Scan barcode
A review by tittypete
The Great Explosion by Eric Frank Russell
3.0
Some guy inadvertently invents a super fast method of space travel and pretty soon every misfit group on earth has abandoned the planet to set up shop on their own. Then 400 years in the future, the powers that be on earth want to form a space alliance to defend against outer space threats (which there so far have been none). So they send out a ship led by a big fat ambassador and visit four of these relatively recently settled planets. The first planet started as a penal colony and is now full of a bunch of lazy thief people with a woman shortage. Those people turn out to be dicks so the Terrans leave for the next place. This one is full of nudists who are dicks too. They think all the Terrans are dirty mined because they wear clothes but even when said dirty minded people take their clothes off the nudists lay into them for having gross bodies and not having sick tans. So those people were dicks too and the spaceship takes off. Third planet was a syncretic muslim-buddhist planet where everyone seemed to have died off. Dunno why this was added. Author's comment on the practicality of those religions, p'r'aps. The fourth planet is full of anarcho-libertarian free spirits who don't use money but instead trade obligations to each other for goods and services. I give you a meal, you owe me some sort of favor in return, etc. They do what they want and don't do what they don't want using Gandhi-style passive resistance. Due to super simplified storytelling and wishful thinking this system works flawlessly in the book. So flawlessly that a bunch of the spaceship people go AWOL and choose to stay on this planet. The spaceship has to take off so that it won't lose any more people and the fat ambassador can get home. In the end I think the moral is the earth people are the actual dicks.
It was interesting but overly idealist. I think I picked it up because I was looking for a book that was the "opposite of Atlas Shrugged". A semi-flimsy maybe on that front.
Stay hard,
Mitch
It was interesting but overly idealist. I think I picked it up because I was looking for a book that was the "opposite of Atlas Shrugged". A semi-flimsy maybe on that front.
Stay hard,
Mitch