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Dreadful Sanctuary
"Vivid whodunit plotting... magnificent concept."
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
"One of the most believable science-fiction books in years."
- Astounding Science Fiction
"Half brilliant imaginative science-adventure-detective story, half bitter and biting social satire, Dreadful Sanctuary is one of the more adult additions to the growing shelf of reprints from the Fabulous Forties."
- Galaxy Science Fiction
"Essentially a spy story, a good and exciting one, full of suspense."
- The New York Times
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
"One of the most believable science-fiction books in years."
- Astounding Science Fiction
"Half brilliant imaginative science-adventure-detective story, half bitter and biting social satire, Dreadful Sanctuary is one of the more adult additions to the growing shelf of reprints from the Fabulous Forties."
- Galaxy Science Fiction
"Essentially a spy story, a good and exciting one, full of suspense."
- The New York Times
Hardcover
First published August 1, 1948
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118 people want to read
About the author
Eric Frank Russell
395 books113 followersEric Frank Russell was a British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales, and non-fiction articles on Fortean topics. A few of his stories were published under pseudonyms, of which Duncan H. Munro was used most often.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 16, 2021
Set in the future world of 1972 as the seventeenth-straight moon rocket has just mysteriously failed, Dreadful Sanctuary is a hard-boiled detective story crossed with an interplanetary conspiracy/ suspense thriller. It's some of Russell's sharpest social satire, as Armstrong tries to solve the mystery of the failed space efforts and ponders the question directed to him by the international Norman Club, "How do you know you're sane?" I don't believe it's quite as good or has aged quite as well as The Space Willies or Sinister Barrier, but it's still quite a captivating read on a number of levels.
December 20, 2021
As I have mentioned elsewhere, there are several writers who never seem to let me down, and in that elite group, English author Eric Frank Russell must surely be included. "The Best of Eric Frank Russell" (1978) was my initial exposure to this Golden Age great (reputedly, legendary editor John W. Campbell's favorite contributor), and it was, for me, among the best of the 21 "Best of..." titles in the justly celebrated Ballantine series. I had also loved "Men, Martians and Machines" (1955), which can almost be seen as a warm-up for "Star Trek"; "Wasp" (1957), a thrilling tale of psychological warfare on the Sirian planet Jaimec; "The Great Explosion" (1962), one of the funniest sci-fi books that I've ever read (not for nothing did Brian Aldiss deem Russell "Campbell's licensed jester"); and finally, "The Mindwarpers" (1964), an exciting spy caper with minimal sci-fi content. Curious to see if Russellian lightning would strike for the sixth time, I was happy to lay my hands on his second novel (out of an eventual 10), "Dreadful Sanctuary." This sophomore effort (not counting the 20 or so short stories he'd released at that point) from the British author originally appeared in Campbell's "Astounding Science-Fiction" magazine as a three-part serial, in the June – August 1948 issues. The front covers of both the June and July issues featured artwork for Russell's contribution by the famed illustrators William Timmins and Chesley Bonestell, respectively. "Dreadful Sanctuary"'s first book publication came three years later, in 1951, as a $2.75 Fantasy Press hardcover, with cover art by Edd Cartier. And my edition is the 1963 incarnation from Lancer, with cover art by the great Ed Emshwiller...and what turns out to be a significantly revised text by the author, featuring a vastly different ending than that which had appeared 15 years earlier. More on that in a moment.
