Take Back Plenty

Tabitha Jute #1

by Colin Greenland

It is carnival time on Mars, but Tabitha Jute isn't partying. She is in hiding from the law, penniless and about to lose her livelihood and her best friend, the space barge "Alice Liddell". Then, the intriguing Marco Metz offers her some money to take him to Plenty, and then the adventure begins.

Winner of both the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year and the British Science Fiction Association Award for best novel of the year--the only book ever to win both prestigious British awards.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Novels, Aliens

484 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1990

About the author

Colin Greenland's fiction and criticism have been translated into a dozen languages and broadcast on BBC national radio. His multiple award-winning science fiction novel Take Back Plenty, long out of print in the UK, is available again in the Orion SF Masterworks series, and for e-readers at SF Gateway.

Colin lives in Cambridge and Foolow with his wife Susanna Clarke, the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Piranesi . He is sometimes to be found writing something, goodness knows what.

Reviews

[Kristian Olesen · Rating 2 out of 5]

At some point in the 1960s, all the hip kids started writing books about nothing. In science fiction, this trend asserted itself in the works of writers as diverse as Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delaney, and Arthur C. Clarke, all of whom endeavoured to take us on ponderous journeys into the heart of the human psyche, eschewing conventional narrative structure, and blah blah blah.

They're all shit.

I hope at least some of the people who've read - for instance - Clarke's "Rendezvous With Rama" shared my sense of having been utterly robbed of my time upon having completed it. The revelation that the giant drifting space tube was in itself too revelatory to be, er, revealed, made "Rendezvous" the smuggest fucking anti-book in the Western canon. "You can't possibly comprehend," Clarke tells us, and then makes no attempt to help us do so. But at least he doesn't have us tripping through some kind of pointless Joycean nightmare like Delaney in "Dhalgren" (which I will never finish), or imploring us to see the face of God with him like Dick in... well, everything written after 1966.

Let me be clear: I don't hate these authors, and I don't even hate these works. But I'm conservative in my artistic tastes. I like my paintings to be of battles or agricultural idylls or 17th century Florentine noblemen, without signifying anything more than "here's a picture of a field". I like my sculptures to be of emperors or philosophers; I like my movies to have three acts and a discernable protagonist. I like my stories to come in the form of a traditional bildungsroman, wherein something actually happens.

Anyway, I digress. After they finished experimenting with anti-art, the SF writers of the 60s became the SF writers of the 70s and 80s, and the literary equivalent of rock'n'roll (that is, innovative and experimental, but limited by its form) gave way to the literary equivalent of prog rock or glam rock (that is, utter shite). To give you a sense of what I mean here, Dune and the Lord of the Rings were both very popular during this time, and George Lucas started making Star Wars.

In other words, the backlash, as it almost always does, went too far. That's why Iraq has swung from Baathist secularism to novo-caliphate without stopping off at grudging tolerance along the way. George Lucas and Frank fucking Herbert and their ilk evidently got sick of people producing SF works that were about everything but in which nothing happened. They initiated the backlash with a series of Saturday morning cartoon level shittery that's about nothing but in which everything happens.

So you get a situation in which one minute everyone's reading novels by Philip Dick in which, if we're honest, the only science fictional element is the fact that he has made up the drug that he - ah, that is, his main character - is taking, and the next minute they're reading about the magical adventures of a plucky cohort of space monsters (I'm looking at you, Jar Jar Binks) who want a thing but can't get the thing because an evil galactic something is being very mean or something.

And we come to "Take Back Plenty". I'll be honest. I bought it because:
1. I liked the title
2. It was in the SF Masterworks series.

This is a novel that fits - that is, that should fit - in with a rich but limited SF tradition called New Wave. New Wave is the little shard of light in the darkness of post-Golden Age SF writing. (And don't talk to me about fucking cyberpunk. Jesus, I hate cyberpunk. There never was a sub-genre that dated more quickly. But I digress. Again.) New Wave - to use my earlier trite musical analogy - is the equivalent of Joy Division in a landscape filled with David Bowie and Queen and all that showy bollocks. In other words, it's a short-lived little island of artisitc innovation in a sea of superficiality. The flagship New Wave novel is "The Centauri Device", whose author has reportedly come to hate it, but which I think should replace Dickens on the school curriculum.

