This SF novel is another from the SF Masterworks series. Whereas the last SF book that I read – Book Review: The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu) – was a sublime piece of work, this book begins with quite ridiculous characters. The main protagonists are Winston Niles Rumfoord and Malachi Constant. Rumfoord, caught by the spirit of adventure, has flown his spacecraft into a “chronological-synclastic infundibulum”, leaving him distributed throughout the solar system, materialising on Earth every 59 days. Able to see the past and future, he hatches a dastardly plan to colonise Mars, invade Earth and found a new religion. Malachi Constant’s father made a fortune by investing in stocks and shares, following a secret recipe for stock-picking that never failed him. Consequently, Malachi inherited vast wealth – but he had no relationship with his father and spends life partying to excess.
I nearly wrote off this book after the early chapters, but the plot develops and the journey of Malachi Constant from Earth, on to Mars (part of the great military build-up to the war) then to the beautiful crystal caves of Mercury are a work of great imagination. There are even parallels with The Three-Body problem, in that we sense the influence of the alien world Tralfamadore in the behaviour of the characters. One of my favourite parts was when Salo (a Tralfamadorian stranded on Venus) read replies to his message home, written in stones on the surface of Earth at what is now known as Stonehenge: “Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed”.
This book won’t be to everyone’s taste (I’m not sure it was to mine!) but, being published in 1959, it’s a work full of the glories of space travel and a terrifying plot of how a rogue individual can control the destiny of our planet.
musingstudio 