Evil Eye

Star Stormers #4

by Nicholas Fisk

Once again forced to flee from the wicked Octopus Emperor in their junkyard spaceship, the four Starstormers crashland on the planet of Moloch - otherwise known as the planet of the Evil Eye. They soon begin to wonder if this unwelcoming planet as its terrifying - yet somehow almost familiar - inhabitants, hold anything for them except death. Then strange voices reveal to Vawn that the hostile planet is linked with an early space experiment from Earth that went horribly wrong. The Starstormers may be able to help restore a balance between good and evil - but can Vawn convince her friends that she is not imagining things? And have they really arrived in time to destroy the evil of Moloch?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Childrens

Paperback

First published August 7, 2014

About the author

(1923–2016), British author of more than forty books and television scripts and a master of science fiction for children. Fisk, whose real name is David Higginbottom, grew up during the Second World War and served in the Royal Air Force. His autobiography, Pig Ignorant (1992), covers the years 1939–1941 and details his life in Soho, a bohemian section of London, where he played jazz in the evenings until he was called to enlist. After the war Fisk worked as a musician, journalist, and publisher. He started writing in the 1960s, and his popularity was at its height in the 1970s and 1980s. His most impressive work, A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair (1982), is a thrilling futuristic novel set at the end of the 22ndcentury. The government is cloning new people and has manufactured a 1940s wartime family whose members are unaware that nothing they know is real. This moving story is a dark representation of the threat posed by technological advancement but is optimistic in its message about the triumph of the human spirit. Fisk's most enduring books include Grinny (1973), which features a technologized extraterrestrial threat in the form of a great- aunt who glows at night, and Trillions (1971), an eerie story about mysterious hard shiny objects that contain an alien intelligence. Monster Maker (1979) was made into a film.

Reviews

[Adam Windsor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the Starstormers book I could never find in the library when I was a kid. Having read it now, I wonder if it was because of the content. There's quite a lot of violence here: two of the teen protagonists hunt and kill hundreds of animals, using spears and axes for the work. There's also a whiff of the sexual/romantic in it. The two characters are a male and a female, they paint one another during the hunt, and they wear little other than the paint while they're out. Given the many wowser-ish inclinations of the period (the campaigns of Mary Whitehouse and the kerfuffle over video nasties, for instance), I can see such things being seen as inappropriate to stock.

Enough about that, though - how's the book? Well, the basic plot has the Starstormer crew crash-land on a planet while trying to escape the Octopus Empire once again. There, they encounter mutant animals corrupted with an 'evil' force, and meet the 'veils', a non-corporeal alien race (quite like their Octopoid enemies, though no-one in the book ever seems to make that connection). Much of what goes on here doesn't feel all that well connected to the established main plot-line, but I think it might dovetail together in the last book. And I think that for the target audience of tweens, the more bloodthirsty tone might well be a selling point.