At its best, New Wave analogises contemporary culture - particularly cultural out-groups, like women, or, in the case of the Centauri Device, Palestinians - in order to plunder familiar ground for new ways of telling stories, but also to help us to understand ourselves a little better. It's short, it's punchy, it's unconventional in its plotting and characters, but at heart the story is always linear and the protagonist is always acting in a comprehensible manner. It's literary punk. It's edgy. It's a hobby-horse of mine.

Anyway, "Take Back Plenty" should fit the bill. It was written at the right time, by the right kind of author. The blurb promises a lot. The opening chapters promise a lot. But ultimately, it's New Wave's evil twin. It's the bastard child of the epic and the introspective, but while its sibling manages to inherit the best aspects of both parents - sure-footed plotting and an introspective sense of purpose - "Take Back Plenty" gets neither.

It aspires to be edgy: the protagonist is a woman for God's sake! She even has sex! And talks about it! But it doesn't manage to hit its notes any better than an installment of any other bog standard space opera. An assortment of silly things makes its silly way through a succession of silly environments designed especially by the author to accommodate the silly and oh-so-fucking-predictable progressions (how generous of me to use that word!) of the plot. On the other hand, we have a running theme of introspection that is so self-knowing that it is compartmentalised in the narrative structure and externalised in thecharacter development: the book's confessor is the AI of the protagonist's (predictably) worn-out but well-loved rustbucket of a space ship called the Millenium Falcon... or the Alice Lidell or something. Does it matter?

Look, the bottom line is that I haven't read a book that I really liked all year, and I had such high hopes for this one. I gave it two stars because the blurb and the title and the cover art gave me a nice basis upon which to invent my own story that isn't as interminably boring as this one and has characters who aren't kooky fucking weirdo space pirate things.

I'm very upset.

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel on this year’s Clarke Award shortlist that stuck out as being most anomalous was Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, because it was the kind of exuberant adventure sf which tends not to do well at the Clarke. Probably the last time a book of that kind won was back in 1991, when the Clarke went to Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland, a novel which also has a reputation as being one of the founding texts of the ‘New British Space Opera’ that’s flourished in the past two decades.

Quite a weight of expectation, then – but I’m pleased to say that, a few references to ‘tapes’ aside, Take Back Plenty holds up remarkably well today. Partly, I think, this is because the particular twist that Greenland puts on his setting hasn’t (as far as I know) been employed much since; and party it’s because of its sheer brio and sense of fun.

Take Back Plenty is set in the future of a different universe, a universe in which there really are canals on Mars and swampy jungles on Venus. Numerous alien species have made themselves known to humanity and populated the Solar System; but no one can leave, thanks to a barrier put in place by the mysterious Capellans. Greenland’s protagonist is Tabitha Jute, pilot of the Alice Liddell, who starts the novel in trouble with the authorities on Mars, and takes on a passenger because she needs the money to pay a fine. But that passenger. Marco Metz, and the other members of his entertainment troupe, may turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth.

I doubt it’s any coincidence that Greenland starts the novel during Carnival and names the ship after the girl who inspired Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, because Take Back Plenty is a parade of incident and colour. Tabitha and colleagues hurtle out of one scrape and into another, but never with a sense of being all-conquering heroes – Tabitha is very much an ordinary, fallible human being; the Alice Liddell gradually falls to bits; and her passengers hinder as much as they help. Yet the rhythm of the story is as it should be: just when you think things can’t get worse, they do; and just when you think there’s no hope, there is. Greenland walks a fine line, but I think he gets the balance just right – Take Back Plenty is self-aware enough to recognise its absurdities, yet it’s also celebratory in its sense of fun, without either being ironic about it or skimping on substance.