Russell's novel transpires at the very beginning of the futuristic year of, uh, 1972. The 17th rocket that mankind has launched toward the planet Venus has just blown up during its approach; 17 attempts, 17 catastrophic blowups in a row. Only this latest attempt had been a manned mission, only adding to the calamity. John J. Armstrong, a 34-year-old, 6' 3", 230-pound bruiser who has invented some novel photographic equipment that will be loaded onto rocket attempt #18, begins to wonder if all those previous mishaps might have been purposefully arranged, and begins to do a little amateur sleuthing on his own--just for fun, as it were. But subsequent events prove that he just might be on to something. A prominent space expert, Bob Mandle, dies in midsentence while conversing with Armstrong via televisor. Another scientist is soon found dead in Armstrong's own living room, cause similarly unknown. Our hero decides to hire a private detective, Hansen, to look up facts pertaining to all government employees who had tried to retard the U.S. space program, and also enlists the aid of scientist Claire Mandle, the sister of the vanquished space expert. Armstrong's investigations lead him to the mysterious, international fraternal order known as the Norman Club, in which many of America's senators are members. During a visit to the NYC branch of said club, Armstrong is held prisoner and subjected to an examination with a gizmo known as the "psychotron," to determine whether or not he is "sane." Armstrong passes the test and is vouchsafed some startling information by his captor, Senator Lindle: The Norman Club members believe themselves to be the descendants of the insane Mercurian, Venusian and Martian rejects who had been summarily dumped onto the Earth 120,000 years ago. They will do anything to prevent mankind from reaching those three worlds today. But, it seems, there is still another group causing trouble on our fair planet, consisting of the modern-day Martian criminally insane, who have recently been sent to Earth and will do anything to get back. Thus, before long, Armstrong finds himself very much an object of attention from both groups...as well as the cops and the F.B.I., as the body count around Armstrong continues to rise. And things grow from bad to worse as the Norman Club, with its international resources, begins operations that will result in WW3! No wonder why Eddie Drake, a pal of Armstrong's, says to him at one point, "...We're in to our necks and sinking to our ears. If you can find a way out of this muddle, boy, you're good!"
Ultimately revealing itself as a triple mashup of the sci-fi, hard-boiled detective, and Cold War spy genres, "Dreadful Sanctuary" is a fairly gripping page-turner, but one that I, surprisingly, had some problems with. First, though, the good news: Armstrong himself makes for a tremendously sympathetic and likable leading man here. Though he's undoubtedly the brainy sort, his hulking physique and facility with the mitts also make him a formidable adversary in rough-and-tumble melees...and a good thing, too, as things turn out. He comes equipped with some self-made gadgets that prove quite handy as he contends with his many adversaries: hidden cameras in both his NYC home and Connecticut laboratory; a cigarette lighter "bleeper" that enables his friends to track him; incendiary leaves hidden in his shoe heels; and mini glass bulbs filled with knockout gas. Russell fills his book with subtle futuristic touches, such as an answering machine called an "ipsophone"; televisions with 10-foot screens (pretty prescient, right?); that aforementioned televisor, here called a "visivox"; the final word on lie detectors, the so-called "schizophraser"; and that ingenious device that the Martians have been using to kill our rocket scientists (nope, I'm not going to say anything more about it).
The book is also filled with wonderful, slangy, tough-guy dialogue (no wonder so many "Astounding" readers thought that Russell was an American!), and although the humor content is kept to a minimum, it does pop up here and there, pleasingly. Thus, newspaper editor Bill Norton's description of the eggheaded Claire Mandle: "Her hair has squared roots. If she condescends to listen to a wolf whistle, it's solely to study the Doppler effect...." Russell's novel is consistently clever, perhaps never more so than when the reader is given, by Senator Lindle, the "true" history of the various races on planet Earth. And the author also has a sure gift with a cleverly written sentence, as well, such as when he tells us "...The world turned below; the torn world, the worn world, a world split into ideological fragments by autocrats, bureaucrats, theocrats, technocrats and other authoritative kinds of rats...." The book contains any number of marvelously done scenes (the ones inside the Norman Club itself are both harrowing and freaky), while the final segment, which transpires at a hidden rocket base in the wilderness of Canada's Northwest Territories, while the clock ticks down to WW3, is hugely suspenseful, indeed. Still, as I mentioned, there were some sticking points for me.
