Time Traveler Show #24: Missing Link (Frank Herbert)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Missing Link (Frank Herbert)

A hapless junior officer is put on the job of working out if a newly discovered group of aliens can be reasoned with or if the human ship in orbit will have to kill them all. The key to friendly relations turns out to lie in Insane Troll Logic combined with some extremely dubious North American anthropology.

The performance is fine; my snarking is directed at the story. Why was Herbert a Big Name Author, again? How low was the bar set in his hey day?

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've always bounced hard off the first few pages of Dune. I don't know what it is, but I can't read that thing. I never get as far as the ecology stuff.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I spent twenty years under the impression that I'd never finished reading it, so I got a copy.

I was wrong.

You did the right thing.

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

You don't need to "get as far as" the ecology stuff. It's all in an appendix. Just get hold of a copy and turn directly to the back of the book.