ponders:

""Everything's so damned neat and tidy," he grumbled. "Standard and the girl are dead. Quinn's dead. All the witnesses are dead. That's too neat. There's something more here. Something underneath all this. We don't know any more now than when we started."" - p 101

Imagine a future in wch the reader can communicate w/ the fictional characters & share insights! Ah.. the future..

"Graystone flicked on the booth vidiscreen and spun through the channels. Automatically, he flipped past the homosexual network, pausing at an adult cartoon show until he realized it was a rerun of Freddy Fornicator and that he had seen it before in a phone booth." - p 105

& then there's Police Theater, a subject I reference frequently enuf. This brings us right back to present-day TV:

"["]One person murdered, two destroyed themselves trying to escape, two policemen injured trying to bring this mad killer to bay. I'd say that we owe a vote of gratitude to our area Policontrol, wouldn't you, Gorse?"

"The team newscaster nodded and paused dramatically. "I certainly would. Alex. It's interesting to note that the officer who managed to shoot down the killer's escape ship was actually on loan to the Department of Interception. Normally, we understand, he works with Computer Control."

""I think that all points up how thoroughly trained all members of our Policontrol are. Speaking of well-trained, we have a message here from our friendly people who make Soyagood, the breakfast cereal that is soy good you can serve it for dinner. Here's how."" - p 106

Oh, well, 'Kamin' is a pessimistic writer & I won't spoil the plot by giving away the moral ambiguity. Let's just say that:

"The doctor watched the egg whites cloud an firm. "If Rim can do everything Jeannine says he can do, then I think your best course of action would be to join your comrades on the moon. It is impossible for you to win. This confusion you are having with the island is a fair indication of your impotency. If Rim is on that island, then he has either moved the island close to us, or he has moved us closer to the island. In either event, that makes for a rather formidable foe."" - p 124

THIS IS WHERE I WD FLIP THE TXT UPSIDE-DOWN IF I KNEW HOW TO DO SUCH A THING ON GOODREADS:

Phoenix Ship is a fairly conventional SF hero's journey w/ the obstacles & action that one wd expect. I'm reminded of Heinlein. The hero, Stan, gets selected to go to a school that proceeds to confound his expectations:

"But it wasn't a school, Stan told himself. It was a series of tests. It was nothing but tests, actually, with occasional lectures that seemed more designed to puzzle than inform. The first day's schedule had consisted of nothing but tests, in this same cubicle, on subjects that ranged from engineering to sociology to anthropology . . . any and every subject you could think of. At the end of the tests he had learned that the next day would consist of a similar series, and that he could study for it or not as he liked." - pp 9-10

It becomes quickly obvious to the reader that the shots (or whatever) Stan's getting are a major part of what's going on:

""You have had your inoculations?" Again the soft voice carried no inflection other than the question.

"Stand was startled. Inoculations had been part of the entrance proceedings. He nodded mutely.

""You will have them weekly," he was told. "They will . . . help."" - p 11

Somehow, Stan doesn't figure this out, tho.

"Bracing himself against the gusting wind, Stan went to meet the figure. "Dr. Lang," he shouted through the wind when they were near, "have I done wrong to come out?"

"The face that he knew to be broad and expressionless was hidden behind the hood, but as the wind lulled between the gusts, the voice was unmistakable. "I think, Stan, that we shall give you a special inoculation. No you have not done wrong. Should it be wrong to come out into the open?"

"A question for every question, Stan thought." - p 14

The hermetic process, a stimulant to thinking. After being exceptionally dim, Stan learns about his molecular learning, learnedly:

""At any rate, young man, you have very little choice. The results the school is obtaining must be demonstrated to the military in no uncertain terms and as immediately as possible. We have convinced them theoretically that with molecular training we can put the wisdom of an older man into the resilient body of a young man on a stimulus-response basis. But theory and demonstration are two separate items. Therefore the demonstration must take place. Once they are convinced, we will be able to do this work on a mass production basis.

""You have no choice, as our top pupil, but to be the demonstration agent—and you will not fail us." Over the precisely composed face a slight smile was allowed to appear and the voice that continued was more kindly now. "We have made an investment in you of well over a megacredit. That is an obligation that you cannot disregard."" - p 22

Hey! Big deal! They spent over a teracredit on me & that's already obsolete as an impressive sum a mere few mnths later. Stan rebels, in the spirit of all good SF characters everywhere, &n instead of being a tool of a fictitious Military-Industrial brainwashing complex he becomes a puppet for the approved-rebellion of his authors.

