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A review by wyrmbergmalcolm
Who Goes Here? by Bob Shaw
5.0
Bob Shaw, usually associated with ‘straight’ science fiction delves into the genre of satirical science fiction with this hilarious and entertaining anti-war romp.
A man joins the Space Legion to forget (they use a machine to do this) and wakes up as Warren Peace and no knowledge at all of his previous life. Normally people have forgotten the events of the past few days or weeks or a specific episode that they can’t bear to live with anymore, but Warren has no memory of anything at all. He also finds that his former self has just enlisted in the Space Legion for the next several decades and after surviving the first couple of suicidal missions, doesn’t think he’s likely to last a year. So, he hatches a plan to go AWOL and find out just what sort of despicable man he must have been to want to scrub out his entire life.
What follows is a somewhat farcical series of unfortunate escapades that the poor and accident-prone Warren plunges heedlessly into. I read this aloud to my wife and on a few occasions had to take a few moments to recollect myself from laughing in order to proceed.
The character of Warren himself is a little basic, he is someone who is having to react to the various situations he finds himself in but I can’t help but like him a lot. There aren’t many other characters who feature for very long as Warren’s encounters see them come and go pretty quickly, but there is certainly and interesting cast there nonetheless.
This was written in the late seventies and so some of the attitudes have dated a little, but there was nothing plot-related and they were very few and far between.
The humour was certainly more on the slapstick side of things, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and this slapstick was executed effectively.
The ending was a little bit abrupt as Bob Shaw’s signature big revelation came into play. It was a really good one, but the story did end very shortly afterwards.
In the end, this was a great read. For me, it was a reread, but I had forgotten most of it apart from the big revelations at the end. Also a very quick read.
A man joins the Space Legion to forget (they use a machine to do this) and wakes up as Warren Peace and no knowledge at all of his previous life. Normally people have forgotten the events of the past few days or weeks or a specific episode that they can’t bear to live with anymore, but Warren has no memory of anything at all. He also finds that his former self has just enlisted in the Space Legion for the next several decades and after surviving the first couple of suicidal missions, doesn’t think he’s likely to last a year. So, he hatches a plan to go AWOL and find out just what sort of despicable man he must have been to want to scrub out his entire life.
What follows is a somewhat farcical series of unfortunate escapades that the poor and accident-prone Warren plunges heedlessly into. I read this aloud to my wife and on a few occasions had to take a few moments to recollect myself from laughing in order to proceed.
The character of Warren himself is a little basic, he is someone who is having to react to the various situations he finds himself in but I can’t help but like him a lot. There aren’t many other characters who feature for very long as Warren’s encounters see them come and go pretty quickly, but there is certainly and interesting cast there nonetheless.
This was written in the late seventies and so some of the attitudes have dated a little, but there was nothing plot-related and they were very few and far between.
The humour was certainly more on the slapstick side of things, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and this slapstick was executed effectively.
The ending was a little bit abrupt as Bob Shaw’s signature big revelation came into play. It was a really good one, but the story did end very shortly afterwards.
In the end, this was a great read. For me, it was a reread, but I had forgotten most of it apart from the big revelations at the end. Also a very quick read.