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Space Police #6
Death Sentence
A doctor who was banished from New Earth vows revenge and starts draining the knowledge from the brains of New Earth's scientists.
58 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1979
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February 11, 2020
I found DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE BOOK at a local thrift store and was immediately intrigued because a) it only cost 25 cents, b) it was only 58 pages long, and c) it's called DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE BOOK. Also, I don't normally do this, but I happened to open to the final page and the last line was so good that I knew I had to read the rest of the book. But I'll get back to that.
From what I can gather, SPACE POLICE was a series of short sci-fi books written by Leo P. Kelley in the late '70s. Judging by the super-short length and the...let's call it not-exactly-challenging language complexity, I'm gonna assume this was meant to be a series for young readers, though I'm not entirely sure of this. After all, DEATH SENTENCE features an early scene where our hero, Officer Ted Prentiss, is forced to blow up a space-ship and murder everyone on-board, and then solemnly muses about what a waste of life it was. Pretty heady stuff for little ones.
DEATH SENTENCE appears to be the sixth and final book of the series, but - in a sure testament to my bravery - I decided not to let this deter me from reading it, despite not having read the other five. Ultimately, I think I was okay. My guess is that every SPACE POLICE book stars a different set of characters. After all, DEATH SENTENCE is sort of about Officer Ted learning to be a better cop and realizing that every mission matters, and it would be pretty wild if this guy was the star of the whole series, was basically a dickhead for the first five books, and then finally learns his lesson in the last entry.
The story of DEATH SENTENCE finds Officer Ted begrudgingly sent to a colony on a planet where an evil scientist is stealing the knowledge of the colony's other scientists by removing some of their brain cells. The book treats what is actually happening to these suddenly forgetful scientists as something of a mystery, but given that the back cover text is simply quoting the evil villain's monologue describing his entire plan, I don't feel TOO bad about spoiling that here.
Anyway, the reason the bad guy is doing this is because the colony tried to exile him after they discovered he was conducting illegal brain experiments. So his revenge is to kidnap the one guy that knows how to grow the colony's food and make him forget how to do that, and to kidnap the one guy that knows how to operate the colony's computers and make him forget how to do that, and so on and so on. Now, to be fair, I've never been in charge of a space colony, but in my opinion it seems pretty darn negligent to only have ONE person each, at any time, that knows how to do all these things. I'm not saying I agree with the evil villain's plan or anything, but maybe this whole thing was just the shock to the system this colony needed to realize they're going about this the wrong way.
But don't worry, the book ends with...SPOILER...the colonists learning that they can just take a few brain cells from one person and add them to another person's brain, and that person will now have the knowledge those cells contained. In the world of DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE book, brain cells are apparently just these free floating things inside your head that you can extract and put back, each containing a different piece of information. So you just need to make sure you're grabbing the correct brain cells that contain "how to grow plants" and "how to operate computers" and whatever else. I mean, it still seems to me like just TEACHING EACH OTHER these things could also work, but at least they're on the right path, I guess.
Look, I could write A LOT about how much I enjoyed this admittedly pretty terrible book. In fact, I could probably write a review longer than the book itself. But, instead, let me just share some of my favorite quotes from DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE BOOK:
"Ted knew what he had to do. Twice before he had blown up ships in space. He hadn't liked doing it. But he was about to do it again. It was the only way to stop ship C-2..... Ted was glad it was over. But he couldn't help feeling sorry for the men and women who had just died on C-2. Ted wished they could have found a way to live together in peace with the people who had once been their friends. They hadn't been able to. Now they were all dead."
"'I have an idea,' Ted said. He told his idea to Bixby. 'That's very interesting,' Bixby said when Ted had finished explaining his idea."
"Ted couldn't sit still while he waited for time to pass. He got up and walked around. Then he sat down. Then he got up and walked around some more."
Ted goes undercover as a scientist:
"Finally it was time for him to go. He got his laser gun and put it under his clothes. He smiled to himself. No one would think that a scientist would have a laser gun hidden under his clothes."
The evil Dr. Brent explains his plan:
"I did it because of what the people of New Earth did to me. I wanted to get even with them for making me leave. And I will. I'm going to take away the knowledge of all their scientists. I've passed a death sentence on New Earth. Yes, a death sentence." (Note: this is why the book is called DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE BOOK)
"Ching said, 'I won't let you take my brain cells!'"
And while I wouldn't dare give away all of the exciting action climax, here is the aforementioned final line of the book that I loved so much:
"And soon he was on his way to another world and another Space Police job."
This book is pretty bad. I loved it. I'm certainly gonna try to find the other SPACE POLICE books. Meanwhile, if this review has you wanting to read DEATH SENTENCE yourself, you can either come over to my place and I'll leave you alone for the 15 minutes or so it takes to read it cover to cover, or you can order your own copy online. As I write this, there's currently one copy available on Amazon for $971.90, plus $3.99 shipping. Which definitely makes the 25 cents I paid feel like a bit of a bargain.
From what I can gather, SPACE POLICE was a series of short sci-fi books written by Leo P. Kelley in the late '70s. Judging by the super-short length and the...let's call it not-exactly-challenging language complexity, I'm gonna assume this was meant to be a series for young readers, though I'm not entirely sure of this. After all, DEATH SENTENCE features an early scene where our hero, Officer Ted Prentiss, is forced to blow up a space-ship and murder everyone on-board, and then solemnly muses about what a waste of life it was. Pretty heady stuff for little ones.
DEATH SENTENCE appears to be the sixth and final book of the series, but - in a sure testament to my bravery - I decided not to let this deter me from reading it, despite not having read the other five. Ultimately, I think I was okay. My guess is that every SPACE POLICE book stars a different set of characters. After all, DEATH SENTENCE is sort of about Officer Ted learning to be a better cop and realizing that every mission matters, and it would be pretty wild if this guy was the star of the whole series, was basically a dickhead for the first five books, and then finally learns his lesson in the last entry.
The story of DEATH SENTENCE finds Officer Ted begrudgingly sent to a colony on a planet where an evil scientist is stealing the knowledge of the colony's other scientists by removing some of their brain cells. The book treats what is actually happening to these suddenly forgetful scientists as something of a mystery, but given that the back cover text is simply quoting the evil villain's monologue describing his entire plan, I don't feel TOO bad about spoiling that here.
Anyway, the reason the bad guy is doing this is because the colony tried to exile him after they discovered he was conducting illegal brain experiments. So his revenge is to kidnap the one guy that knows how to grow the colony's food and make him forget how to do that, and to kidnap the one guy that knows how to operate the colony's computers and make him forget how to do that, and so on and so on. Now, to be fair, I've never been in charge of a space colony, but in my opinion it seems pretty darn negligent to only have ONE person each, at any time, that knows how to do all these things. I'm not saying I agree with the evil villain's plan or anything, but maybe this whole thing was just the shock to the system this colony needed to realize they're going about this the wrong way.
But don't worry, the book ends with...SPOILER...the colonists learning that they can just take a few brain cells from one person and add them to another person's brain, and that person will now have the knowledge those cells contained. In the world of DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE book, brain cells are apparently just these free floating things inside your head that you can extract and put back, each containing a different piece of information. So you just need to make sure you're grabbing the correct brain cells that contain "how to grow plants" and "how to operate computers" and whatever else. I mean, it still seems to me like just TEACHING EACH OTHER these things could also work, but at least they're on the right path, I guess.
Look, I could write A LOT about how much I enjoyed this admittedly pretty terrible book. In fact, I could probably write a review longer than the book itself. But, instead, let me just share some of my favorite quotes from DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE BOOK:
"Ted knew what he had to do. Twice before he had blown up ships in space. He hadn't liked doing it. But he was about to do it again. It was the only way to stop ship C-2..... Ted was glad it was over. But he couldn't help feeling sorry for the men and women who had just died on C-2. Ted wished they could have found a way to live together in peace with the people who had once been their friends. They hadn't been able to. Now they were all dead."
"'I have an idea,' Ted said. He told his idea to Bixby. 'That's very interesting,' Bixby said when Ted had finished explaining his idea."
"Ted couldn't sit still while he waited for time to pass. He got up and walked around. Then he sat down. Then he got up and walked around some more."
Ted goes undercover as a scientist:
"Finally it was time for him to go. He got his laser gun and put it under his clothes. He smiled to himself. No one would think that a scientist would have a laser gun hidden under his clothes."
The evil Dr. Brent explains his plan:
"I did it because of what the people of New Earth did to me. I wanted to get even with them for making me leave. And I will. I'm going to take away the knowledge of all their scientists. I've passed a death sentence on New Earth. Yes, a death sentence." (Note: this is why the book is called DEATH SENTENCE: A SPACE POLICE BOOK)
"Ching said, 'I won't let you take my brain cells!'"
And while I wouldn't dare give away all of the exciting action climax, here is the aforementioned final line of the book that I loved so much:
"And soon he was on his way to another world and another Space Police job."
This book is pretty bad. I loved it. I'm certainly gonna try to find the other SPACE POLICE books. Meanwhile, if this review has you wanting to read DEATH SENTENCE yourself, you can either come over to my place and I'll leave you alone for the 15 minutes or so it takes to read it cover to cover, or you can order your own copy online. As I write this, there's currently one copy available on Amazon for $971.90, plus $3.99 shipping. Which definitely makes the 25 cents I paid feel like a bit of a bargain.
Displaying 1 of 1 review