The novel is also wonderfully written. Tabitha has periodic conversations with her ship’s AI persona; in what I think is a rather brilliant touch, the Alice Liddell seems to communicate at times in the style of the ELIZA program. Then there’s Greenland’s superb eye for description:

Carnival in Schiaparelli. The canals are thronged with tour buses, the bridges festooned with banners. Balloons escape and fireworks fly. The city seethes in the smoky red light. Though officers of the Eladeldi can be seen patrolling everywhere, pleasure is the only master. Shall we go to the Ruby Pool? To watch the glider duels over the al-Kazara? Or to the old city, where the cavernous ancient silos throb with the latest raga, and the wine of Astarte quickens the veins of the young and beautiful? A thousand smells, of sausages and sweat, phosphorus and patchouli, mingle promiscuously in the arcades. Glasses clash and cutlery clatters in the all-night cantinas where drunken revellers confuse the robot waiters and flee along the colonnades, their bills unpaid, their breath streaming in the thin and wintry air. (6)

I love the vivid details in that passage, and the rhythm of the sentences… just great. Take Back Plenty has stood the test of time so far, and I think it will continue to do so. I’d say it’s a worthy winner of the Clarke Award, and it shows just what adventure sf can be.

[Paul Baribeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of Science Fiction. This book really took me by surprise. Had so much fun reading it. Can't convince anyone else to read it though. Too bad for them. This one is a gem.

[DiscoSpacePanther · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an utterly infuriating book. There’s an awful lot of crappy froth that the reader must wade through in order to get to the good stuff, but there is good stuff to be found nonetheless.

From the spine design that looks like something from the magnificent BBC SF show Blakes 7, to the cover art that shows what appears to be Star Trek’s Seven of Nine wearing a brunette wig, my hopes were high for a swashbuckling space adventure, and that is kinda sorta maybe what it delivers. It reads a bit like a blend of John Carpenter’s Dark Star, elements of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all wrapped up in the chaos of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.

This book thinks it’s really clever, but it suffers from not knowing whether it is space opera or cyberpunk: not committing to either genre, and becoming a bit of a mess. It gives me the sensation of going on vacation with a bunch of people who know each other far better than I know them, and who communicate in smug in-jokes. I felt that every single one of the characters could use a good slap for behaving like entitled, bickering children.

At first I thought that perhaps English isn’t Colin Greenland’s first language, because his writing is full of things that I might ungenerously class as errors, such as a character describing a person they had met the night before with the phrase, “He could be bloody evasive sometimes.” I don’t know about the general reader, but to me “sometimes” indicates a certain familiarity about a person’s behaviour that stretches beyond a one night stand, an acquaintanceship of some standing. The same goes for tense agreement, which Greenland seems to think is optional, as in the sentence, “In some lights they seem to glisten, as if they were hot, molten.” I found myself thinking, “Did anyone proofread this?” Then, once the identity of the narrator becomes clear, this authorial choice becomes explicable, although still irritating.

I’m not sure if the author was trying to be provocative or astereotypical, but describing a character as, “a short tubby man, quite good looking” seems to be going out of the way to be “Different”, with a capital D. But whatever the author’s intentions, it just comes off as sloppy and thoughtless writing, like saying “she was a pox-faced hunchbacked leper, utterly sexy”—sure, you can place the words next to each other, but it doesn’t mean they work together.

Then there’s this bit of casual sexism: “Slut, she told herself. It was a word her father had used frequently. Slut, she thought again, comfortably.” I get (I think) what the author is trying to do here—to get Tabitha to take ownership of a derogatory term and thus diminish its power to hurt—but I’m not sure that a male writer should be given credit for creating a character who uses a misogynistic slur to describe herself, no matter how comfortable he asserts she should be with it.

Plus, there is at least one example of throwaway sexual humiliation tossed carelessly into the narrative stream simply as a cheap means to momentarily ratchet up the tension. Blech!

Writing-wise, it’s not really to my taste. Structurally it is ungainly, and the pacing is very rough around the edges. I could do with less ugly fucking and more swashbuckling in the first half—in fact, I would rather the fucking was totally absent as it adds nothing more than a juvenile voyeuristic quality to the narrative that I find totally unnecessary. And the author resorts to what is essentially magic in order to resolve a plot point—the sorcery of torpedo launchers appearing from nowhere to allow a ship to escape.

