Crash Landing on Iduna

by Arthur R. Tofte, Kelly Freas (Illustrator), Roger Elwood (Editor)

[Back Cover]"When a spaceship crashes, the survivors are in peril for their lives. When the planet and its inhabitants are unknown to the survivors, fear becomes tangible among them. When the survivors are a crippled man and his four children the odds against survival increase dramatically. When the entire family has lived a controlled, docile, protected life and has been deliberately kept passive by the managers of the society on earth from which they came, the situation looks hopeless. But when two of the survivors are Peder and Inga Evenson there is always hope. This is their story." Cover Artist Kelly Freas

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Arthur Reginald Tofte was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, in 1902.

He also used the pseudonym Arthur Tofter

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a novel about a group of four children fighting for survival after crashing on an alien planet. The father is crippled, and they name the planet Iduna after their mother who has died in the crash. It was the third novel in the Harlequin-produced Laser Line edited by Roger Elwood, each of which had a cover painting by Kelly Freas. It has a distinct YA feel in the Swiss Family Robinson vein, and an awkward old-fashioned style and flavor, even when it appeared in 1975. Tofte had sold a handful of stories to the pulps (primarily Amazing and Fantastic edited by Raymond Palmer) prior to World War Two and then sold several more to Roger Elwood for various original youth-oriented anthologies thirty-some years later in the early 1970s. I remember thinking this one wasn't a really bad book but had a religious message I found awkward, as well as a lackluster, inconclusive ending. Tofte did have a sequel published by Bobbs-Merrill in hardback, Survival Planet, a few years later, but it never received a paperback edition, and I was never especially motivated to look for it. I assume Tofte had sold it to Elwood, but Laser folded before they could get it onto the stands.

[George K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Αναγκαστική προσγείωση", εκδόσεις ΒΙΠΕΡ.

Δεύτερο βιβλίο του Άρθουρ Τοφτ που διαβάζω, μετά το αρκετά μέτριο "Κάτω από τα τείχη", που διάβασα τον Σεπτέμβριο του 2011. Και αυτό που μόλις τελείωσα δεν μπορώ να πω ότι με ξετρέλανε, μιας και συνάντησα πανομοιότυπα προβλήματα με το προηγούμενο -τουλάχιστον απ'όσο μπορώ να θυμάμαι τόσα χρόνια μετά-, πάντως μου φάνηκε ελαφρώς καλύτερο, αν και αυτό δεν λέει και τίποτα για την ποιότητα του.

Λοιπόν, οι άνθρωποι στην Γη έχουν καταντήσει να ζουν αυτοματοποιημένα σαν ρομπότ, χωρίς να ευχαριστιούνται πραγματικά την ζωή, με το περιβάλλον να έχει τα μαύρα του τα χάλια και πολλές συνήθειες να έχουν αλλάξει δραματικά. Γι'αυτό ο πατήρ Έβενσον, επιστήμονας και έμπειρος αστροναύτης, πήρε την γυναίκα του και τα τέσσερα παιδιά τους, και με το σκάφος που φτιάχτηκε με δικά του σχέδια, την έκανε για άλλο πλανήτη. Μετά από μήνες ταξιδιού, τρακάρουν πάνω σ'έναν ωραίο πλανήτη, τον Ιντούνα, με καθαρή ατμόσφαιρα, μπόλικο πράσινο, και μεγάλη ποικιλία σε ζώα. Μόνο που τρακάρουν και κυριολεκτικά, γιατί είχαν μια ανώμαλη προσγείωση. Η μητέρα πεθαίνει, ο πατέρας χτυπάει σοβαρά στο κεφάλι και τα έχει χαμένα για ένα μεγάλο χρονικό διάστημα, και τα τέσσερα παιδιά πρέπει να επιζήσουν σε ένα άγνωστο περιβάλλον, όντας εντελώς άπειρα σε θέματα επιβίωσης. Θα γνωρίσουν το νέο τους σπίτι και θα αντιμετωπίσουν διάφορες δυσκολίες, πάντως θα τα καταφέρουν...