For one thing, there's the name of the novel, one that I’m not quite sure I understand. Is the "dreadful sanctuary" of the title supposed to refer to Earth itself, as far as those marooned Martian defectives are concerned? I'm not sure. As I mentioned earlier, Russell rewrote his book for the 1963 edition, and I have a feeling that I may have been happier with his original concept, in which rockets were being aimed at the Moon, not Venus; the Norman Club members were revealed to be a bunch of fakes; and the forces of good prevailed by the book's end. In his altered version, it is impossible to be sure if those Norman adherents really are Martian descendants, OR just a bunch of eccentric crackpots with lunatic notions. The novel is cleverly ambiguous on that score, and although this reader prefers the more far-out, fantastic explanation (as always!), there is simply no way to be sure. And then there is the 1963 edition's wrap-up itself; one of the most shockingly downbeat endings that you will ever encounter in any Golden Age science fiction novel. Thus, readers who go into "Dreadful Sanctuary" expecting a happy ending, with all their questions answered and all ends tied up neatly, are bound to be a bit disappointed. Yes, it is a startlingly realistic ending, I suppose, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a satisfying one. It is one that leaves many matters unresolved...even the budding romantic relationship between Armstrong and Claire. Still, that's the way life sometimes is, I guess: messy, unhappy, bleak and unfulfilled.
There were a few other minor tidbits that irritated me in Russell's second novel also. For instance, when Lindle mentions that Eric the Red had discovered America...shouldn’t that rather be Eric's son, Leif Ericsson? And then there’s the matter of phone numbers. Professor Mandle's is said to be Tarrytown 1-1042; three paragraphs later, it's said to be Tarrytown 3-1042! Armstrong's number is given as Gramercy 2-5717; on the next page, it's said to be Greenwich 2-5717! These kinds of things can drive a copy editor and proofreader such as myself bonkers! Fortunately, these are minor matters, if unusual for the typically meticulous Russell. The bottom line is that "Dreadful Sanctuary" is still another wonder-filled offering from a sci-fi great. Although it was surely not as wholly satisfying as those other Eric Frank titles mentioned up top, I can still honestly say that Russellian lightning has indeed struck for the sixth time now. Shall I go for seven? Stay tuned....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Eric Frank Russell....)
Russell's novel transpires at the very beginning of the futuristic year of, uh, 1972. The 17th rocket that mankind has launched toward the planet Venus has just blown up during its approach; 17 attempts, 17 catastrophic blowups in a row. Only this latest attempt had been a manned mission, only adding to the calamity. John J. Armstrong, a 34-year-old, 6' 3", 230-pound bruiser who has invented some novel photographic equipment that will be loaded onto rocket attempt #18, begins to wonder if all those previous mishaps might have been purposefully arranged, and begins to do a little amateur sleuthing on his own--just for fun, as it were. But subsequent events prove that he just might be on to something. A prominent space expert, Bob Mandle, dies in midsentence while conversing with Armstrong via televisor. Another scientist is soon found dead in Armstrong's own living room, cause similarly unknown. Our hero decides to hire a private detective, Hansen, to look up facts pertaining to all government employees who had tried to retard the U.S. space program, and also enlists the aid of scientist Claire Mandle, the sister of the vanquished space expert. Armstrong's investigations lead him to the mysterious, international fraternal order known as the Norman Club, in which many of America's senators are members. During a visit to the NYC branch of said club, Armstrong is held prisoner and subjected to an examination with a gizmo known as the "psychotron," to determine whether or not he is "sane." Armstrong passes the test and is vouchsafed some startling information by his captor, Senator Lindle: The Norman Club members believe themselves to be the descendants of the insane Mercurian, Venusian and Martian rejects who had been summarily dumped onto the Earth 120,000 years ago. They will do anything to prevent mankind from reaching those three worlds today. But, it seems, there is still another group causing trouble on our fair planet, consisting of the modern-day Martian criminally insane, who have recently been sent to Earth and will do anything to get back. Thus, before long, Armstrong finds himself very much an object of attention from both groups...as well as the cops and the F.B.I., as the body count around Armstrong continues to rise. And things grow from bad to worse as the Norman Club, with its international resources, begins operations that will result in WW3! No wonder why Eddie Drake, a pal of Armstrong's, says to him at one point, "...We're in to our necks and sinking to our ears. If you can find a way out of this muddle, boy, you're good!"