Still, it got far better in the second half, and by the last page I was sufficiently intrigued to contemplate maybe perhaps adding one of the sequels to my “to read” pile, but not to put it anywhere near the top!

I have read worse, but I have also read a hell of a lot better. Faint praise is all this book deserves—if that damns it, then so be it.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Hay muchas formas de hacer Space Opera, incluso Space Operetta.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. En un Sistema Solar controlado sin excesos aparentes por una raza alienígena conocida como Los Capellanes pero plagada de miembros de otras razas incluyendo la humana, la capitana Tabitha necesita dinero para afrontar una serie de gastos inesperados, por lo que acepta el encargo de transportar en su nave inteligente a un músico hasta la estación espacial Plenty. Primer libro de la serie Plenty.

¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

fun enjoyable space opera. Got great reviews when originally published may be because the main character is not the usual super competent pilot.

May not be as awesome but still a good fun read.

[Michael O. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Female Han Solo gallivanting around the galaxy in a decidedly British SF offering. It's a Culture novel with significantly better style and writing, but absent anything really interesting to say.

[Andres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una space ópera de tomo y lomo.
Acción sin freno, en un tono que bordea lo humorístico casi siempre.
Muchas razas, una misteriosa que controla o quizás no, estaciones espaciales, barreras, limitaciones a la humanidad, temas conocidos en una ensalada que entretiene.
La protagonista es algo así como Han Solo en una eterna montaña rusa de acciones y aventuras. La vida del transportista espacial, la eterna carretera.
No es un libro que quede en mis recuerdos de “lo mejor de”, pero se lee fácil y funciona.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know much of what to expect from this. I knew it had one the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was a well considered piece of space opera but that was it. I am glad to say I was delighted by it. Whilst it has a distinct flavour of the early 90s it slips very much into the contemporary mode of character driven space opera. The type where the characters are so vivid and well drawn that even if they weren't going through a bonkers adventure you would still enjoy the journey. It also touches on a number of interesting issues, some are well handled, others less so. But overall was a good time and it flew by in spite of the length.

[Ivan Bogdanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

За сетинга - свят и извънземни - шест+. Сюжетът обаче е объркан и много зле. Зарязани са важни герои в нищото, но все пак е първа част от трилогия и може да се появят пак.
Увлекателна е - всички се лутате както главната героиня, която до последно нищо не знае какво точно се случва.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sequels to this book rated awesome covers by Jim Burns but I didn't enjoy this book. It was readable, or I'd've never finished it, but not good enough for me to even read the sequels...

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a fantastic piece of science fiction. My only misgiving was the deux ex-machina ending . I'll give him a pass on the one seen of sexual violence because (a) it happens off-screen and (b) the villain is not long for this universe . The character of Tabitha Jute is very compelling - she could have stepped out of Iain M. Bank's Culture (probably recruited as an agent for Special Circumstances) or a C.J. Cherryh Alliance-Union book (as a hardened cargo pilot). Her ship AI, Alice, is also a fantastic character, as charismatic as Breq in Anne Leckie's Radch universe or ART in Martha Wells' Murderbot series. I loved the dozens of aliens she described and how each had a unique relationship with humans. The idea of the Capellans holding back Earth inside the Solar System reminded me of John Varley's Eight Worlds and David Brin's Uplift books. Again, Greenland does this in an original way with a crazy reveal towards the end. What works best is truly the 4-dimensional description of Tabitha and the realistic dialogs among all the characters, the realistic action sequences, the descriptions of the planets, moons, and space stations, and the great tech.
I read the despite the great promise of this series as represented by this first book, that the other two books were real letdowns. So, the question is now whether to keep the good memories of this book or risk spoiling them by reading the other two. Decisions, decisions...

[Gert De Bie · Rating 3 out of 5]

De Arthur C. Clarke award & de British SF Association Award winnen, een nominatie voor de Philip K. Dick Award op zak hebben én een enthousiaste blurb van Michael Moorcock op de cover waren meer dan voldoende geloofsbrieven om ons op 'the best Science Fiction Novel of the Year (1990)' te storten.