""With this molecular training system, we will be able to fill the action posts of government and the military with young men who will dependably react to almost any situation not only with the most extensive knowledge and abilities that experts have achieved, but in the manner that would be dictated by those same elderly, disciplined minds!"

""In other words," Stan said slowly, "what you are doing here is creating educated robots?"" - p 24

I feel ya, Stan. Stan does, of course, use his molecular training to outwit his handlers:

"Just inside, he held himself out of the way so that the two following him could reach the control panel. Then, turning his head, he noticed the travelcase still floating in the air lock.

""Oh. My duffel," he said happily, and pushed himself into the air lock again, angling his motion toward a large red handle marked EMERGENCY PRESSURE RELEASE.

"His fingers grasped the handle before anyone could react, and he used the lever to set his feet against the side of the lock and pull against his own leverage.

"Abruptly the air spilled from the lock, and with a thwummp, the tube bulkhead closed. Stan, timing the lowering of pressure by a feeling of internal expansion, had just released the handle when Paulsen reached him." - p 37

Not yr everyday move, fer sure. Stan reaches Belt City where he becomes a clasp rather than a mere hole:

"The first and gigantically expensive but necessary act of the BC Corp. was the construction of an even flooring over the entire scalloped-looking built-up portion of the planetoid, a section around the equator that extended roughly thirty-degrees to the north and south. It was flooring, not ceiling, since centrifugal force applies outward, and the floors of the existing structures were toward space, the ceilings toward the planetoid core." - p 50

But it's not long before the short leg of capitaljism spurts all over his escapee dreams:

""Mr. Dustin, I am Jonathan Weed of Astro Technology. Your activities since the Sassy Lassie docked here have been reported to me from no less than five different sources. Your current position is pinpointed as twelve-thirty-two, forty-seven south fifth; area one, seventy-five, the restaurant at fifty-eighth.

""Your call to Dr. Lang will not be accepted. Since AT is only one of the several parties interested in your current activities, and since you must know that your interests lie with AT, I suggest that it would be to your advantage to report to my office immediately, before your life becomes unduly complicated by others. You are, as I hope I have impressed you, easily monitored in our society.["]" - p 63

The Richmonds are pro-individualists, as am I, so, of course, their hero triumphs & gives his philosophical say:

"Stan smiled and shook his head. "You don't need physicists, General. You need individualists. Mallard and Weed sere trying to give you robots; and that was the worst sabotage anyone could have perpetrated upon you.["]" - p 103… (mais)

review of
Walt & Leigh Richmond's The Lost Millennium
& A. Bertram Chandler's The Road to the Rim
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 17, 2016

Guess what?! My review is too long! SO for the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/477512-whatever-pt-6-000-000-000

These Ace Doubles often seem to have lesser-known writers paired w/ better-known ones for the sake of promoting the lesser-known ones. In this case, I'd never heard of Walt & Leigh Richmond, but've read a fair amt by Chandler, & didn't necessarily have high expectations. Nonetheless, I found reading The Lost Millennium sufficiently rewarding. 1st, there's an interesting initial premise:

""What are you trying to prove?"

""That the power's there. That there's a tremendous electrical potential between Earth-ground and the ionosphere. That the Earth and the ionosphere form a sort of sphere-in-sphere capacitor fed by the solar wind, with the dense part of the atmosphere acting as a leady dialectric between them. I'm planning to short out the 'capacitor' and prove the power's there. Lots of it. Thousands of times more power than all the generating stations in the world produce today.["]" - p 6

In "SFE: The Science Fiction Encyclopedia" the entry regarding Leigh Richmond begins w/ this:

"(1911-1995) US writer who began publishing with Prologue to an Analogue (June 1961 Analog; 2009 ebook), and who wrote some solo stories. Her several sf novels were all in collaboration with her husband, Walt Richmond; three were revised by her after his death. Almost all their work together expressed a sense – one formally presented by the Centric Foundation which they founded and directed – that scientific breakthroughs could be made by young minds freed of the bureaucratic artifices of orthodox scientific thinking; unfortunately, overloaded Space-Opera plotting did little to make their novels convincing emblems of this new clarity, and the exaggerated individualism they expressed seemed less mould-breaking than nostalgic." - http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/richmond_leigh

My sense of the Richmonds is that they might've been scientists who tried to write visionary SF that had a solid scientific basis that was open-minded. I suppose that doesn't make them much different from any other SF writers but there's something very plotted-out about The Lost Millennium that almost evokes an outline-of-possibilities - as if they might've been even more concerned w/ the possibility of the logics than they were w/ the readability of the plot. As literature I reckon that's a short-coming but I found their premises all compelling enuf to help me overlook some of the turgid language.