Ultimately revealing itself as a triple mashup of the sci-fi, hard-boiled detective, and Cold War spy genres, "Dreadful Sanctuary" is a fairly gripping page-turner, but one that I, surprisingly, had some problems with. First, though, the good news: Armstrong himself makes for a tremendously sympathetic and likable leading man here. Though he's undoubtedly the brainy sort, his hulking physique and facility with the mitts also make him a formidable adversary in rough-and-tumble melees...and a good thing, too, as things turn out. He comes equipped with some self-made gadgets that prove quite handy as he contends with his many adversaries: hidden cameras in both his NYC home and Connecticut laboratory; a cigarette lighter "bleeper" that enables his friends to track him; incendiary leaves hidden in his shoe heels; and mini glass bulbs filled with knockout gas. Russell fills his book with subtle futuristic touches, such as an answering machine called an "ipsophone"; televisions with 10-foot screens (pretty prescient, right?); that aforementioned televisor, here called a "visivox"; the final word on lie detectors, the so-called "schizophraser"; and that ingenious device that the Martians have been using to kill our rocket scientists (nope, I'm not going to say anything more about it).
The book is also filled with wonderful, slangy, tough-guy dialogue (no wonder so many "Astounding" readers thought that Russell was an American!), and although the humor content is kept to a minimum, it does pop up here and there, pleasingly. Thus, newspaper editor Bill Norton's description of the eggheaded Claire Mandle: "Her hair has squared roots. If she condescends to listen to a wolf whistle, it's solely to study the Doppler effect...." Russell's novel is consistently clever, perhaps never more so than when the reader is given, by Senator Lindle, the "true" history of the various races on planet Earth. And the author also has a sure gift with a cleverly written sentence, as well, such as when he tells us "...The world turned below; the torn world, the worn world, a world split into ideological fragments by autocrats, bureaucrats, theocrats, technocrats and other authoritative kinds of rats...." The book contains any number of marvelously done scenes (the ones inside the Norman Club itself are both harrowing and freaky), while the final segment, which transpires at a hidden rocket base in the wilderness of Canada's Northwest Territories, while the clock ticks down to WW3, is hugely suspenseful, indeed. Still, as I mentioned, there were some sticking points for me.
For one thing, there's the name of the novel, one that I’m not quite sure I understand. Is the "dreadful sanctuary" of the title supposed to refer to Earth itself, as far as those marooned Martian defectives are concerned? I'm not sure. As I mentioned earlier, Russell rewrote his book for the 1963 edition, and I have a feeling that I may have been happier with his original concept, in which rockets were being aimed at the Moon, not Venus; the Norman Club members were revealed to be a bunch of fakes; and the forces of good prevailed by the book's end. In his altered version, it is impossible to be sure if those Norman adherents really are Martian descendants, OR just a bunch of eccentric crackpots with lunatic notions. The novel is cleverly ambiguous on that score, and although this reader prefers the more far-out, fantastic explanation (as always!), there is simply no way to be sure. And then there is the 1963 edition's wrap-up itself; one of the most shockingly downbeat endings that you will ever encounter in any Golden Age science fiction novel. Thus, readers who go into "Dreadful Sanctuary" expecting a happy ending, with all their questions answered and all ends tied up neatly, are bound to be a bit disappointed. Yes, it is a startlingly realistic ending, I suppose, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a satisfying one. It is one that leaves many matters unresolved...even the budding romantic relationship between Armstrong and Claire. Still, that's the way life sometimes is, I guess: messy, unhappy, bleak and unfulfilled.
There were a few other minor tidbits that irritated me in Russell's second novel also. For instance, when Lindle mentions that Eric the Red had discovered America...shouldn’t that rather be Eric's son, Leif Ericsson? And then there’s the matter of phone numbers. Professor Mandle's is said to be Tarrytown 1-1042; three paragraphs later, it's said to be Tarrytown 3-1042! Armstrong's number is given as Gramercy 2-5717; on the next page, it's said to be Greenwich 2-5717! These kinds of things can drive a copy editor and proofreader such as myself bonkers! Fortunately, these are minor matters, if unusual for the typically meticulous Russell. The bottom line is that "Dreadful Sanctuary" is still another wonder-filled offering from a sci-fi great. Although it was surely not as wholly satisfying as those other Eric Frank titles mentioned up top, I can still honestly say that Russellian lightning has indeed struck for the sixth time now. Shall I go for seven? Stay tuned....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Eric Frank Russell....)
