No World of Their Own

by Poul Anderson

Space explorers returning to an unrecognizable Earth after five millennia away find themselves caught up in a deadly political power game on a planet racing toward intergalactic war Five thousand years have passed since the interstellar spacecraft Explorer left Earth, and now Edward Langley and his two crewmates are returning home. The faster-than-light mission that took only a year for Langley, Matsumoto, and Blaustein has cost them the only world they ever knew. This future Earth is unrecognizable, its global society ruled by a benevolent, all-powerful computer and divided into a strict class structure of masters and slaves. Though war has been eradicated for generations, tensions between the powers on Earth and colonists on Centaurus over mineral mining are rapidly reaching a violent breaking point. The homecoming of three astronauts from the distant past should have no bearing on the present political situation. But the crewmembers did not come back alone—and the alien visitor who accompanied them holds the key to victory or total defeat.   One of the most acclaimed of the Golden Age science fiction masters, Poul Anderson has written a provocative and enthralling tale of the future that incorporates his trademark blend of hard science, sociology, and humanism. At once thrilling and thought provoking, No World of Their Own is classic speculative fiction at its page-turning best, as only the incomparable Anderson could imagine it.  

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

182 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Pseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, Winston P. Sanders, P. A. Kingsley.

Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.

Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]

Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.


Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm relatively new to scifi genre, for the longest time I didn't think it would interest me and I think it's books like these that made me think that. Recently I've come upon a treasure trove of old scifi (1950s, 60s and so on), a variety of authors to try, hoping to find some fun ones. Strike one. No World of Their Own. The original paperback of this unquestionably would have had the sort of cheesy lurid cover that might have made it more of a collectible than a readable. Open Road publishers have classied it up, but the contents remain the same. Interesting enough premise of a spaceship with an alien ambassador on board ending up in the future by mistake, but the subsequent intergalactic politics got tiresome fairly quickly, the language and the characters felt stilted and of course there was that famous prerequisite sexism. The sum total came across like a lesser episode of Star Trek at best, decently written, but date, not particularly exciting and just didn't maintain my interest. Quick read at least, but disappointing, though seems like the sort of thing that would have its devoted audience.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

What else could he have done? He had tried and failed. Wasn’t it enough?

Planet of the Apes meets Matrix. A simple, linear adventure story focused on an astronaut who returns to earth and discovers 5000 years have elapsed. The various warring factions of humanity may be pawns in someone else’s game.

Read the answer off a dial and whipped a slide rule through his fingers.

First published 1955, this hard science fiction reflects what one of the best minds in SF knew or projected seventy years ago. Lots has changed, but Anderson gets more correct than many modern writers: time dilation, AI supercomputers, and archaic social norms.

“A machine is less fallible, less selfish, less bribe-able, than a man. Also, it saves men the trouble of thinking for themselves.”

Gets many scientific details wrong, but correctly identifies time dilation relative to near-light-speed travel. Excellent projection of AI potential, considering the computers of 1955 used vacuum tubes.

[Redacted] knelt, wanting to cry or pray or both. But nothing would come out. Then he began to laugh.

[Nicola · Rating 2 out of 5]

Am schlimmsten sind die eindimensionalen Charaktere und der erhobene moralische Zeigefinger von Anderson. Ich würde theoretisch rein storytechnisch einiges aufgrund der Entstehungszeit der Geschichte verzeihen, wenn es nicht aus ebenjener Zeit weitaus bessere Sci-Fi-Romane gäbe.

Grundsätzlich ist die zugrundeliegende Idee nicht schlecht - jedenfalls war das der Grund, weshalb ich das Buch überhaupt lesen wollte. Die Umsetzung ist aber nicht gelungen. Anderson hat den Fokus auf die soziologischen Aspekte seiner Geschichte gelegt. Schön und gut, aber ein bisschen mehr innere Logik und vor allem auch ein bisschen mehr Im-Dunkeln-tappen für den Leser hätten wenigstens den Ansatz von Spannung zugelassen, aber so ist ein alles in allem eher ödes Buch auf die Menschheit losgelassen worden, das - wenn es nicht gerade sowieso vorhersehbar ist - dem Leser eh alles unter die Nase reibt. Schade.

[Kynan · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL;DR: Great start to a hard-ish sci-fi dystopia! But what happened to the end?!? Also, written in the 1950's so brace yourself for 50's-style sexism.

TL: I liked this book quite a lot, it was shaping up as a 4-star "really liked it" kind of deal! It starts out with some real science and I was busy being impressed that it was doing well at not dating itself when talking about spaceship technology, until:

Blaustein tuned in to the photoelectric analyzer, read the answer off a dial and whipped a slide rule through his fingers.