Een boek van 528 blz lees je niet zomaar uit, dus ga je ons ook nergens horen zeggen dat het boek van Colin Greenland, tevens eerste deel van de driedelige Plenty-serie, niet lezenswaardig is.

Maar al bij al vonden we het een rommeltje (een enthousiast en sappig rommeltje weliswaar) waarin we meermaals onze weg verloren én waarvan we ons lange tijd afvroegen waar dit in godsnaam naartoe ging.
Op het eind van de rit is dat effectief wel naar een plot, met zelfs onderbouwde gedachtes en visies, maar de weg er naar toe leek ons nodeloos lang. We lazen amusante stukken en Greenland is duidelijk niet bang om zijn lezers te verrassen, maar we achten de kans klein dat we opnieuw naar een boek van zijn hand grijpen. Of hij moest wat nominaties en een fijne blurb hebben.

[EmBe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schräge Space-Opera, die in einem Raumschiff spielt, das wie das menschliche Gehirn aufgebaut ist, und als Vergnügungsstätte gilt.
Die Raumschiff-Kapitänin Tabea Jute landet dort.
Es gibt noch vermeintlich wohlmeinden Außerirdisch, die dieses Schiff gebaut haben.
Geschrieben in einem literarisch ambitionierten Stil, also keine gewönliche Kost. Hat erstaunlicher Weise eine zweite Auflage erhalten, so dass die ganz Trilogie noch übersetzt veröffentlicht werden konnte.

[Leif · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's zany, mad-cap, and colourful; it has a really compelling protagonist and an interesting universe: reader, I hated it and couldn't wait to be done. Sorry. This space opera has all the hallmarks of a classic but we must all recognize our tastes, and something here felt very, very off balance to me.

[PetSch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wenn das nicht die Frauenherzen erfreut: fast nur Frauen als Handlungstragende ;-)
(3,5 Sterne)

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great fun. Classic space opera. Well plotted, skillful worldbuilding, and lots of good old tongue-in-cheek pseudo science.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

What if I told you there’s a book with an alien that looks like a demented baby, incestuous twins, a dead woman smarter than all else, and a man who steals the body of an extinct alien? You’d be a little interested, right?

Tabitha Jute isn’t a competent pilot by any means. She doesn’t have all the answers, she can’t pull off the maneuvers that movie heroes do--heck, she can barely land enough jobs to keep her antique ship running. So when she stops on Schiaparelli, Mars to connect with old friends, she realizes too late it’s the middle of Carnival. The whole city is alive with noise and tourists and, to Tabitha’s dislike, no solid leads on a job. So when she’s attacked by aliens that resemble otters and taken into police, she’s slapped with a steep fine. She needs a job--and quick.

Enter Marco Metz. He’s the kind of guy who seems to have everything figured out. A skilled performer with his parrot’s help, he offers Tabitha a job. His band is on a planet-sized ship called Plenty and they have a gig coming up on Titan. After a party, some booze, some drugs, and some sex, they’re on their way to Plenty to find Marco’s band.

During their trip, Tabitha starts to uncover some truths about Marco. Oh, didn’t he mention he’s not actually in a band? Well actually he’s a very important person. Wait, that’s not right. He’s a thief and he’s going to pick up his crew. Wait, no, he’s not exactly a thief. His crew? Oh, they’re all just a big happy family! He’s the dad of these crazy twins. Wait, no, that’s not true either. The parrot? Well it’s not really a parrot--an alien? That’s silly! The giant package he brought onboard? A bundle of gold, obviously. Wait, Tabitha, don’t open it!

So Tabitha discovers that Marco is part of some crazy plot to steal a Frasque--a hive-mind alien species thought to be extinct. When he promised Tabitha a big paycheck, she didn’t think anything about driving Marco and his weird crew to Titan, but now she was tangled up with police, and worse, the almighty alien overlords called the Capellans.

