Four From Planet Five - A Book Review

When I was a kid, only ten or eleven, I was interested in science fiction. While at the super market one day, on one of the racks of paperback books that held genre novels including westerns, mysteries and romances, I spotted Four From Planet Five. I asked if I could have it and my mother agreed. It was only 35 cents, which in those days was a nice bit of money for a book, but she agreed. I have long since decided that she agreed because she wanted to read it too.

Now, for decades, I have hauled that book around. It has followed me as I moved from one state to another, which is to say that I still have it. True, the clue is given away because, as you can see the cover isn’t pristine, but I do have it.

I mention all this because I just reread it after all these years. I remembered nothing about it, except that the kids were supposed to be telepathic. Of course, you could learn that by reading the cover blubs, so that was no big deal.

Clearly, the book, by Murray Leinster, was written quickly. It is fairly short and tells us the story rather than show us much of it. The science is late in the 1950s. The children, that is, the four from planet five, identify Jupiter, not only by its size but by the twelve moons that orbit it. We’re much smarter today because we know the number is 79 plus a couple of moonlet, but I didn’t really care about that…

The children are horrified by the craters on our moon, suggesting that the destruction there was caused by the destruction of the postulated planet in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. The children can’t speak English, of course, and none of the adults can speak their language so there is a communication problem.

Their ship arrives with a sudden burst of static, so powerful, that it is heard on radios and televisions all around the world. I’m not sure about the science here but it sounded something like an electromagnetic pulse which would be more or less line of sight. In other words, the radios and televisions on the other side of the world might not have been affected but that’s just a minor problem.

The main male character, Soames, a scientist, laments that he will never earn enough to support the journalist, Gail Haynes, but that doesn’t stop him from wishing. Of course, that is all turned around when the ship bursts into the airspace over the Antarctic where they both happen to be working. Soames, who is also the helicopter pilot, flies her out to look for the object they are sure is down somewhere near their outpost. It gives him an excuse to hang around with her.

It is clear to me that Leinster knew nothing about helicopter operations, given the way he described the flight. That’s really no big deal, but since I am a helicopter pilot, I spotted this right away and, of course felt the urge to mention it.

Wilson "Bob" Tucker with his
ever present bottle of Beam's.

As an irrelevant aside, Bob Cornett and I wrote a science fiction novel, Seeds of War. We kept getting it rejected. Well, not always. One editor was going to buy it, but he got fired and the book was returned. He tried to buy it at his new publisher, but got fired again. Bob and I knew Wilson Tucker who had published some 25 very good but underappreciated science fiction novels so we asked him to take a look at it. When we visited him at his home, one of the first things he said, “Which one of you is the helicopter pilot?”

I hadn’t thought there was anything particularly insightful about the way I had described the helicopter operations, but Bob (Tucker, aka Wilson and not Bob Cornett) knew that one of us was a helicopter pilot… but I digress.

We learn that the cause of the big static burst was an alien ship that crashed. Flying over it, they saw four children, hardly dressed for the cold, outside the ship. They looked human, but, of course, they couldn’t be.

Here, we see the first of the scenes in which we are told more than we are shown. No big deal, but it was something that I noticed throughout the book.

Sure, the story was okay, but I thought some of the developments in the book were not properly set up. The romance between Soames and Haynes developed a little too quicky. People do fall in love at first sight, but this just seemed rushed to me. Almost within hours, they’re talking about marriage.

And we have the military man… well, woman, Captain Moggs… really, we couldn’t give her a name that was somewhat more attractive. Moggs, of course, isn’t all that bright but is following her orders, such as they are. She is not a nice person, but given the name, what would you expect?

Within a few pages, we have the world on the brink of atomic war because the Americans have access to the children, with the technology that seems to be far superior to anything on Earth. True, Fran, one of the children, blew up the remains of the ship to keep it out of the hand of we savages, but that didn’t stop the rest of the world from believing that Americans had access to all that technology.

Soames makes a few deductions based on very thin information that turn out to be correct. Again, I didn’t think that sufficient evidence was supplied for him to leap to the conclusions that he did because the theory is so radical that I’m not sure it would cross the mind of a scientist. On the other hand, I suspect a science fiction writer would leap to it because it is much more fun than interstellar travel.