September 9, 2024
A dry and unimpressive spy mystery with some science fiction wrapping paper. The longest 174 page novel I’ve read in a long time.
February 17, 2017
Better than Sinister Barrier.
Sinister Barrier is the book that Russell is most known for. Dreadful Sanctuary takes a crack at the same idea--that there are unseen forces controlling humans. It is not as well regarded, but I think it works better.
Certainly, there are some of the same problems as Sinister Barrier, primarily the tough-guy slang and over-the-top language. Racism also creeps up here, in fundamental ways. But the tone fits better, and there is not a tacked on love story.
The story starts similarly, with a mystery to solve: not who is killing scientists, but who are killing our rockets? Why do they keep exploding before they reach Venus. John J. Armstrong, a government official, sets out to investigate.
In the course of which, he discovers a vast conspiracy. There is a group, the Norman club, which is sabotaging rockets. But why? [Spoiler for a 70 year old pulp novel forthcoming] because earth is an insane asylum for the other nearby planets, Mercury and Venus and Mars. They've dumped all their crazies here, the way England did in Australia.
The Norman Club knows this history, and is also composed of people who are no longer insane--through time and evolution, they have become sane, as proved by a test. They are sabotaging the rockets to keep their gods--the aliens--safe from earth's nutsos. As it happens, there is also another group on earth who knows this history and are not sane, and they want to go back to compel the aliens to recognize them.
There's the feel of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics here, but this book predated Hubbard.
Once that's all sorted, there is a quest to defeat the conspiracy and send a rocket to reach Venus. It is, again, like Sinister Barrier in this second half, and it does drag at times--again it feels as though Russell was stretching the material for no particular reason other than to add words.
But the end is tonally appropriate, humans locked here with no hope.
Sinister Barrier is the book that Russell is most known for. Dreadful Sanctuary takes a crack at the same idea--that there are unseen forces controlling humans. It is not as well regarded, but I think it works better.
Certainly, there are some of the same problems as Sinister Barrier, primarily the tough-guy slang and over-the-top language. Racism also creeps up here, in fundamental ways. But the tone fits better, and there is not a tacked on love story.
The story starts similarly, with a mystery to solve: not who is killing scientists, but who are killing our rockets? Why do they keep exploding before they reach Venus. John J. Armstrong, a government official, sets out to investigate.
In the course of which, he discovers a vast conspiracy. There is a group, the Norman club, which is sabotaging rockets. But why? [Spoiler for a 70 year old pulp novel forthcoming] because earth is an insane asylum for the other nearby planets, Mercury and Venus and Mars. They've dumped all their crazies here, the way England did in Australia.
The Norman Club knows this history, and is also composed of people who are no longer insane--through time and evolution, they have become sane, as proved by a test. They are sabotaging the rockets to keep their gods--the aliens--safe from earth's nutsos. As it happens, there is also another group on earth who knows this history and are not sane, and they want to go back to compel the aliens to recognize them.
There's the feel of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics here, but this book predated Hubbard.
Once that's all sorted, there is a quest to defeat the conspiracy and send a rocket to reach Venus. It is, again, like Sinister Barrier in this second half, and it does drag at times--again it feels as though Russell was stretching the material for no particular reason other than to add words.
But the end is tonally appropriate, humans locked here with no hope.
October 25, 2021
I remember fondly from my youth a novel by Russell titled Next of Kin, a light-hearted contact with aliens story where a human was captured and convinced his alien jailers that each human had an invisible companion called a Eustace, which had impressive powers. Not literature by any means but quite funny - a trait unusual in SF. Having now read this book I am reluctant ever to go back to that earlier one for fear of destroying those memories, because Dreadful Sanctuary is not very good.
The set-up is that each of a series of spaceships, all bound for Mars and built by various countries, has suffered a calamity. It seems as if someone - or something - is deliberately preventing a successful landing. Viewpoint character John Armstrong decides to find out who or what. (When reading his various adventures to that end I was reminded of the YA book Tom Swift and the Captive Planetoid which I also read recently.)
