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On a Planet Alien
The mission was to Folsom's planet, the purpose to educate the native inhabitants and bring them within the Federation.
But Commander Hans Folsom was worried. Something had happened on the voyage, but he could not remember what. A runic stone he had found on the planet seemed to have a power of its own. And now messages from Earth were becoming meaningless.
Then there was the crew. Were they educating the natives correctly, or were they traitors? Or was Commander Folsom going mad? Could it be that some unknown force was controlling his mind - a force that could bring disaster to the mission?
But Commander Hans Folsom was worried. Something had happened on the voyage, but he could not remember what. A runic stone he had found on the planet seemed to have a power of its own. And now messages from Earth were becoming meaningless.
Then there was the crew. Were they educating the natives correctly, or were they traitors? Or was Commander Folsom going mad? Could it be that some unknown force was controlling his mind - a force that could bring disaster to the mission?
- GenresScience Fiction
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1974
2 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
About the author
Barry N. Malzberg
534 books130 followersBarry Nathaniel Malzberg was an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy.
He had also published as:
Mike Barry (thriller/suspense)
K.M. O'Donnell (science fiction/fantasy)
Mel Johnson (adult)
Howard Lee (martial arts/TV tie-ins)
Lee W. Mason (adult)
Claudine Dumas (adult)
Francine di Natale (adult)
Gerrold Watkins (adult)
Eliot B. Reston
He had also published as:
Mike Barry (thriller/suspense)
K.M. O'Donnell (science fiction/fantasy)
Mel Johnson (adult)
Howard Lee (martial arts/TV tie-ins)
Lee W. Mason (adult)
Claudine Dumas (adult)
Francine di Natale (adult)
Gerrold Watkins (adult)
Eliot B. Reston
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 13, 2021
1974 was an amazingly prolific year for Malzberg; On a Planet Alien is one of a dozen novels listed in his bibliography for the year. This one is more of a traditional science fiction novel than most, with familiar tropes of interplanetary exploration, ancient astronauts, prophetic runes, less-developed civilizations and the Federation, etc., etc. Of course, he stood them on end and wrote against the grain as much as he could, with his customary insecurities and paranoias and very, very long sentences... Still, a fast and enjoyable read.
March 5, 2025
Malzberg satirizes science fiction tropes that other authors in the genre take very seriously. I’m not criticizing the instinct of an author—or any artist—to use a culturally relevant form to impart their ideas. But Malzberg wields them with sardonic wit, and since he’s writing under the banner of science fiction about the psychotic monologues of a disillusioned, megalomaniacal astronaut, he’ll set it on an alien planet (or is it?) and throw in a galactic federation.
Hans Folsom, the captain and our protagonist, represents a form of tyrannical indoctrination. He is a walking sponge, absorbing all forms of bureaucratic propaganda. Folsom does not question the world he lives in; he allows reality to be designed for him. And why would he? On paper, he’s everything the average man should envy—an astronaut hired to command an elite mission, a golden few among the many, a model citizen, strong and capable, and what the hell, let’s also make him debonair and a marathon runner in the sack. As the exemplar of the American Dream, there is no better character to obliterate into psychosis, no face more fitting than that strong white patriotic jaw to descend into psychological hell. It’s no wonder Malzberg chose this kind of man as his lead for so many novels and stories—he wanted to deconstruct the illusion of an ideal, to impart a truth upon a lie that had been sold.
Inevitably, Malzberg’s protagonists begin to question their nature. Before everything goes downhill, Folsom, in a moment of vulnerability, questions the purpose of the Federation (Malzberg’s characters always do this), wondering whether their voyages for missionary purposes serve the will of humanity or simply reinforce an oppressive power structure. In short, he tries to have a heart, a moral center. But as he dwells on these thoughts, debating with his inner monologue, he nearly vomits. Literally—the act of rebuking the Federation, acknowledging the truth of reality, and resisting his conditioning makes him physically ill. Throughout the entire novel, Folsom fights to keep his sandcastle belief system intact as the waves of a horrible truth close in.
The ending of this one is particularly harrowing. The metaphor is clear: the aliens are a pre-technological race, literally the humans of antiquity, still harmonizing in small communities and working toward the betterment of the tribe. Folsom and his crew, however, are the devils of the future—missionaries of technological profundity who offer a corrosive opportunity, bringing thermodynamics and guns, and whose gift is ultimately the death of knowledge.
Plagued by rumination and a lie of self-aggrandizement, Folsom looks out into the alien world, into the faces of its inhabitants, even into the faces of his own crew members, and he only ever sees himself. Which, in turn, means he sees nothing.