The writing style is sometimes enjoyable, sometimes annoying. We learn all about Tabitha’s life between action-packed chapters while she talks to her ship, Alice. She tells Alice about her early life on the moon, her early career, and how she came across the Alice Liddell. Alice is such a reassuring voice in a book full of non-stop craziness between Marco’s crew and alien encounters throughout space. And while those conversations are enjoyable, there are also moments of repetitive conversations, how the characters mimic one another question after question. There are times when the characters are constantly reaching, grabbing, and groping each other when it’s really not necessary.

However, the details in alien descriptions, culture, and religion are never spared. When the crew is crashed on Venus, you can feel the humidity and terror. The aliens within the populated cities are integrated so they don’t stand out as something weird or new like authors sometimes do; it’s more like they’ve always been there, it’s nothing amazing, it’s just life. I loved soaking in those details.

Even after the explosive ending, there are plenty of questions I still have. Do all ships have AI or personas? What made Alice so special that she got a persona plus a powerful hyperdrive? Why do the Capellans just appear at the end instead of showing Tabitha their hand throughout? Are Tabitha and Saskia a couple?

While Tabitha might not be my favorite space lady, I really enjoyed that she wasn’t afraid to admit she didn’t have answers and she wasn’t afraid to get comfortable with both sexes. She’s not afraid to say she’s slept with half of the galaxy and took part in a giant alien orgy. Her retellings of these moments (you’ll be spared all the minute details, don’t worry) will make you laugh and realize that Tabitha is just as awkward as the rest of us.

[Nicolas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ce roman nous raconte donc les aventures de Tabatha Jute, pilote d’une fidèle gabarre (l’Alice Lidell) intégrant une IA. Elle va se retrouver malgré elle mêlée, comme d’habitude dans les romans de sf, à une aventure qui va bouleverser l’ensemble du système solaire. Et, grâce à un certain caractère, elle va s’en tirer.
Dit comme ça, ça ressemble à une banale balade dans le système solaire, alors qu’il ne s’agit pas du tout de ça. Au début du roman, il me faisait penser à la mécanique du centaure, par son côté délicatement looser, où les personnages principaux sont d’avantage balottés de droite à gauche que moteurs de l’action. Et, même si cette impression est restée, une autre à pris le dessus.
Celle de faire un voyage, de participer à un univers largement plus développé que ce que les quelques centaies du roman peuvent montrer. Alors évidement, ce terme de voyage ne suffit pas à faire de ce roman une oeuvre majeure, mais je ne pense pas que ce soit sa prétention. je pense au contraire que l’auteur cherche à nous emmener dans un univers où les vaisseaux portent des noms de types de navires (frégate, gabarre, ...), où les métaphores et images du monde de la course nautique (au sens course de piraterie) sont nombreuses (figures de proues, équipages ayant des titres nautiques, vaisseaux décrits suivant une terminologie très marine). Bref, ça marche d’enfer.
Malheureusement, cet auteur a voulu mêler à cette atmosphère une espèce d’intrigue géoplitique à l’échelle galactique (parce que, oui, il y a des extra-terrestres à la pelle, qui m’ont d’ailleurs fait penser à Monstres & Cie) et là, il se plante grave. Car cette intrigue, on ne la découvre qu’en toute fin du roman, après une fuite sans fin à travers tout le système solaire, où le brave vaisseau de l’héroïne sera quasiment détruit, et où toutes ses illusions – pas très nombreuses, certes – seront dissipées. Mais il n’y a pas qu’une ambiance maritime bien rendue, dans ce roman, il y a également de magnifiques images, égrennées au cours de récit que Tabatha raconte à son vaisseau, et qui ajoute un charme terrible à l’ensemble. Je pense notamment à certaines histoires de planeurs, et à tout ce rendu d’une civilisation du système solaire vue, comme c’est désormais usuel à travers le prisme des multiples expériences de cette pilote qui a à peu près tout vu.
Au final, je suis assez mitigé sur cette histoire. Si les éléments de décor et d’ambiance sont exceptionnels, l’histoire en elle-même souffre de nombreuses faiblesses, et d’un faux rythme qui en casse, je trouve tout l’intérêt. Quant aux personnages, ils sont si peu décrits qu’on a le plus grand mal à s’y atacher. Pourtant, c’est un roman assez original, sur lequel je me suis peut-être fait une mauvaise idée, non ?