By videophone he contacts a Professor Mandle who has a theory about layers around Mars potentially causing the problem and has an idea to invetsigate this During the call Mandle appears to suffer a heart attack and dies. This later gives Armstrong the opportunity to meet and question Mandle's sister Clair. She is as capable a person as her brother was but apart from sharing her ideas with Armstrong has no other agency in the book, beyond Armstong's possible romantic interest in her.
Russell's style here draws on US demotic speech and mannish wisecracks as in film noir. Though he also manages to insert a few classical and literary allusions by and large the prose is no more than workmanlike and contains frequent - not altogether approving - references to consumer products such as Vitalax (not to mention the advertisements for them) and a popular song titled "Skiddin’ with my shiver-kid."
Armstrong's researches take him to the Norman Club where he is asked a strange question, "How do you know you’re sane?" Armstrong doesn't know, of course, but his interlocutor is sure of his own sanity since the club is in possession of a device known as a psychotron which can establish sanity beyond doubt. Armstrong's subjection to the machine
Normans or Nor-mans claim to be normal men and not only sane but originated centuries ago from Mars and do indeed, in order to guard that history, wish to prevent other humans reaching there. There have been previous instances of implicit racism in the book - at one point Armstrong thinks of a stereotypical country named Bungo Bungo, at another he says, “‘That’s mighty white of you’” - but with the Normans it becomes explicit. According to them only white-skinned people came from Mars, yellow-skinned are the only true terrestrials, brown-skinned are Venusians, and black-skinned are Mercurians. The white people on Earth are descended from those banished from Mars because of their insanity. Earth is a prison for the insane, the dreadful sanctuary of the title. So much for the psychotron.
Only the spaceships and a handheld weapon which induces arterial blood clots make this in any way Science Fiction. The plot about a group of lunatics with aspirations to incite wars need not involve any fantastical speculation at all.
We also have the inherent difficulty of portraying the future and avoiding the unexamined assumptions of the time, assumptions all too apparent seventy years down the line. In Dreadful Sanctuary, despite habitual use of videophones, newspapers are still a main information source, accessed via recorder booths, and interpersonal calls are to devices still fixed in one place. Women, even the intellectually gifted ones such as Clair Mandle, are restricted to the domestic sphere or a job as a secretary. Then again, how will SF, or indeed any literature, written today stand up to posterity's scrutiny?
The set-up is that each of a series of spaceships, all bound for Mars and built by various countries, has suffered a calamity. It seems as if someone - or something - is deliberately preventing a successful landing. Viewpoint character John Armstrong decides to find out who or what. (When reading his various adventures to that end I was reminded of the YA book Tom Swift and the Captive Planetoid which I also read recently.)
By videophone he contacts a Professor Mandle who has a theory about layers around Mars potentially causing the problem and has an idea to invetsigate this During the call Mandle appears to suffer a heart attack and dies. This later gives Armstrong the opportunity to meet and question Mandle's sister Clair. She is as capable a person as her brother was but apart from sharing her ideas with Armstrong has no other agency in the book, beyond Armstong's possible romantic interest in her.
Russell's style here draws on US demotic speech and mannish wisecracks as in film noir. Though he also manages to insert a few classical and literary allusions by and large the prose is no more than workmanlike and contains frequent - not altogether approving - references to consumer products such as Vitalax (not to mention the advertisements for them) and a popular song titled "Skiddin’ with my shiver-kid."
Armstrong's researches take him to the Norman Club where he is asked a strange question, "How do you know you’re sane?" Armstrong doesn't know, of course, but his interlocutor is sure of his own sanity since the club is in possession of a device known as a psychotron which can establish sanity beyond doubt. Armstrong's subjection to the machine
Normans or Nor-mans claim to be normal men and not only sane but originated centuries ago from Mars and do indeed, in order to guard that history, wish to prevent other humans reaching there. There have been previous instances of implicit racism in the book - at one point Armstrong thinks of a stereotypical country named Bungo Bungo, at another he says, “‘That’s mighty white of you’” - but with the Normans it becomes explicit. According to them only white-skinned people came from Mars, yellow-skinned are the only true terrestrials, brown-skinned are Venusians, and black-skinned are Mercurians. The white people on Earth are descended from those banished from Mars because of their insanity. Earth is a prison for the insane, the dreadful sanctuary of the title. So much for the psychotron.
