Planet Explorer

Murray Leinster Planet Explorer (1957)
I think I generally prefer his novels. As with The Forgotten Planet, we have four thematically linked short stories, in this case all featuring Bordman, the Colonial Survey Officer. Bordman's job is to fly around the galaxy visiting newly discovered habitable planets and give them the thumbs up for future colonisation, or not as the case may be. Here he visits worlds which are respectively too cold, too sandy, too wild, and too wet for further settlement, in each case tackling some ecological obstacle which ultimately facilitates his being able to give settlers the thumbs up. The stories work - assuming here that we all agree they work - in much the same way as Asimov's robot tales. They are environmental puzzle boxes which the reader is invited to see if they can figure out before Bordman comes through with the solution, as he usually does. Leinster was at least on top of his game when he wrote this material, so nothing quite reads like a manual on structural engineering despite the stories being fairly dry and low on incident. Planet Explorer therefore just about succeeds where The Forgotten Planet kind of doesn't, representing one particularly ponderous strain of written science-fiction which is unlikely ever to be adapted and translated into another medium for the convenience of dullards; so it's readable.

It's also a record of changing attitudes which can be enjoyed, more or less, without getting too indignant about its failure to chime with contemporary sensibilities. The settlers of the world in Sand Doom, for example, are mostly Native American or African because they're better able to stand the sun of Xosa II - which is okay - and Leinster scores points for not only cultural sensitivity but for allowing non-Caucasians some dignity without condescension, but the suggestion that the African settlers seem in particular well-disposed towards manual labour is kind of awkward. Also we have the apparent mass extermination of an indigenous species in the nevertheless Hugo award winning Combat Team, just in case any of us should have forgotten that the thrust of the collection is specifically colonial. On the other hand, Huyghens in Combat Team seems to express libertarian views without being a walking cliché, and yet is countered by our man.

'In a way,' said Bordman, 'you're talking about liberty and freedom, which most people think is politics. You say it can be more. In principle, I'll concede it. But the way you put it, it sounds like a freak religion.'

Planet Explorer is fairly ponderous for Leinster, although most of the pondering relates to the mechanics of environment, and yet it's thought-provoking without pushing any one particular agenda; so I suppose it might best be described as a slightly more self-aware representative of its genre - perhaps nothing spectacular, but respectable nonetheless.

I'll therefore overlook the cover illustration depicting nothing which actually occurs in the pages that follow, although it would have been nice had they spelled his fucking name right.