There is a sort of nice twist at the end of the book, but I won’t go into that because I see that you can buy the book on Amazon if you’re so inclined. Spoilers, you know.

I will point out that the book felt rushed, meaning that I think Leinster wrote it for the bucks in a hurry. I think it was one of the old-time mystery writers who said that he once locked himself in a hotel room for a weekend to knock out a book. Needed the cash.

It’s a nice story though, but it just isn’t as developed as it could have been. I believe that given that it was Fawcett Gold Medal Book, and since it was a paperback to being with, back in the days when most people looked down their noses at paperback books and paperback writers, I don’t think anyone took the care with it that they would have taken with a hardback.

 That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. I had no trouble getting through it. I saw the flaws and just ignored them. It was a fun story with a hint of romance and a world that was about to go up in flames but then the world is always about to go up in flames. It’s just not a Nebula or Hugo worthy book, but then it wasn’t meant to be. It was designed to appeal the science fiction audience, and that it does. It was designed, I believe, for the quick buck. It’s not a masterpiece but it is a serviceable story. Let’s say three stars, maybe three and a half out of five.

The Tomorrow War - A Review

 I took time out Saturrday to watch The Tomorrow War, which is a movie presented by Amazon Prime, starring Chris Pratt. The basic idea is that there has been some sort of alien invasion in the future that was working and the human race had been reduced to about a half million people. Somehow the future humans had opened a portal into the past and were now recruiting people from the past to fight in the future in an attempt to save humanity. Well, that is a bit confusing but that’s what the movie is about.

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW:

Chris Pratt is a former special operations soldier, Don Forester because, apparently, the military has no regular soldiers anymore. He has a nice little family, but is recruited for future duty. We learn that the survival rate for these recruits is about thirty percent. We learn that the tour is one week in the future and when those 168 hours are up, the soldier returns to his “home” time automatically, no matter where he is or what shape he is in.

And here’s where I become annoyed. They recruit the people, from all over the planet, including, it would seem, those who had no military service, who have never handled any sort of a weapon, and who are not necessarily in peak physical condition. They’re just civilians who have been living their lives, aware of this war in the future but not overly concerned about it because it’s, well, in the future and they’ll never live to see that future. They have no special skills, no special knowledge that would help defeat the enemy, but are sent off to fight that enemy anyway.

They are given automatic weapons, but no real instruction on the care of those weapons. They wouldn’t know how to safely clear a jam, they have no fire discipline, and have no idea about target acquisition. In the real world, handing an automatic weapon to an untrained soldier would result in many, many friendly casualties. Never mind that, just throw them into the fight in the future and hope for the best. I will note here that fire discipline isn’t a concern because like all Hollywood weapons, the shooter has an infinite supply of ammunition.

During the first fight, as they’re blasting away at the creatures running at them, shooting off bits and pieces of the alien body with little effect, a veteran tells them that only hitting the soft underbelly is fatal. Wouldn’t you think that someone would have mentioned this important bit of intelligence before sending them into the fight. Not to mention giving them weapons that would be effective against the aliens. Wasn’t in one of the old Doctor Who episodes when the general of Unit wished they would meet an alien presence that wasn’t immune to bullets?

Don finally meets his daughter, Muri, in the future who is now a graduate of MIT and a colonel, in the Army, I think. She was annoyed with him for what he did to the family some years after he had left to fight in the war, which tells us at that point he survived the 168 hours he’s in the future. Of course, we already knew that given what he was told during his induction that he would die in seven years, which was why he could be recruited. So much for suspense.

There is a special mission to capture the brain bug, whoops, I mean the queen that is capable of creating thousands of beasts and that is an even more aggressive than the male versions. They helicopter over to the underground lair of the queen. Now, down below, we find soldiers who have, somehow, managed to get ropes on the queen and are attempting to drag it out where they can stuff it in a cage.

I’m thinking, ropes?

Really?

You don’t have a better plan… not that one was needed because they eventually succeed but only after they are kicked around in a way that would have killed most people.

The whole point is that they have developed a toxin that is affective against the males, but not so much the females. They need a female creature to find a formula that works… which, of course they do just before Don slingshots back to his own time.

