Mutiny in Space

by Avram Davidson

Rond and his crew had been left to die slowly on an unknown planet.

As they moved warily through the alien forest they heard the eerie rhythms coming toward them.

Then they saw the grotesque figures.

A bizarre army of screaming women!

Masked, brandishing gleaming swords, rattling their terrible death drums, howling with the fury of some primitive blood lust - and they were attacking!

As the scarlet waves of growling women approached, Rond and his men began to run - back into the dark forest of looming horror...

Genres: Science Fiction

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Avram Davidson was an American Jewish writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and a Queen's Award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His last novel The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was completed by Grania Davis and was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "he is perhaps sf's most explicitly literary author".

Reviews

[Joe Santoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot: The starship Persephone has been taken over by Mutineers, and the loyal crew was stuck on the life boat and left. The Captain, instead of going to the nearly planet with the lifeboat and calling for help, goes far afield to a pre-tech culture to try to get back to Guild space and catch the mutineers before the sell the ship for a good 'ole fashion binge.

One of the mutineers figures it out and follows them.. the planet they find is you basic 'Amazon women in charge' type, with the men all being very short and essentially breeding stock. The loyal crew tries to save them while the bad guys try to take over...in the end, it turns out to be pretty much a male fantasy fufillment... the loyal crew end up in charge of a planet full of women, who are demanding they take multiple wives to 'refresh the species'. Yeah.


Analysis: This could easily have been made into a cheesy 60s movie that would get the MS3K treatment... a fun read, but nothing redeeming or complex about it. At least the women were reasonably intelligent and strong, rather than being confused damsels in distress (though they came close to that in the end).... it's a SLIGHTLY less misogynistic that the average.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Davidson, Avram. Mutiny in Space. 1964. Prologue, 2012.
Everything about the way this book has usually been packaged is misleading. The title should be something like Castaways on Valentine’s World because most of the action takes place on that planet. The name of the planet suggests a romantic focus that is present but downplayed in the plot. A blurb says the main characters are surrounded by a “howling mob of women,” phrasing that suggests a misogynistic focus that Davidson was at pains to undercut. As Michael Swanwick noted in his 2003 “Introduction to Mutiny in Space” (michaelswanwick.com/nonfic/mutiny.html), Davidson also undercuts the heroic stereotype of the brave, hunky space captain who never makes a mistake, and he suggests a critique of attempts to make colonialism, racism, and sexism morally palatable. The plot does have some pulpy elements, though. A mutiny leaves a captain and the loyal members of his mostly male spacecraft crew stranded on a planet with a nonindustrial culture in which women far outnumber men. When the captain inadvertently leads the mutineers with their megalomaniac leader to the planet, violence ensues. But the loyal crew is also having trouble deciding how to create a viable society. The ones we root for are the ones with the least grandiose plans. Three and a half stars rounded up to four.

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in Dutch translation
Gelezen in Nederlandse vertaling 'Veldslag der vrouwen'

De oorspronkelijke titel ‘Mutiny in Space’ doet meer eer aan deze sciencefictionroman dan de Nederlandse vertaling. De matriarchale samenleving die Davidson beschrijft, was als onderwerp in 1971 zowel geen als wel een evidentie. De door vrouwen geleide samenleving vertoont heel wat gelijkenissen met de maatschappij van het begin van de zeventiger jaren en verwijst tevens naar de emancipatiebeweging van de jaren zestig. Dit verhaal is niet zomaar in een specifiek hokje onder te brengen, zoals dat blijkbaar over het algemeen het geval is met de verhalen van deze schrijver. Luchtig leesbaar is het werk niet en dat is niet in geringe mate te wijten aan plaatsbeschrijvingen die bondiger kunnen. De kleine kantjes van de personages zijn dan weer leuk om te lezen en zijn soms vlijmscherp.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Solid ideas, a female quasi-shogunate ruling in the name of a saintly king whose gender has shrunken to be small house carers. All the while, threats from mutineers turned pirates abounds. Unfortunately, the work is rather roughly written with lots of strange turns stops and starts, odd sentence structure, and sometimes jarring cutaways.

Honest brain candy if you can ignore or accept the writing style.

[Alton Motobu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly dreadful story about the aftermath of a mutiny in space, but no explanation about the causes. Six men are abandoned on a planet populated by warrior women and childlike men. Sounds interesting, but story skips and turns with different characters coming and going with no explanation. Horribly executed! Top ten on my list of most awful books ever read.

[Brannigan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Far too stream of conscience writing for me. It didn’t work for a sci-fi setting in my opinion.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/961172.html[return][return]I confess that I bought this purely because I overheard people sniggering about how Jack Gaughan, the cover artist, had been told to add a very small amount to the costume of the lady on the front cover compared to the original (which is still visible, if more dimly, on the back cover). Also the blurb made this look like it was probably entertainingly bad, particularly given its likely take on sexual politics.[return][return]Well, it turned out to be a bad book for quite different reasons. The blurb writer obviously felt that a planet controlled by women must be a Bad Thing; but in the novel Davidson portrays it as a pre-industrial feudal Eden, where men happen to be much shorter and women do the chivalry thing. (The scenes described in the blurb have almost no resemblance to anything that happens in the book.) If anything, I was disappointed by how unimaginative the setting actually was, and the plot is just good Earthmen vs bad Earthmen in Eden. On top of that the characterisation is lousy, and the pacing rather peculiar.[return][return]A quick read, though not necessarily a particularly edifying one.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fair book for science fiction. I enjoyed it, but, I have read better.