The Star Dwellers

Amusing good ol' boy “Golden Age” sci-fi - aka straight white Basic Geek guy sci-fi - that now reads a bit like wish fulfillment YA nonsense by, again, a very Basic Geek white guy indeed. Like, our hero - Jack Loftus (lofty indeed) - is a 17-year-old whiz kid from California who HOLDS THE FATE OF EARTH'S FUTURE IN HIS HANDS. Also, btw, that midcentury American rock music is some real claptrap, I mean am I right or amirite???

OK, basically, the plot: It's the near future US, and whiz kid Jack Loftus is a “foreign service cadet” with the Secretary of Space. AKA, he's an intern. In this near future, school goes as fast as they can cram knowledge into you - v good if you're a bookish nerdy school-loving geeky sort - and, oh yes, no sex is allowed for cadets until they have finished their apprenticeships (when they're like 30?). And none of that filthy rock music!!!

Sorry, I am getting distracted by the amusingly prim and conservative social/cultural hijinx. BACK TO THE HARD SCIENCE. THE PLOT. THE POINT! So, Jack is tasked with the ultimate intern project: he's been assigned to a crack team of three - a super-brain technocrat, his minion, and Jack - to go make Second Contact with an alien race nicknamed “Angels”. The Angels are named Angels because they're super duper old (like, age of universe old), and are basically pure balls of energy. There is 1 female character (this book is like a super hard Bechdel Test fail, but like, it was never even trying there HA HAAA), she is a crack journalist cadet (or maybe she just graduated?) whose name is Sylvie? But I shall call her Sparky McNewsroom, because those were the vibes I got.

Anyway, Jack and Technocrat and Other Minion go to space in a super fast, super cool ship. We spend a lot of time salivating at the ship. They make a (literal) pit stop at an amusing planet called - and I am not joking here - “Aaa”, where a race of - and, again, I am not joking here - sentient cat-people live. Then they get down to business and fly to the Coal Sock? Coal Sack? Horsehead Nebula? Some space place. And finally meet these Angels.

OK, so we have covered, I just want to go over this again, but this is Blish's vision:
- Spaceship is beautiful, so cool.
- Education should have no pacing; pacing is for losers and dumdums.
- The reason education takes so long (and you can't be a super cool space cadet negotiating treaties with Big Bang-born aliens by 17) is because of the commodification of teen sex drives into bad music (rock n roll).
- Trust the 17yo white guy.

This book suffers from that unfortunate thing that happens in fiction, where we are made to believe that a character is a Super Brain - but obviously his brain is a subset of the author's brain. And the author's brain is, well, just ok? Like, I mean not to harsh Blish, but it's just cringe when you're like:

Jack: [says something relatively banal and straightforward]
Other character: MY GOD MAN, this kid is a genius.

Sigh. I will say that - maybe I am mellowing in my old age - but I was more amused than irritated by this book, and I flew through it, reading it in maybe 2 sittings? I did sometimes get more than a little irked by the lack of any imagination on the social/cultural front. Like, why does Jack have to be - of all things - a white guy? Ah yes, because anything else was - for many of these Golden Age authors - apparently UNTHINKABLE. More unthinkable than energy beings and lots and lots of dressed up science baloney.

(I will also say - another thing that irks me about Golden Age sci-fi and the worshipping of “smarter than thou” Basic Geekdom (which has been gate-kept so hard, in general) is how fixed mindset it is. But that is for another review, perhaps.) Anyway, Blish eventually wrote for Star Trek - the ultimate, utopian, growth mindset, truly big brain show ever - and that redeems him quite a bit.