  

Ahh, the ubiquitous slide rule! Nit-picking like that aside, I liked the way that this book approached the sprinkling of science into the story. There's definitely a bit of "this sounds sciency" going on, in the first chapter when there's some ship-debugging going on there's a reference made to Wheatstone Bridges (which I had to look up) and I suspect they were something that came up while researching spectroscopy for a chat that happens just before this one. Ignoring this though, credible thought has gone into the way that the faster-than-light travel, and a number of future conveniences work because this story is set 5000 years in the future of the books characters.

Our protagonists are a minimal experimental spaceship crew who were on a test flight and discover that what they thought was FTL was actually, not. The travel methodology is a little hand-wavey (and in fact I felt like perhaps Harry Harrison might have been inspired by this when it came to the creation the "Bloater Drive" from The Stainless Steel Rat Returns) but it comes down to travel feeling instantaneous for those travelling because they're converted to a wave and reinstantiating at the end-point of their journey, however if you travel 5,000 light years away...relativistic time dilation kicks in and your trip will take 5,000 years!

Of course, one can't have futuristic humans without a future-distopia-in-utopian-clothing! In response to Captain Langley's query about what they missed whilst away, one of the the characters who greets our time-travelling space-buddies on their eventual return states:

The usual. Overpopulation, vanishing natural resources, war, famine, pestilence, depopulation, collapse, and then the resumption of the cycle. I don’t think you’ll find people very different today.”

The story basically begins when the travellers return and they attempt to come to grips with the world, and indeed galaxy, as it exists now. There has been a colonisation of the solar system, and the discovery of some aliens outside the solar system (some of whom have compatible biology and co-habit Earth). Interplanetary-warfare is infeasible, and interplanetary-cooperation is grudgingly accepted. There are three main factions: the humans on Earth who follow the orders of what appears to be a very basic specific artificial intelligence (quoted as being a "sociomathematical computer") called the Technon that is fed a diet of "facts" about existence and changes on a day-to-day basis and then advises the Technate how to order the world. There are the Commercial Society, interplanetary traders who call no planet home and earn a (good) living moving goods across interstellar space. They have a completely opaque leadership structure, operating on a cell-based structure. Finally, there are the League of Alpha Centauri who, as you can probably tell from the name, are the humans who colonised Alpha Centauri and retain a strong and low-level-adversarial presence in the Solar system.

All three of these societies are essentially the same. They're strongly caste-based and as befits a book from the 1950's, completely bereft of women. There is a single woman in the entire story, a 2-dimensional creature whom exists purely to trigger the protagonist and assorted plot points. It was sad, and also obvious from the first few pages that she would show up but, credit where it's due, not everything ended up as I expected it to!

Things get twisty pretty quickly because, as I've failed to mention so far, our intrepid travellers were returning to Earth with an ambassador of what had been at the time the First Contact alien species. That creature has an interesting telepathy/telekinesis ability that gets the assorted stalemated societies at each other's throats and the chase is on! One of the returned spacemen also gets the idea that something's not right with the whole setup and, it turns out he's right. Unfortunately this is where things start to come undone plotwise. The setup was good but it feels like Mr Anderson maybe forgot he had been contracted to write a novella and started on a novel then realised he only had 40 more pages in which to wrap up the story so everything, like really everything, suddenly came to a set of neatly tied-up conclusions with...well, I won't spoil it, but I doubt you'll be surprised.

I think the bones of a good story are in here, but it deserves more time and less 2-(nay, 1?)- dimensional characters. I'll generously give this 3-stars due to the good start, but it's probably closer to 2.5. I'm not recommending that anyone read this.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A middling piece of fluff. This tale, like many sci-fi works from the mid-50s, blends speculative fiction with action and a dash of adventure. The characters are typically thin and cliched, the dialogue predictably trite, and—of course—the sole purpose of the lone female character is to drip off the arm of our protagonist. And yet, as light reads go I've definitely run into worse. As a diversion at the end of a long day of work, it helped take the edge off, although it certainly does not rank among Anderson's more essential efforts.

[Adam Meek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novella was part of an old Ace double, along with Isaac Asimov's '1000 Year Plan'. It's a typical Anderson adventure, featuring an American spaceman marooned in the far future.

[Illusive · Rating 3 out of 5]

Der gute alte Zeitdilatationseffekt schickt eine Raumschiffcrew von der Erde und ein ausserirdisches Wesen mit besonderen Fähigkeiten 5000 Jahre in die Zukunft. In dieser Zukunft geraten sie in den Kampf zwischen dem Solaren Technat, der Liga des Alpha Centauri und den Thrymkanern.

Action-SF zum Lesen für zwischendurch. 2.5 Sterne