Martin Magnus, Planet Rover

Martin Magnus

by William F. Temple

Martin Magnus is a hardened troubleshooter who might be driving a six-wheeled buggy over rugged Moon terrain in chapter two, strolling the ocean floor in chapter four and flying to Venus by chapter seven. He's competent, confident, wilful, allergic to bureacracy and interference from his 'betters', and intolerant of pompous, self-important twits.

140 pages, Paperback

First published December 9, 2011

About the author

William Frederick Temple was a British science fiction writer.

Reviews

[Roddy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martin Magnus is an agent for the Special Investigation Department of the Scientific Bureau, currently based on the Moon, and is called in when complications arise with missions, such as happens at the start of the novel.
An exploratory ship is returning from its mission to take samples from the only lake (or body of water) on Venus. However, there are two shadows showing up on the radar.
The wiring has been checked and rechecked. It must be a radar echo but which one is the real one? If they give the wrong shadow landing instructions then it could mean disaster.
Martin Magnus is called from his room and grudgingly obliges. He realises, (after giving the correct landing coordinates to the right ship) that the other is not an echo and that there must be two ships.
Shortly afterward, Magnus and his new assistant Cliff find themselves facing three-eyed tentacled decapods on the Moon, undersea shenanigans on Earth and a search for Cliff’s missing brother on Venus.
It’s a superficial tale but surprisingly well-characterised with some snappy dialogue with a tale that zips along from one piece of action to the next. One even gets a brief visit to the Old Kent Road of the Nineteen Fifties.
Magnus is an interesting character emerging from British SF only ten years after the end of World War II. It’s very much an anti-militaristic novel, and shows a world where Humanity has united to try and feed an overpopulated Earth by growing food on the seabed. It’s interesting to compare the attitude evinced here to comparable works by American authors of the time, many of which were arguably laced with a cultural xenophobia.
In the Nineteen Seventies, the first two of the Magnus novels were reprinted by Mayflower in the juvenile ‘Green Dragon’ paperback edition, although the third (‘Martin Magnus on Mars’) has remained difficult to obtain, although it should now be available for Kindle release, thanks due in the main to the efforts of Martin Magnus fan, author Simon Haynes.

[Cheryl]

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