Το σενάριο κλασικό, η εκτέλεση όμως κάπως απλοϊκή, χωρίς βάθος σε πλοκή και χαρακτήρες, και με διάφορες ευκολίες και αναπάντητα ερωτήματα. Δεν χρειάζονται και πολλά λόγια, πρόκειται για ένα μέτριο περιπετειώδες βιβλιαράκι επιστημονικής φαντασίας, που περνάει κάποια μηνύματα με απλοϊκό τρόπο, διαβάζεται πολύ εύκολα και γρήγορα, και ξεχνιέται σχεδόν αμέσως. Η γραφή είναι απλή και ευκολοδιάβαστη, τίποτα το ιδιαίτερο. Είχε τις στιγμές του και μια καλούτσικη ατμόσφαιρα και δεν σπατάλησα χρήμα ή πολύ χρόνο για να το διαβάσω, οπότε δεν θα είμαι αυστηρός.

Υ.Γ. Πάντως για άπειρους, νεαρούς αναγνώστες, δεν είναι άσχημη εισαγωγή στο είδος.

[Meshach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crash Landing on Iduna is a very wonderful book. In the book, there are no feelings on Earth.No one has a personality. Everything is done for them, and to keep some people from insanity, they are allowed to have jobs. The oceans and lakes are polluted,there is no nature. Peder's, Inga's, Sven's, and Bretta's mother and father,Lars and Iduna, do not beleive in how Earth is now. So they blast off into space in a private ship in search of a planet of their own. They reach a planet that seems livable, and stay in orbit for a couple of days, figuring out if it is really livable. They reach the conclusion that it is livable and so they name it Iduna, after their mother. So of course, they decide to land on the planet. Read the book, and figure out what happens next.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical variation of a standard Space Family Robinson theme, with children fending for themselves on an unknown world.
Having left a suffocating future Earth, the Evenson family crashes on habitable but unexplored Iduna where young Peder leads his sisters and brother to survive while protecting their unconscious father. They fight wild alien animals and meet intelligent aliens while struggling to survive.
Reads almost like a juvenile or older pulp novel, with no great depth to the characters, but still enough suspense and sense of wonder to keep it interesting to the end.

[SUPER BRETT · Rating 5 out of 5]

name of my book is crash landing on iduna. The authors name is Arthur tofte. the book is about a boy named Peder who is going to live a new life away from the over crowded earth, when his dads ship malfunctions and crash on the remote, tropical planet of iduna, the crash is harsh and they landed in some kind of goopy, slimy marsh. His mother named iduna (witch the planet was named after) was instantly killed on impact, but Peders brother (Sven) and two sisters (Inga and bretta) are ok, but no sign of dad. Everyone amuses the worst but in the crash the ship split in two, now Peder must cross a part of the marsh to get to the other side of the ship, but who knows what’s lurking in the marsh. Peder takes a step out of the cockpit and sees nothing he slowly makes his way to the other part of the space ship when out of nowhere a huge fury tusked monster stands between him and the bow of the ship it looked mad very mad and within seconds starts charging him, he runs as his brother and sister scream when he remembered the neuro gun (stun gun) my dad had. I pulled it out and fired at the beast it hit it in the head and was knocked out but when it fell to the ground it fell on Peder he moves it of him and runs to the bow, Peder stops to check for anything but thankfully nothing. He goes inside the tangled bow and sees his mother with a steel bar through her heart. SHE IS DEAD! Soon after he finds his dad not dead but lost the ability to speak and walk.


for the next few day Peder work on helping his dad and fishing because the fish are the only other eatable thing other then the tusked beast, but as he's fishing with the spear he made out of metal, a river monster comes out of the water, Peder quickly throws the spear it hit the monster in the mouth and injures it. After days of fishing, watching out for the tusked beast and helping his dad walk, he figures that on the other side of the river (were it is more open grassland) that he has been fishing on he has seen none of the tusked monster that charged him. Peder makes a plan to move to the other side of the river, but to do that he must 1.get his fathers strength back to walk 2.he must make more spears for his brother and sisters 3. Find away to cross the river. Once they crossed they river they had another challenge. THE MOUNTAINS!

