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The Plot Against Earth; Recruit for Andromeda by Calvin M. Knox, Milton Lesser, Robert Silverberg
cerv's review
4.0
The Plot Against Earth - Robert Silverberg (1959)
Image is from a Google search.
In 2304, Lloyd Catton is the special investigator for the Terran World Government sent to the Interworld Commission on Crime to discover who is behind The Plot Against Earth. He is able to speak the local Morilaru dialect through a hundred hours of intensive hypnotraining, which I've always found to be silly. Three other major races are in attendance concerned with a threat that imperils them all. The threat being hypno-jewels. Merely gazing at these jewels gives the beholder unlimited pleasure, but after a mere hour, it also brings death. It is suspected that the non-humanoid races are conspiring against the humanoid races as they are not affected by the hypno-jewels.
Catton later meets Estil, the 18 year-old daughter of Earth's ambassador, who is "GRAVELY ATTRACTIVE" confides in him that she's secretly in love with her older music teacher, and he's an alien. SCANDALOUS! But he may be in the hypno-jewel trade and needs to be investigated because she can't be with a criminal alien.
"We will have it coded for your retinal pattern" for documents, which brings a different meaning to the phrase "for your eyes only". It seems the idea for retinal scans were put forward in 1935.
The first 50% of the novel is the investigation phase. 15% is uneventful primitive planet survival. 35% is the apprehension.
Estil is later met again and she says that after eloping with him they had sex but after a few weeks he grows bored of her and leaves her on an alien planet where she lives in penury for some time until Catton meets her again.
The actual thread turns out to be matter duplicators, which are banned by all the humanoid races because apparently becoming post-scarcity will destroy civilization. This is something that I entirely disagree with.
Receptionist met soon as the novella starts:
She wore the green crest of an unmarried woman twined in her hair. Her skin was a soft purplish hue; her eyes, light crimson, stood out brilliantly against that background. The clinging blouse she wore left her shoulders bare, revealing the three little inch-high nubbins of bone on each shoulder that marked the chief external anatomical difference between Terran and Morilaru.
Plot Spoiler:
Pouin Beryall's, who he meets as soon as the novella starts, name looks so much like betrayal and burial that I instantly knew that he was going to be the mastermind behind everything, which he was. I don't know if this was intended, but it made it rather predictable, but whatever.
A perfectly functional and fun story of an investigation.
Image is from a Google search.
In 2304, Lloyd Catton is the special investigator for the Terran World Government sent to the Interworld Commission on Crime to discover who is behind The Plot Against Earth. He is able to speak the local Morilaru dialect through a hundred hours of intensive hypnotraining, which I've always found to be silly. Three other major races are in attendance concerned with a threat that imperils them all. The threat being hypno-jewels. Merely gazing at these jewels gives the beholder unlimited pleasure, but after a mere hour, it also brings death. It is suspected that the non-humanoid races are conspiring against the humanoid races as they are not affected by the hypno-jewels.
Catton later meets Estil, the 18 year-old daughter of Earth's ambassador, who is "GRAVELY ATTRACTIVE" confides in him that she's secretly in love with her older music teacher, and he's an alien. SCANDALOUS! But he may be in the hypno-jewel trade and needs to be investigated because she can't be with a criminal alien.
"We will have it coded for your retinal pattern" for documents, which brings a different meaning to the phrase "for your eyes only". It seems the idea for retinal scans were put forward in 1935.
The first 50% of the novel is the investigation phase. 15% is uneventful primitive planet survival. 35% is the apprehension.
Estil is later met again and she says that after eloping with him they had sex but after a few weeks he grows bored of her and leaves her on an alien planet where she lives in penury for some time until Catton meets her again.
The actual thread turns out to be matter duplicators, which are banned by all the humanoid races because apparently becoming post-scarcity will destroy civilization. This is something that I entirely disagree with.
Receptionist met soon as the novella starts:
She wore the green crest of an unmarried woman twined in her hair. Her skin was a soft purplish hue; her eyes, light crimson, stood out brilliantly against that background. The clinging blouse she wore left her shoulders bare, revealing the three little inch-high nubbins of bone on each shoulder that marked the chief external anatomical difference between Terran and Morilaru.
Plot Spoiler:
Pouin Beryall's, who he meets as soon as the novella starts, name looks so much like betrayal and burial that I instantly knew that he was going to be the mastermind behind everything, which he was. I don't know if this was intended, but it made it rather predictable, but whatever.
A perfectly functional and fun story of an investigation.
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