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Some older SF dates really well; The Long Way Home doesn't, really. But the novel, hackneyed as it is by modern standards, still is most entertaining to read if you catch it in the right frame of mind — just as an old black-and-white SF film from the same period can be to watch, papier-maché backdrops and all. The story relates the startling plight of three astronauts who are returning to Earth from the very first deep space voyage, bringing back with them an alien. Only in '50's SF would you get a bunch of guys to zip off into the unknown aboard a spacecraft whose hyperspace drive is not fully understood; but Anderson, a smart fellow even at this early stage of his career, knew the problem with the SF tropes of the day even while he was obliged to employ them. Imagine our heroes' horror when they discover that a whopping five millennia have passed since they left home! Edward Langley and his two crewmates find themselves on a far future Earth which is governed by the Technon, a benevolent computer, and which is home to, of course, a rigidly classist society with the haves living way up high and the have-nots living way down in the lower levels of sprawling cities. Upon their unexpected arrival, their alien companion, Saris from the planet Holat, flees in fear, leading to a massive manhunt — er, alien-hunt. It appears that Holatans possess a unique sorta-psychic ability to interfere with laser-weapons and other electronic machinery, and this talent is seen by numerous factions as having a potentially excellent military application. For, although the human race hasn't known war for many many years, it looks as if a new war is brewing between the Earth and the fiercely independent colonies on Centaurus over mineral rich worlds orbiting Sirius. Everyone wants to know where Saris is, and the pressure is on Langley and crew. Langley finds himself, of course, a pawn in a political chess match between the Technon, the Centaurans, and an enormously powerful guild of interstellar traders called the Company. Everyone is playing everyone else, and, for all its familiary, the story is a heck of a lot of fun for readers who get a kick out of reading dialogue like "There are, of course, ways to make a man talk," and, "You realize, of course, that this means war." (Neat how simply inserting the modifier "of course" can automatically make whomever says it sound dastardly.) There are silly conventions all over the place; a slave girl whom Langley manumits to show what a great guy he is, who then falls in love with him anyway. That sort of thing. It's all in keeping with the black-and-white charm of this anachronistic tale. You can enjoy it because of, not in spite of, its outmoded clichés, because Anderson handles it all with storytelling flair. Nowadays we're far too sophisticated to think anyone would accept the premise of a society run by a computer because computers can allegedly be perfectly objective and fair — but then, in one of the clever twists towards this story's end, Anderson demonstrates exactly why that idea is preposterous in the first place. No one would write a novel like The Long Way Home today — except, perhaps, as parody. But then, no one makes movies in black-and-white anymore either. Have a good romp and don't take it seriously. It's only a story after all. |
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