Newton and the Quasi-Apple

by Stanley Schmidt, Frank Kelly Freas

What if Newton was wrong—or just seemed to be wrong? What if visitors from an advanced civilization accidentally made it seem as if the Three Laws of Motion didn’t work as advertised—and thus got Newton in very serious trouble with the authorities?And what if that was just the start of the trouble?

Genres: Science Fiction

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Stanley Schmidt is an American science fiction author. Between 1978 and 2012 he served as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good, thought-provoking story investigating the consequences of The Prime Directive from the alien viewpoint. Not a whole lot of character development, but a fun story with an ending that could go either way.

[bsolt · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Enough!” Kangyr exploded, furious and incredulous. Terek stopped and stared, breathing hard, as Kangyr spat out, “It’s incredible that anyone can persist in such folly even in the face of such direct evidence. Even in the face of the explicit word of a Holy Dixar that it’s a folly!” He shook his head, staring wildly, then stopped abruptly, staring as if his gaze should nail Terek to the wall. His voice turned suddenly dead serious. “Obviously words alone will not put an end to it.”

I picked this book up from a clearance shelf at a used bookstore because I thought the title was intriguing. For a dollar, how can I pass up a seemingly quirky scifi book? I give it 3/5 stars because the story and premise was intriguing, the writing was mediocre but passable, but the ending in my opinion was a bad decision.

The premise of the story is about a team of humans who monitor alien civilizations and make sure they are protected with little intervention. A particular society they are watching is on the brink of a ‘renaissance’ age; however, a second intelligent species is threatening to wipe them out. They intervene and cause all sorts of havoc for the society.

On the other side of the story, Terek is a young disciple in the temple of the alien society. After examining lost manuscripts, he has plotted out different mechanics of the universe (e.g., the path of the planet around the star) as well as stumbled on to numbers he attempts to turn into what we know as physics equations. Basically, he is the Newton of this alien society. Much like the human race, Terek is persecuted for his new ideas by the longstanding temple and labeled as a heretic - all in time for the town to get attacked by the barbaric race again.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

The story was interesting until the end.

Instead of the ending in the book where the humans tell the priest king the truth and they end up accepting Terek and his ideas... I have a different ending formed in my mind:

When the human landing party confronts the priest king, Terek is able to persuade all the templemen that the human landing party is influenced by the evil one, trying to throw the Supreme Being off balance. The entire temple rallies behind Terek and the priest king gives the order and the humans are executed. After this event Terek and his ideas around physics are legitimized and they are able to build adequate defenses to ward off the barbarians. He works with the temple to write down his laws of the world in alignment with their previous teachings and he is also favored later in life to become a priest king.

The final chapter is a deposition from the pilot and the field agent aboard the ship who did not go on the excursion into the main city. They will be questioned about what transpired and certain conclusion will be made about humans interfering with future alien planets

That is the short version anyways.

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humans from the future land on a planet that is at a medieval stage. One intelligent
young inhabitant, having read certain documents he has been studying, comes to the
conclusion that his planet, Ymrek, is not at the center of everything. The Universe
does not revolve around Ymrek. Terek, that is the youngsters name, just now
convince the head priest Kangyr. Terek is Ymreks equivalent of Isaac Newton.
Can the visiting humans avoid interfering in the affairs of the planet of will they
make a mess of it.

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s fine. The entire concept is aliens learning Newtonian physics which is a bizarre plot for any novel but it works

[Scott Nieradka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well this book got me through a three hour greyhound ride, so im not too bitter, cause this book was numbingly dumb and a waste of my time, but since i was on the greyhound, that was what i wanted anyway.

Alright, so the premise is there a group of xenobiologists/anthropologists, whom are mucking around on an alien planet full of standard aliens that could be human if you squint a little, and cows with funny horns, of course. There's a Italian pseudo-buddhist culture who is about to go all renaissance-y but they are getting mauled by vikings with funny hats. So the anthropologists decide to contact HQ, to get permission to give the natives air-boats made of wanktonium to defend themselves. Sensible. So that gets rubber stamped along with a side dressing of bureaucrat intrigue which is standard far for this sort of book. And they go back disguised as magicians showing off samples of their wanktonium to the natives for it get accepted as normal. Unfortunately, and this is the plot, the village they were in spontaneously generated a monk who is their version of newton, Galileo, Copernicus into one tidy convenient package, and their wanktonium (as it doesn’t abide by Newtonian physics) is used by the church to disprove his theories. And apparently having a knowledge of Newtonian physics will make your cannons accurate as viking slaughtering lasers. Wackiness ensues. Actually no. just a bunch of dumb. The only real amusement is how callously disregardful of any prime directive-y thingie, general anthropology, common sense, etc the anthropologists are.