""Or take the Piri Reis maps, aerial surveys estimated to be about 7,000 years old. They contain information about the polar regions that we did not possess until we checked their accuracy with soundings. They were made when the poles were unglaciated.["]" - p 11

I wasn't familiar w/ the Piri Reis maps so I did a little online research:

"The Piri Reis map is a world map compiled in 1513 from military intelligence by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis (pronounced [piɾi ɾeis]). Approximately one third of the map survives; it shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy. Various Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands, are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan.

"The historical importance of the map lies in its demonstration of the extent of exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, and in its claim to have used Columbus's maps, otherwise lost, as a source. It used ten Arab sources, four Indian maps sourced from the Portuguese, and one map of Columbus. More recently, it has been the focus of pseudohistoric claims for the pre-modern exploration of the Antarctic coast."

[..]

"As far as the accuracy of depiction of the supposed Antarctic coast is concerned, there are two conspicuous errors. First, it is shown hundreds of miles north of its proper location; second, the Drake Passage is completely missing, with the Antarctic Peninsula presumably conflated with the Argentine coast. The identification of this area of the map with the frigid Antarctic coast is also difficult to reconcile with the notes on the map which describe the region as having a warm climate." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map

"Dear Professor Hapgood,

"Your request of evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis map of 1513 by this organization has been reviewed.

"The claim that the lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land, Antarctic, and the Palmer Peninsular, is reasonable. We find that this is the most logical and in all probability the correct interpretation of the map.

"The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.

"This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap. The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.

"We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.

"Harold Z. Ohlmeyer Lt. Colonel, USAF Commander"

[..]

"Summary

"The Piri Re'is map is often exhibited in cases seeking to prove that civilization was once advanced and that, through some unknown event or events, we are only now gaining any understanding of this mysterious cultural decline. The earliest known civilization, the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, appear out of nowhere around 4,000 B.C. but have no nautical or maritime cultural heritage. They do, however, speak reverently of ancestral people who were like the "gods" and were known as the Nefilim.

"Here is a summary of some of the most unusual findings about the map:

"*Scrutiny of the map shows that the makers knew the accurate circumference of the Earth to within 50 miles.

"*The coastline and island that are shown in Antarctica must have been navigated at some period prior to 4,000 B.C. when these areas were free of ice from the last Ice Age." - http://old.world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm

I don't have an opinion about the significance of the Piri Re'is map or of any other map - I'm not a cartographer. I do think that the Richmond's bringing the map into their plot is a good indicator of how they try to build their narrative case on a solid basis.

"["]I'm going to outline the five major catastrophes that geological evidence indicates, exactly as I think they happened.

"The first catastrophe—the one that destroyed an advanced civilization here eighty-six hundred years ago—was a solar tap avalanche at the pole.["]" - p 11

I think the Richmonds were visionaries. Given that our lifetimes overlapped I'm sorry I didn't know about them until now. In The Lost Millennium they postulate a device for providing energy, the solar tap, & then try to demonstrate the likelihood of its historical existence thru geological & other evidence. I imagine many wd find such a hypothesis ridiculous but I find it fascinatingly ambitious. This ambitiousness makes the bk for me.

A name I've been running across for decades is Velikovsky. I have a vague notion that he's generally written off as a crackpot but that's only partially & not entirely why I haven't read his work. There just ain't enuf time in the day.

""The catastrophes and their dating have been deduced before, but it's taken courage to publish the findings. For instance, Velikovsky outlined the historic and geologic evidence that prove and date the last two catastrophes—the ones in 1450 and 776 BC—in great detail in 1950. He took a terrific beating from the self-styled 'scientific community' for doing it.["]" - p 13

Apparently, the Richmonds are willing to take Velikovsky at face value.

"Immanuel Velikovsky in his 1950's book Worlds in Collision proposes that many myths and traditions of ancient peoples and cultures are based on actual events: worldwide global catastrophes of a celestial origin, which had a profound effect on the lives, beliefs and writings of early mankind.

""Worlds in Collision is a book of wars in the celestial sphere that took place in historical times. In these wars the planet earth participated too. [...] The historical-cosmological story of this book is based in the evidence of historical texts of many people around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of the northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material." - Worlds In Collision, Preface.

"After reaching the number 1 spot in the best-sellers list, Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision was banned from a number of academic institutions, and creating an unprecedented scientific debacle that became known as The Velikovsky Affair. In 1956 Velikovsky wrote Earth in Upheaval to present conclusive geological evidence of terrestrial catastrophism." - http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovsky/index.htm

"In 1950, Macmillan Company published Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, a book which asserts, among many other things, that the planet Venus did not exist until recently. Some 3500 years ago in the guise of a gigantic comet, it grazed Earth a couple of times, after having been ejected from the planet Jupiter some indefinite time earlier, before settling into its current orbit. Velikovsky (1895-1979), a psychiatrist by training, did not base his claims on astronomical evidence and scientific inference or argument. Instead, he argued on the basis of ancient cosmological myths from places as disparate as India and China, Greece and Rome, Assyria and Sumer. For example, ancient Greek mythology asserts that the goddess Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. Velikovsky identifies Athena with the planet Venus, though the Greeks didn't. The Greek counterpart of the Roman Venus was Aphrodite. Velikovsky identifies Zeus (whose Roman counterpart was the god Jupiter) with the planet Jupiter. This myth, along with others from ancient Egypt, Israel, Mexico, etc., are used to support the claim that "Venus was expelled as a comet and then changed to a planet after contact with a number of members of our solar system" (Velikovsky 1972,182)."

[..]

"What Velikovsky does isn't science because he does not start with what is known and then use ancient myths to illustrate or illuminate what has been discovered. Instead, he is indifferent to the established beliefs of astronomers and physicists, and seems to assume that someday they will find the evidence to support his ideas. He seems to take it for granted that the claims of ancient myths should be used to support or challenge the claims of modern astronomy and cosmology. In short, like the creationists in their arguments against evolution, he starts with the assumption that the Bible is a foundation and guide for scientific truth. Where the views of modern astrophysicists or astronomers conflict with certain passages of the Old Testament, the moderns are assumed to be wrong. Velikovsky, however, goes much further than the creationists in his faith; for Velikovsky has faith in all ancient myths, legends, and folk tales. Because of his uncritical and selective acceptance of ancient myths, he cannot be said to be doing history, either. Where myths can be favorably interpreted to fit his hypothesis, he does not fail to cite them. The contradictions of ancient myths regarding the origin of the cosmos, the people, etc. are trivialized. If a myth fits his hypotheses, he accepts it and interprets it to his liking. Where the myth doesn't fit, he ignores it. In short, he seems to make no distinction between myth, legends, and history. Myths may have to be interpreted but Velikovsky treats them as presenting historical facts. If a myth conflicts with a scientific law of nature, the law must be revised." - http://skepdic.com/velikov.html

I must admit that I find the above-quoted Skeptic's Dictionary critique convincing but I must also admit that I just skimmed thru it & haven't read the Velikovsky at all so who knows? Maybe I'd revise my opinion if I were better informed. Whatever the case, it's obvious that Velikovsky was a big influence on the writing of The Lost Millennium. A part of what 'saves' this for me is that it's not just Velikovsky. There're also more demonstrably proven visionaries referenced:

"With power to waste, you can transmit by broadcast, you know, and simply tune in to it as a power source, the way you tune in a radio. Nikola Tesla showed that could be done, back in 1911.["]" - p 15

I'm willing to believe that Tesla cd've pulled that off & that his research was stopped by capitalist forces but I do tend to wonder what the negative environmental & health effects of such a system wd be. Even the Velikovsky influenced spin on the bible doesn't bother me so much:

""The Bible. The story of the Lord of Molecular Biology of the University of Créta, who used the DNA patterns of his own cells to create Adam and Eve—and who created the domestic animals from the undomesticated ones he had in his laboratory, and from the frozen cells of frozen meat he had on hand.["]" - p 15

And the writing isn't quite as hack as I may've implied: "The engineer leaned forward and knocked the dottle out of his pipe." (p 25) No writing can be too bad if it uses a word I don't know: "unburned and partially burned tobacco in the bowl of a pipe" ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dottle )

&, WTF, the idea of a spaceship made out of ice is practically as wonderful as Alfred Jarry's 'pataphysical boat that's a sieve:

"the starship on which he stood: a "snowball" of polar ice, raised in huge blocks from the polar cap, with the control systems, the crew's quarters, and the huge holds for the 2,000 colonists and their equipment, nestled and shielded in its center.

"The Vahsaba; the seventh ship, its goal nearly 2,200 light years out. Nothing short of the tremendous power of the polar Siva generator could have raised the parts for this ship. Megalar by megalar, the great blocks of ice from the polar cap had been raised by the tremendous blasts of power into an orbit in space. Month after month the pre-formed blocks of ice had been welded and fitted to form the huge central mass of a star-drive ship" - p 29

""Yes," said the archeologist. "R. W. Bussard's Ram-Jet Vehicle for Interstellar Flight.["]" - p 32

'Naturally', I have to research that: "Instead of carrying all the fuel for a mission inside the vehicle, the nuclear ramjet (also known as the Bussard Ramjet) would use an electromagnetic "scoop" to collect hydrogen from space for use in nuclear fusion. The shape of the flow path constricts (similar to an air-breathing ramjet), causing the gas to compress until fusion begins. Since the density of hydrogen in space is projected to be only at most 1-2 atoms per cm2 on any given plane through space, the scoop would need a large cross-sectional area: for a circular scoop, a radius on the order of 60 km may be necessary to maintain the necessary thrust." ( http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph241/micks1/ ) SO, it appears that Brussard's Ram-Jet is somewhat accepted as a possibility for interstellar travel.

Not being completely ignorant, there're a few things I pick up on:

"["]You know that the foetus goes through an entire evolutionary process in reproduction? Well, the regenerative factor is just as apt to pick out an early evolutionary characteristic to regenerate as a recent one. For instance, one mammal developed fins.["]" - p 49

This seems to be based on Ernst Haeckel's "Ontogeny replicates Phylogeny": "The "law of recapitulation" has been discredited since the beginning of the twentieth century. Experimental morphologists and biologists have shown that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between phylogeny and ontogeny. Although a strong form of recapitulation is not correct, phylogeny and ontogeny are intertwined, and many biologists are beginning to both explore and understand the basis for this connection." ( http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html ) Perhaps I misunderstand.

One of the ancient scientists explains how he's funding his extraordinary project:

""Ah," David explained proudly. "This is only partially from research funds. Haven't you heard that I went commercial? I had some research funds that could be allocated to the Juheda, of course, but they weren't nearly sufficient. So I began commercializing. I've sold books and articles—I even wrote some science fiction—with sound scientific bases, I might add. Two were bought for the movies. And I've been making films for the Educational TV channels. I've just been signed up by the Knights Interests to make a series of cartoon-films on biology which will be used on commercial channels.["]" - p 57

Cd the Richmonds be using David as their proxy? The rogue scientist(s) going commercial to fund, what? Their "Centric Foundation"? The part about writing "science fiction—with sound scientific bases" certainly fits what I've written in this review so far. In an article entitled "Walls of Secrecy Surround Alternative Technologies: Will Citizens Demand Their Removal?" by Jeane Manning (Originally published in issue #20 of Atlantis Rising magazine. Posted with permission at http://www.paradigmresearchgroup.org/article-manning1.html .) it's written:

"Individuals in every decade have tried to open the Secrecy closet. The late Leigh Richmond Donahue and physicist Walter Richmond were in the thick of science politics in the 1940s. In the introduction to their novel The Lost Millennium she says "It is hard to remember the predictable results (of new secrecy laws), because those outcries, by the top scientists of the country, the top economists, the top theorists, were smothered by the very legislation that they fought. The fact that they fought was one of the major secrets of the secrecy syndrome." In 1962 her late husband figured out how to tap into an atmospheric source of electrical power. Leigh adds, "A source of power can be used for construction or for war." They took their research to John F. Kennedy’s science advisor. Instead of their intended use—clean power for the people--the papers were classified and the Richmonds were offered a research contract which they refused. "It would have placed us under the Secrecy Syndrome, in which we had refused for some years to have any part. We were told to sit down and shut up, in no uncertain terms."

"Do the wrong people have the advanced science? Leigh wrote to me a year or so before her death, "My reaction to HAARP is much the same as yours. I’ve seen too much of what they do, and if they don’t actually destroy the planet, at least they’re trying hard. In 1964 when they --the military of course-- sent up a band of tiny copper wires into the ionosphere to orbit the planet so as to reflect radio waves and make reception clearer, we had the 8.5 Alaskan earthquake, and Chile lost a good deal of its coast. That band of copper wires interfered with the planetary magnetic field."… (mais)

Neither book did much for me. [Phoenix Ship] opens with an unusual young man recruited by a mysterious stranger to go to an advanced school located in the arctic. He is clearly being Prepared For Something(tm). I found his secret unlikely. The biased reporting of the Belt's first rebellion held my interest, but not enough to continue: I just couldn't stick with the book.

[Earthrim] starts with a doctor lousing up a procedure on the narrator's black-market bionic arm. The resulting conversation (wait you have a super-strong, functional bionic arm and you just *talk*?) seemed unrealistic -- for both characters. I put it down.

(My patience was greater when I did not have boxes upon boxes of SF to read.)… (mais)