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Mind Call
Commander Light was assigned to stop the wave of inexplicable insanity - any way she could!
Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 5, 2023
This book hovered between a 3 and a 4 most of the way. Despite the solid writing and appealing protagonist, it's missing some things. I've decided on 3 stars: liked it but didn't love it.
First, the blurbs and writing on the back cover are misleading in terms of the book's plot. The book wasn't about figuring out why people were returning from space voyages and going crazy. The book was about figuring out if a certain planet, Sil'Vahn, posed a danger to Earth or not. Was this planet's government surreptitiously preparing to wage war on Earth? In order to determine Sil'Vahn's intentions, a powerful governmental body comprised of people with extraordinary parapsychic abilities sent a newly commissioned Commander, Diana Light, in the company of a male military escort captain on a 2-person spaceship to the planet to investigate. The two are attacked on their way to the planet and once there are subject to a number of intrigues that form the basis for the book's plot.
The plot situation and characters are fine, but the world-building is exceptionally thin. The lack of background makes it hard to fully understand the stakes and thus invest in the outcome. The book is 160 pages long, but most of it is spent simply on the various intrigues and dangers posed to the characters and them getting by, surviving. The bigger picture is never made all that clear. It's a quick, easy book to read. But at the end the reader is left wondering where the beef is.
Apparently, I am the only GoodReads reader to pick this up in the 44 years since it was published, either to rate or review it. I suppose I should explain why I went to the trouble. I recently read another Neil Shapiro work, a novelette titled "Journey of the Soul" in the anthology Tomorrow: New Worlds of Science Fiction. His story was the best in a spectacularly good anthology and still stays in my mind. It was a deeply conceived and exquisitely written tale about a heartless galactic empress dictator who transforms into another person, why, and how she did. It was very realistic for such a fantastic premise. Reading that story makes me want to read more Neal Shapiro. Born in 1949, he wrote eleven short stories followed by two novels, all in the 1970s, after which he seems to have called quits to his writing career. Shapiro would have been in his twenties when he was a writer. This book here was the last work he published as far as I know.
In a way, I wonder if Shapiro did himself in by choosing to write a novel on this subject: parapsychological warfare. Its big problem is that it inherently does not have any action. The main event of necessity takes place only in the minds of the conflicting characters. I've seen even great authors like Ben Bova, A. E. van Vogt, and Andre Norton founder on these same rocks in their attempts with this subject. Only Asimov, it seems to me, ever managed the feat with any success through his character The Mule in the second and third Foundation books, and even then, this was because Asimov had so much else going on. Depicting purely mental struggles is not a formula for action or a way to set a starting author up for success. Had I been Shapiro's editor at the time, I'd have gently asked him if he had any other plot ideas he wanted to write about.
Well, I have ten other stories and an earlier novel of Shapiro's I can read at some point, if I can only find the time. I wonder if I have read Shapiro's best and his least already.
First, the blurbs and writing on the back cover are misleading in terms of the book's plot. The book wasn't about figuring out why people were returning from space voyages and going crazy. The book was about figuring out if a certain planet, Sil'Vahn, posed a danger to Earth or not. Was this planet's government surreptitiously preparing to wage war on Earth? In order to determine Sil'Vahn's intentions, a powerful governmental body comprised of people with extraordinary parapsychic abilities sent a newly commissioned Commander, Diana Light, in the company of a male military escort captain on a 2-person spaceship to the planet to investigate. The two are attacked on their way to the planet and once there are subject to a number of intrigues that form the basis for the book's plot.
The plot situation and characters are fine, but the world-building is exceptionally thin. The lack of background makes it hard to fully understand the stakes and thus invest in the outcome. The book is 160 pages long, but most of it is spent simply on the various intrigues and dangers posed to the characters and them getting by, surviving. The bigger picture is never made all that clear. It's a quick, easy book to read. But at the end the reader is left wondering where the beef is.
Apparently, I am the only GoodReads reader to pick this up in the 44 years since it was published, either to rate or review it. I suppose I should explain why I went to the trouble. I recently read another Neil Shapiro work, a novelette titled "Journey of the Soul" in the anthology Tomorrow: New Worlds of Science Fiction. His story was the best in a spectacularly good anthology and still stays in my mind. It was a deeply conceived and exquisitely written tale about a heartless galactic empress dictator who transforms into another person, why, and how she did. It was very realistic for such a fantastic premise. Reading that story makes me want to read more Neal Shapiro. Born in 1949, he wrote eleven short stories followed by two novels, all in the 1970s, after which he seems to have called quits to his writing career. Shapiro would have been in his twenties when he was a writer. This book here was the last work he published as far as I know.
In a way, I wonder if Shapiro did himself in by choosing to write a novel on this subject: parapsychological warfare. Its big problem is that it inherently does not have any action. The main event of necessity takes place only in the minds of the conflicting characters. I've seen even great authors like Ben Bova, A. E. van Vogt, and Andre Norton founder on these same rocks in their attempts with this subject. Only Asimov, it seems to me, ever managed the feat with any success through his character The Mule in the second and third Foundation books, and even then, this was because Asimov had so much else going on. Depicting purely mental struggles is not a formula for action or a way to set a starting author up for success. Had I been Shapiro's editor at the time, I'd have gently asked him if he had any other plot ideas he wanted to write about.
Well, I have ten other stories and an earlier novel of Shapiro's I can read at some point, if I can only find the time. I wonder if I have read Shapiro's best and his least already.
Displaying 1 of 1 review