Rather than killing the queen after developing the toxin, they keep it alive. It seems to be in some form of telepathic communication with hoards of the males. Of course, there is a major assault in which the humans are being overrun. Don can’t get Muri to the lab where they could manufacture the formula. Instead, she is killed just before he returns to his own time. There is a truly moving moment as they talk, heart to heart, because she is dying, but who cares? We understand time travel.

Oh, I don’t mean that we don’t care about the character, I’m saying that he is about to return to his time where his daughter will be alive and he can warn her about all this. No one ever thinks about those sorts of things. If he KNOWS when and where she dies, he can prevent it.

Anyway, he falls back into his own time with a vial of the toxin and then, someone figures out that all they have to do is find the point where the aliens first came to Earth. (Okay, it’s his wife, Emmy, but that’s not important now.) They can prevent the war. The clue is on a tooth or claw or something from one of the aliens and frankly, I don’t care what it was. It contained a bit of volcanic ash that identifies the crater from which it was ejected. The ash and the tooth. Some high school kid has the information they need about the volcano because why would you consult a volcanologist when you can talk to a high school kid about it. Anyway, the volcano is in Russia and it’s on to Russia because the movie isn’t long enough yet.

With the solution to the war at hand, with the ability to save, literally, billions of lives, the Earth governments aren’t interested in the plan. You have a guy, actually, a bunch of them, who have returned from the future, they know what it will take to keep the war from happening, but no one will listen to them. They are forced to take on the mission by themselves, flying in a C-130, into Russia, avoiding the radar and other sensors available to the Russians and ignoring the fact the C-130 doesn’t have the range to get there without refueling. They do arrive, however. They find the alien ship…

And now we know why the alien creatures don’t seem bright enough to cross the street let alone interstellar space have space travel. They were brought along to clear the Earth-based life from the planet so that these alien sentient beings can colonize… do a detect a subtle message here?

At any rate, they find the ship, they enter, and then let the queen escape. They didn’t want to destroy the ship. Think of the technological advances that could be made. But, then, there are so many of these creatures on it, they have no choice. The secret of interstellar flight is lost again, just as it was in The Thing from Another World. To quote the journalist in that move, “What a bunch of butterfingers.”

Of course, they have to chase down the queen in a fight that is ridiculous to watch. Here is this beast with huge teeth and claws and strength that is far superior to those fighting it. The bullets of their high-powered rifles are ineffective and I’m thinking, why didn’t they bring something along that would put that creature down for good. I’m thinking a grenade launcher or a fifty cal or something with a little bit of real power.

And that is the point. I have lost my sense of disbelief. Rather than being swept up in the story, I keep seeing the flaws in it. I don’t grant the writer and the director the privilege of creating a world that I will accept for the story. There are just too many gaps in the plot. Too many missed opportunities. And no reason, once they located the queen in the future world, they didn’t just nuke it. They look for a toxin to kill it, but I’m thinking if you know where it is, the nuke will take care of it because it is clear that these aliens aren’t wizards. They are, basically, animals and you would think that someone in that future war would have figured that out. And yes, there is more than one queen (which is the term I use but they don’t) but they found one, why not the others?

But here’s where we are. Don, his father, and some other guy, have killed the queen in their time and destroyed the ship, which means they won’t escape into our world, so there is no war. It ends at that point and Don’s daughter doesn’t die in the future as she did earlier in the movie.

I won’t go into the other problems with all this. Okay, just one more. Don knows that he’s going to be killed in a traffic accident in seven years. Since they’ve already made one change in time, can’t he make another and avoid the traffic accident? Just wondering.

So now that I have picked this apart, let me say this. I did enjoy the movie and some of that joy was picking it apart. I didn’t mind the virtual signaling that went on because it was more subtle than it is in some other movies (really, Anne Boleyn as a black woman, BBC?). The special effects were good, but I just wish someone had invented a weapon that would have allowed our soldiers to put down the aliens with a single shot rather than having to shoot them to pieces (which, eventually worked so that the movie wasn’t even faithful to its own devices).

If you have something over two hours to waste and want to see a mindless time travel/alien invasion film, well, this is some fun. Just don’t think about it, and you’ll be fine. At least you don’t have to pay for it on Amazon Prime, if you’re a member