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Book Note: Edward E. Smith, Masters of Space (#2)

I read this book about 6-Feb-2008. I've read this book before. The book is copyright 1961. This note was last modified Wednesday, 20-Feb-2008 07:54:53 PST.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

 

An obscure Doc Smith book from 1961/62 (serialized in If). Project Gutenberg has just released it, which is nice. E. Everett Evans is cited as a co-author.

Humans may not be native to Earth. Out in space they stumble on an alien fighting machine, and later make contact with perfect humanoid robots who acknowledge them as The Masters, returned.

They learn a lot, and figure out why the masters left, and what they have to do to protect Earth, defeat the enemy, and survive themselves. Which is to have themselves and those they can trust turned into perfect robots as well, and live for 5000 years, with other robots as their near-slaves (though they figure out how to educate them out of much of the feeling of awe they initially have to the Masters).

There's even a character who says "Well, I've never been a proponent of genocide." But of course he goes on to make an exception for the current situation. I don't think Doc Smith was actually a big fan of genocide; he just kept looking for bigproblems to throw at his characters, and ultimately implacable menaces, and generally that ends up requiring their extinction.


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David Dyer-Bennet