Unknown to Peder and his family they are being watched from every where. Peders dad (who’s name is Lars) still can’t speak and is seemingly life less, the mountains and steep and rocky. Peder’s sister bretta has fallen and hurt her leg; Peder must find a place to rest. A cave about a few hundred feet away, that’s where Peder and his family will stay, but after Peder goes exploring he comes back to a speaking father. Well and able Peders father can carry more weight and go farther. They make it to the jungle and Lars (Peders father) has the feeling some ones watching him ignoring his body he and the family move through thick jungle they finally make it to the coast. winter is coming, the cold is nearing and peder's family has no blankets or warm cloths so after they find a cave near the coast, Peder and Lars set out back to the ship for some blankets they get to the ship and get the blanket and head back but while Lars stays in the same cave they used before Peder leaves to scout where they are, when Peder comes back Lars has been killed or at least it looks like it, not knowing what to do he wraps his shirt around his head were he had been hit by a rock or something, another rock comes flying through the door and missed Peder by inches, the night goes by and no more rocks are thrown as the set out back to the coast they reach the jungle again and now Peder feels like someone is watching them but like Lars he ignores it and keeps moving. For the next winters they meet a furry, tall stubby legged creature, called thrulls they made a loud humming noise. To speak they use the humming and clicking noises. They were not hostile but groups of the same creature called maloons are hostile attacking the thrulls for a long time. The thrulls were friendly and well have never attacked anything other then for hunting reasons. near the end of the book Peder and all his family could speak the thrulls language the thrulls maid a peace treaty with the maloons and 12 later a scouting ship came to iduna and found Peder, and his family and were brought back to the over populated earth

[Lance Schonberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Initially, this reads as if it’s trying to be an homage to 1950s and 60s Heinlein YA SF. Unfortunately, it also reads as if it were a first draft and written entirely in one weekend. The prose is stilted, most apparent in the dialogue where the limited number of speaking characters all sound essentially the same, a rigid English diction professor intent on perfect grammar and pronunciation, and the plot is almost non-existent.

And then, of course, there are philosophical bombshells like this one, dropped on page 123:

“One of the greatest losses,” he said, “in this general willingness to accept a controlled existence is the decline in religious worship.”

And the main character then goes on to describe how religious instruction in families just isn’t done anymore. There’s no place for it. Clearly, that’s a problem, though only one religion is referenced, because there’s only one that matters. It’s the beginning of a multi-page lecture on why religion is the most important thing, a lecture that happens while the remaining cast is living in a cave and worried about surviving the winter. And this is given as the reason why they need religion, because that’s where you turn when life is hard.

With those few pages out of the way, we go back to the choppy, derivative plot and wooden cast, continuing, of course, the constant hints that we’d all be better off living a much more primitive existence that started as soon as the father figure had recovered mentally from the crash.

I have a hard time rounding this up to two stars, especially since I really only got through the book due to nostalgia for the series, but it wasn’t quite as painful as other things I’ve given one star that I’ve actually finished. Let’s call it one and a half.

[Jon Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as a scanned paperback copy on the Internet Archive. It's the third of the Laser Books series I've read, and by far the worst of the three. The book was published in 1975 or so but it reads like it was written in the 1940's or 1950's. The plot is simplistic: an inventor dissatisfied with the overcrowded and regimented life on Earth sets out on an interstellar voyage with his wife & four kiddos to discover an unspoiled planet where they can set up housekeeping and live life on their own terms. Great plan until their spacecraft crashes on a distant world. Mom is killed in the crash and Dad is injured, so the eldest son must take charge. The planet is unspoiled but home to some dangerous beasts. All the family's homesteading equipment and supplies were destroyed in the crash, forcing them to live off the land. This book is a scifi take on "The Swiss Family Robinson," complete with the kiddos all having names like Sven & Britta & Peder. Not much interesting happens in the book and the dialogue is wincingly bad. Reading this book has dampened my enthusiasm a bit for consuming more titles in the Laser Books series. Three out of five stars

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm reading through the Laser series and this has been my least favorite of them so far. As others here mention, it's a sortakinda take on Swiss Family Robinson in space.
I'm fine with that, but the story and characters and the action were quite bland.
The fact that the same author wrote next book in the series that I'm about to read has me wary... but I'm going to try to go in with an open mind.

[James Dick · Rating 1 out of 5]

A frontier fantasy with every conceivable trope you might expect from that genre, including the white saviour. It touts idyllic pastoralism and positions its characters as heroes for choosing a life where they might die at any second from eating the wrong plant. This kind of backwards tripe should've died with the 1930s era of science fiction, but sadly, I predict us being plagued by it in the 2030s. Do yourself a favour and don't read this book.

[Green Cupcake · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy read. It's a shame it wasn't longer as I can see a number of places where it could be fleshed out.