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greenland, Colin. Take Back Plenty. 1990. Tabitha Jute No. 1. SF Gateway, 2013.
In most space operas, human beings find some way to travel to the stars and either create or join a galactic civilization. In Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland turns these memes upside down. The aliens have come to us, filling the solar system with extraterrestrial visitors of several species. They have also told us to stay home in the Sol system. Thus, there is interstellar trade and culture, but human colonies are outclassed by large-scale alien habitats. Our heroine, Tabitha Jute, is the owner of a small freighter who makes a marginal living as a trader. The freighter has a damaged AI, called Alice Liddell, after the little girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland. To keep it sane, Tabitha tells it stories, some fictional and some from her own past. The main plot begins when Tabitha contracts with a fast-talking, seductive impresario to take him to an alien space habitat called Plenty to pick up his cabaret troupe. Adventure ensues. Tabitha has a well-developed personality with more depth to her character than we usually adventure heroines. The conversations between Tabitha and Alice are charming. The alien menagerie is complex and well-detailed. I don’t know what the competition was, but I am not surprised that Take Back Plenty won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I plan to read the other two volumes of the trilogy. 4 stars.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is supposed to be a madcap, comical space opera with a likable female protagonist who is sucked into an adventure that she wasn't really looking for and of which she wants no part. It fell a little flat for me. The characters, several of which could have been really interesting, ended up underdeveloped. The plot, and the way it was structured, left me confused. On the other hand I thought the writing was good, there were instances of humor and excitement, and some of the aliens were intriguing. So in the end I thought it was okay but not enough to get me to read the sequel.

[Nick B · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just found it a mess, really. A host if unlikeable characters in a universe where things only seem to exist for plot convenience rather than making a coherent background. The main character has no real agency, just rolling from crisis to crisis while people explain the plot to her (well, whatever the plot is at that time, it changes without rhyme or reason) and the most interesting events seem to have happened in the background. No idea why this ended up in a Masterworks collection.

[Manuel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not sci-fi

[Jonny R · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably 2 and a half stars... It was more or less a waste of time but moderately enjoyable - I'd say more of a fantasy book set in space rather than science fiction really.

Moderately enjoyable, readable fluff where there's none stop action interspersed with some back story in the form of the protagonist telling her ship stories. Probably those back story sections were the most interesting parts.

I found it very predictable once the pattern of crazy things happening followed by improbable escape was set up.

By the end I was well ready for it to be over and won't bother with a sequel but I also didn't overly dislike it.

I don't feel like the book really had anything to say and it had a lot of magic in it, aswell as a lot of convenient things happening. I think I enjoyed the writing style though and there were at least some characters with different goals and personalities. Also there were some genuinely alien aliens and some fairly interesting world building at times. There was some exciting action although the plot was pretty thin and you had to suspend disbelief but certainly there were some fun/entertaining bits.

It's very comic book like in that nothing bad really happens to any of the main characters (with one notable exception that gets glossed over). That fits with the non serious style/content.

I think one or the main bits that bothered me was having lots of really uninhabitable places being habited - in particular Venus without any magic technology being involved, that was really bizarre! I ended up reading the Wikipedia article about Venus and just thinking about how ridiculous it was. You got bombarded with a lot of made up flora and fauna for no particular reason which probably sums up a lot of the book - visit somewhere, have a load of stuff described, kablammo - something bad happens, now escape. Bit of backstory talking to the ship. Rinse and repeat.

Tbh the whole venus section was totally ridiculous why did everyone wander off for no reason when they crash landed? Why did they crash land anyway? Venus was never mentioned up to that point... When the mysterious axis lock crystal malfunctions does it cause the ship to navigate towards the nearest planet?? That seemed so bizarre, I was expecting either the ship to become stranded or something bad to happen in the transition back to normal space like to rip itself apart. It seemed like if there'd been no planet nearby it would have just been travelling fast in normal space and the odds of being pointed right at a planet would be super low

So yeah I wouldn't recommend it but if you like your taste for science fiction is lots of inventive aliens and descriptions of wild environments with comic book plotting you may feel differently. Definitely not totally devoid of charm despite all my negative comments!

[Jouke Jong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let's just say that in the course of reading this book I started reading others. Out of boredom and frustration.

This book was adviced by a friend because it contained a woman of colour as the heroine. Well, that is far from a guarantuee of a good book. I was curious though, it seemed like a proper adventure story.

It would have been that if the writing and the translation of this novel had been better. At first I blamed the atrocious translation only. I read it in Dutch, and several times I could just easily pick the mistakes.

But the writing itself is also to blame. If I would give a summary of the book, it would sound exciting: a flyer of a spaceship finds herself in an unusual company, and gets dragged around the solar system bumping into friends and enemies. Hurray, sounds great.

What went wrong? I would say a sense of place, description, pacing. All those things that make writing novels wórk. (at least as far as I know, I'm not a writer)

I guess this is one of those books that were popular when it came out because it (re) introduced things to the genre that people missed.

but ja, reading this now... maybe 200 pages less? an adventure less and a description more? the final part made me go from one to two stars. so there's that.

read at your own risk.

[Tony Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit of a disappointment, this. I remember it appearing to a big buzz back around 1990, heralded as British sci-fi's triumphant return to the good old days of explosions and spaceships, and I always meant to get around to reading it. Brian Aldiss and Michael Moorcock are on the cover, telling you what an epic-scale adventure this is.

It's all right. It's entertaining, knockabout, episodic fun, sharply written with more style and wit than you'd find in a lot of American SF then or indeed now. I can see how when it came out after a decade of the downbeat, low-budget, miserablist British science fiction of the '80s it must have looked very exciting. But, epic it is not, nor is it that much of an adventure.

I hate to damn a good book with faint praise, but there it is. It's fine. You'll probably enjoy it.

[Arturo Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of worldbuilding and at times it was difficuly to imagine some of the words describing the scene.

Sometimes it felt too much description/ambiance and not that much plot going on.

All in all once you got the hang of the plot it was entertaining although almost ALL of the action starts to really happen until the last 1/4 of the novel.

We start with our main character who is a pilot of a cargo ship that gets in trouble even though it wasn't her fault, and ends up taking a job in order to pay some fines an that is where her real problems really start.

From there she gets bamboozled/ tricked into helping some traveling band that end up being something more she bargained for.

In the end she gets involved unbeknownst to her in intergalactic politics and power plays and gets help from some unexpected party.

it's

[Cbx · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Stylistically, this is kind of interesting. The perspective switches between narration of events, the author directly addressing the reader to describe or explain, and the main character conversing with her ship to provide expository information. In terms of world-building there is potential here too, there are multiple alien races, each with a different role, and the solar system has been colonized. The characters are unlikable and oddly flat, despite being as kooky as the author could make them.
This is sci-fi on the fever dream end of the spectrum, and ultimately, there was nothing about this that drew me in.

[Alan Rylans · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book won the BSFA Award for the Best SF Novel of the Year 1990 (and the Arthur C Clarke award the following year) but I can't say that it really met my expectations. It seemed over long although I was sucked in by the exuberant descriptions of carnival time on the Martian canals in the opening chapters. Tabatha Jute is a fully fleshed out character and her adventures after she picks up a band of weirdo entertainers are fun. Her philosophical dialogues with her ship - Alice (Liddell) - are also intriguing.

[Ian Massey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book on re-read more than I remember enjoying it first time round. I don't remember why it disappointed me back then. I mean... it won an award, it garnered good reviews, but something about it just didn't resonate with me.

This time, I liked the characters and I liked the plot. I didn't get the whole Venus scenario - it felt like a throwback to the Venus of the pulps. But, I didn't get the ending... I literally don't know what happened. Maybe it's the way I read or maybe it's that I need things spelling out to me in more easy-to-understand terms.