Only the spaceships and a handheld weapon which induces arterial blood clots make this in any way Science Fiction. The plot about a group of lunatics with aspirations to incite wars need not involve any fantastical speculation at all.
We also have the inherent difficulty of portraying the future and avoiding the unexamined assumptions of the time, assumptions all too apparent seventy years down the line. In Dreadful Sanctuary, despite habitual use of videophones, newspapers are still a main information source, accessed via recorder booths, and interpersonal calls are to devices still fixed in one place. Women, even the intellectually gifted ones such as Clair Mandle, are restricted to the domestic sphere or a job as a secretary. Then again, how will SF, or indeed any literature, written today stand up to posterity's scrutiny?
August 11, 2020
DNF
Got halfway through, couldn't take the racism and ableism any more.
(And the complete lack of insight, with "good" actors justifying their actions by the fact that the "bad" actors later did the same, just on a smaller scale. Huh?!)
This was recommended to me as an example of a good conspiracy novel, but it's not even that. Nothing comes as a surprise here, and most of the obstacles are created by the main character getting in his own way (despite--or maybe because of--constant protestations of superior intelligence and strength), which is no way to build tension.
Anyway... EUGENICS.
Ugh. No.
Got halfway through, couldn't take the racism and ableism any more.
(And the complete lack of insight, with "good" actors justifying their actions by the fact that the "bad" actors later did the same, just on a smaller scale. Huh?!)
This was recommended to me as an example of a good conspiracy novel, but it's not even that. Nothing comes as a surprise here, and most of the obstacles are created by the main character getting in his own way (despite--or maybe because of--constant protestations of superior intelligence and strength), which is no way to build tension.
Anyway... EUGENICS.
Ugh. No.
November 13, 2024
How do you know you are sane? Russell’s hardboiled, offbeat prose drives a SF conspiracy thriller born, like Sinister Barrier, of Fortean speculation. The Lancer publication, purportedly revised by Russell himself, substitutes an ending markedly more pessimistic than those of other editions.
April 3, 2023
Well written detective story. I was expecting a space opera, but the detective in the noir tradition was satisfying.
August 3, 2024
An exciting and quirky novel from one of the modern masters of the genre, filled with Russell's trademark brand of satirical humour, and evoking a sense of wonder that recalls the best of the pulp era of SF.
October 14, 2014
I was in the mood for something sci-fi. I wanted space ships and aliens, lasers etc... I knew this was old but thought it might hold up because I had read Wasp and loved it. There were a couple rockets, some "maybe aliens" and even some "advanced weaponry" but really this was more like watching an old gangster movie. The main character was larger than life and the women were in the background (like dames should be).
The dialogue was the best part. So many phrases I had never heard, for example "Sure as I'm standing under my hair." So there were a bunch of laughs and there was plenty of action but overall it wasn't all that great. The ending was really short and completely unexpected, so probably more like 2.5 stars.
So if you want to brush up on your 1940-50's colloquialisms then definitely give this a read but it's no WASP.
The dialogue was the best part. So many phrases I had never heard, for example "Sure as I'm standing under my hair." So there were a bunch of laughs and there was plenty of action but overall it wasn't all that great. The ending was really short and completely unexpected, so probably more like 2.5 stars.
So if you want to brush up on your 1940-50's colloquialisms then definitely give this a read but it's no WASP.
July 13, 2025
That was not at all what I wanted. I expected a science fiction about aliens preventing us from getting into space. Instead I got an annoying gumshoe wannabe detective who spends the book gloating about how strong he is and following boring leads to try and prove that the Russians are blowing up our ships. Halfway in and I give up.
April 28, 2015
1984 grade D
note = Don't read
note = Don't read
Read
May 3, 2019I have the german edition: Planet der Verbannten
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews