Deathworld by Harry Harrison (1960)

[AE35Unit]

This is one of Harrison's first novels and is part of a series..

Jason DinAlt is a professional gambler who has psi powers that he can turn to his advantage. One night he is approached by a stranger with a unique proposition-gamble a huge amount of money to make a fortune worth billions. At first Jason is apprehensive but he can't refuse such a challenge!
The stranger identifies himself as Kerk Pyrrus, who also happens to be the ambassador to the planet that bears his name. Jason gets more and more curious as to why he is being hired-who is he to gamble for? What is the reason for the mission?
Kerk informs Jason that the planet Pyrrus is like no other planet in the galaxy, with ferocious plant and animal life and a very challenging climate, including a 2G atmosphere which makes even walking a struggle. Just to step out on the planet is suicide, he is informed, but Jason cannot be put off. Not only does he agree to gamble the money, risk being a planetwide outlaw, but also he decides he must visit this "Death World", against the better judgement of his companion.
And so begins Jason's adventure, first as a trainee, his peers being mere children, then as a serving soldier in the fight against this hostile planet. But there is far more to this Death World than meets the eye....

This book was written in 1960, a year before the first Stainless Steel Rat book, but is very much in that vein- one man caught up in a war against a seemingly unbeatable enemy. There are some interesting ideas in this book, including a weapons system that is attached to the wearer in such a way so that as soon as the person thinks about getting his gun out it is immediately in his hand; he is instantly armed for battle!

A fun little romp this! Bravo and RIP Mr Harrison!

 

[Dave]

I read these ages ago - but it had the same cover picture. I remember them as not being the greatest literature written, but I read science fiction for the ideas too, and as you say, there are some interesting ideas here. I read them after reading the Stainless Steel Rat and didn't realise they were written before that, but it makes sense if he was still perfecting his craft. I think Make Room, Make Room is his best book. Still relevant today.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

This is my take on the trilogy (from my SFF blog: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.co.uk/)

I bought these books about forty years ago and hadn't read them for almost as long, so I was pleased when the first of them was chosen as the book of the month by the Classic Science Fictiondiscussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClassicScienceFiction/ ). Since they are all very short by modern standards, only adding up to one average-sized modern novel between them, I read the two sequels as well.

Deathworld is set in a far-future universe in which humanity has colonised 30,000 worlds (with no mention of any alien civilisations) and features Jason dinAlt, a gambler with limited telekinetic powers which enable him to cheat. He is recruited and bankrolled by Kerk Pyrrus, a formidable native of the planet Pyrrus, to win a large sum of money to purchase weapons which the people on his planet need to survive. It emerges that Pyrrus is ferociously hostile to humanity; not just in its double gravity and violent extremes of weather and climate, but in a flora and fauna which keep evolving at a rapid rate to attack the settlers as viciously as possible. As a result the Pyrrans are formidable fighters, their whole lives geared to survival.

Bored with his existence, dinAlt is intrigued by what he hears and decides to travel to Pyrrus with Kerk. Surviving with some difficulty and a lot of help, he gradually realises that there is something odd going on and believes that humanity doesn't need to live in such a state of violent warfare with the planet's biota. However, the Pyrrans are so focused on survival that they have no time for his theories and dinAlt has to put his own life on the line to try to change the situation.

Like most heroes of contemporary SF, dinAlt regards himself as far superior to the rest of humanity, but his self-confidence takes a battering on Pyrrus where he struggles with the high gravity and is demonstrably inferior in fighting skills to the average eight-year old. His intelligence wins out over the brute force of the Pyrrans in the end, though. Read with modern eyes, the story has a certain allegorical feel - of a population whose own actions are changing their environment in ways which make it more hostile to themselves, but who are too wrapped up in their own way of life to want to make the necessary alterations. But Harrison wrote this long before concerns about climate change emerged.

Deathworld 2, originally titled The Ethical Engineer, directly continues the story with dinAlt on Pyrrus, from which he is abruptly kidnapped by Mikah, a representative of a group of religious fundamentalists who have decided to bring the now famous dinAlt to trial for his various earlier misdeeds as an example to others. However, Mikah's ship crashes on an isolated planet with a primitive human civilisation based on slavery. As might be expected, the resourceful dinAlt manages to cope with the situations he keeps finding himself in, while planning how to get off the planet.

This is a slightly strange sequel as dinAlt, whom we knew from the first book as someone whose only skill was as a psi-aided gambler, suddenly morphs into an engineer with a comprehensive knowledge of early technology and with no mention of psi powers at all. The story is full of arguments he has with Mikah, in which the merits of dinAlt's rationalist atheism are hammered home in a decidedly unsubtle way. This aspect of the book is not helped by the fact that Mikah is portrayed as a cartoonish parody of a blindly religious fanatic, totally incapable of coping with the real world. If this doesn't appeal, you can skip this book and go straight to the third volume without losing anything.

Deathworld 3 is something of a return to form, and to former issues. Jason dinAlt, once again on Pyrrus with his local girlfriend Meta, has a plan to offer the Pyrrans something other than perpetual war with the local flora and fauna. He has discovered a planet dubbed Felicity possessing valuable mineral resources which lie undeveloped because of the violent opposition of barbaric natives almost as ferocious as the Pyrrans. He recruits enough Pyrrans to take on the task but runs into far more problems than he expected. The fierce locals are led by Temuchin (a name borrowed straight from Earth history - it was the original name of the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan) who proves a hard nut to crack. But dinAlt eventually discovers a solution by reading up on ancient history.

I remembered the stories as fun reads; short, fast paced and entertaining, with a wry sense of humour, as Harrison novels usually are. That is still true, although they appear rather simplistic by modern standards. Despite this, they're still worth the time to read.

 

[AE35Unit]

Hmmm when I first looked for Deathworld I didnt realise there were 2 sequels! I must find them....

 

[Dave]

Hmmm when I first looked for Deathworld I didnt realise there were 2 sequels! I must find them....

What? Even though the cover you posted has the title Deathworld I?

But Harrison wrote this long before concerns about climate change emerged.

Maybe before Global Warming was widely believed to be a issue, but the idea of a greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824. In the sixties, I think we believed instead that smoke and dust particulates would cause global cooling and a new Ice Age. Also, while the environmental movement was in its infancy, there were books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, written in 1962, that documented the detrimental effects of pesticides on birds. Harry Harrison would be well aware of all of those things. Not only that, but he was particularly concerned with the consequences of unchecked population growth on the Earth, as made clear in the preface to Make Room, Make Room.

 

[AE35Unit]

What? Even though the cover you posted has the title Deathworld I?

Maybe before Global Warming was widely believed to be a issue, but the idea of a greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824. In the sixties, I think we believed instead that smoke and dust particulates would cause global cooling and a new Ice Age. Also, while the environmental movement was in its infancy, there were books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, written in 1962, that documented the detrimental effects of pesticides on birds. Harry Harrison would be well aware of all of those things. Not only that, but he was particularly concerned with the consequences of unchecked population growth on the Earth, as made clear in the preface to Make Room, Make Room.

Yes, when I first heard about Deathworld I was unaware of sequels. Of course upon reading it I discovered thr truth.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Maybe before Global Warming was widely believed to be a issue, but the idea of a greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824. In the sixties, I think we believed instead that smoke and dust particulates would cause global cooling and a new Ice Age. Also, while the environmental movement was in its infancy, there were books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, written in 1962, that documented the detrimental effects of pesticides on birds. Harry Harrison would be well aware of all of those things. Not only that, but he was particularly concerned with the consequences of unchecked population growth on the Earth, as made clear in the preface to Make Room, Make Room.

Quite right - thanks for reminding me.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Deathworld 2, originally titled The Ethical Engineer, directly continues the story with dinAlt on Pyrrus, from which he is abruptly kidnapped by Mikah, a representative of a group of religious fundamentalists who have decided to bring the now famous dinAlt to trial for his various earlier misdeeds as an example to others. However, Mikah's ship crashes on an isolated planet with a primitive human civilisation based on slavery. As might be expected, the resourceful dinAlt manages to cope with the situations he keeps finding himself in, while planning how to get off the planet.

This is a slightly strange sequel as dinAlt, whom we knew from the first book as someone whose only skill was as a psi-aided gambler, suddenly morphs into an engineer with a comprehensive knowledge of early technology and with no mention of psi powers at all. The story is full of arguments he has with Mikah, in which the merits of dinAlt's rationalist atheism are hammered home in a decidedly unsubtle way.

The aspect of the story that I found pertinent was the way the technological clans hid information from each other. The clan that made steam engines hid the design and principles from the clan that produced oil. Another clan controlled electricity. But this behavior goes on in the real world. IBM didn't tell me that all of the computers used the von Neumann architecture and that John von Neumann had been hired as a consultant in 1951.

47 years after the Moon landing economists can't talk about the depreciation of automobiles designed to become obsolete. Why do we redesign cars and why does anyone care?

psik

 

[psikeyhackr]

Here is the cover I bought:

Claims to be the first publication of the entire trilogy. Looks like $1.95, or is it $1.25?

This is weird. Babylon 5 graphics?

psik

 

[galanx]

Te first one was great, the second one,meh- and as Anthony G. Williams pointed out above, the idea of a professional gambler thousands of years in the future being an expert on early industrial technology is pretty far-fetched. The third one I barely remember.