Hans Folsom, the captain and our protagonist, represents a form of tyrannical indoctrination. He is a walking sponge, absorbing all forms of bureaucratic propaganda. Folsom does not question the world he lives in; he allows reality to be designed for him. And why would he? On paper, he’s everything the average man should envy—an astronaut hired to command an elite mission, a golden few among the many, a model citizen, strong and capable, and what the hell, let’s also make him debonair and a marathon runner in the sack. As the exemplar of the American Dream, there is no better character to obliterate into psychosis, no face more fitting than that strong white patriotic jaw to descend into psychological hell. It’s no wonder Malzberg chose this kind of man as his lead for so many novels and stories—he wanted to deconstruct the illusion of an ideal, to impart a truth upon a lie that had been sold.
Inevitably, Malzberg’s protagonists begin to question their nature. Before everything goes downhill, Folsom, in a moment of vulnerability, questions the purpose of the Federation (Malzberg’s characters always do this), wondering whether their voyages for missionary purposes serve the will of humanity or simply reinforce an oppressive power structure. In short, he tries to have a heart, a moral center. But as he dwells on these thoughts, debating with his inner monologue, he nearly vomits. Literally—the act of rebuking the Federation, acknowledging the truth of reality, and resisting his conditioning makes him physically ill. Throughout the entire novel, Folsom fights to keep his sandcastle belief system intact as the waves of a horrible truth close in.
The ending of this one is particularly harrowing. The metaphor is clear: the aliens are a pre-technological race, literally the humans of antiquity, still harmonizing in small communities and working toward the betterment of the tribe. Folsom and his crew, however, are the devils of the future—missionaries of technological profundity who offer a corrosive opportunity, bringing thermodynamics and guns, and whose gift is ultimately the death of knowledge.
Plagued by rumination and a lie of self-aggrandizement, Folsom looks out into the alien world, into the faces of its inhabitants, even into the faces of his own crew members, and he only ever sees himself. Which, in turn, means he sees nothing.
May 16, 2014
Barry Malzberg is not well-represented by the world of in-print things and I'm not even sure how well-know he is by the current generation of SF readers. Most of his best novels ("Herovit's World", "Beyond Apollo" and I have a soft spot for "Galaxies") were written in the seventies and take some tracking down to find, although none are difficult to find or expensive, for those so inclined. He was then, and continues to be now, a bit of an anomaly in the world of SF, a satirist flush with ideas, both hilariously funny and savagely downbeat. His novels often take a situation that was becoming a fairly common SF cliche and destroys it with a thousand cuts, inverting it while taking it to offbeat extremes. Most of this requires characters who are mentally unbalanced or somewhat unreliable, giving it the dual perspective of both critique and commentary, along with a fair shade of depressing nuttiness. He's worth rediscovering, if only to see where the current crop of satirists probably learned their craft.
With that said, having three of his novels in one place at least gives the reader a chance to figure out whether his style is worth the hunt. None of these are his best work (for one, all of them are marred by so-so endings, but we'll get to that) but it gives you a good cross-section of what he's capable of, all of which seem to have a theme of people not succeeding, even while they're pretty sure they are succeeding. Spoiler alert: they don't succeed.
Of the three, "Scop" is the one that goes over the most familiar ground, a short novel where the title character spends his time attempting to stop terrible assassinations of the twentieth century, and repeatedly fails. Most of the assassinations were ones that were recent for the time (both Kennedys, MLK) but Malzberg attacks them from unfamiliar angles (a brief scene with RFK dying in the hospital is particularly affecting) and while he gets some initial mileage out of the depressing hilarity of a time traveller failing again and again, but in different ways, Scop's determination eventually becomes somewhere between crazy and noble, a desperate attempt to prevent his own future and what he sees is a history built entirely on murder. Less SF than commentary on the twentieth century and the mess it eventually became, he sees the people becoming less people than abstractions representing ideas as the gap of history keeps putting us further and further away from the events themselves, and in some ways the only way to stop them is to cause them all over again. He packs a lot into a scant number of pages, switching perspectives and locations frequently and if the story more ends than finishes, that could be commentary itself or just Malzberg tacitly admitting he painted himself into a corner. Fair enough. I probably couldn't have done any better.
For me, "In the Enclosure" has the best central premise, even if it was probably more radical when the story was first written. A ship of aliens crash-lands on Earth and are immediately captured and stuck inside an enclosed camp while therapists and scientists pump them for every last stray bit of information about their technology. Every day. For years. The problem is that the aliens don't remember their own world and are aware their memories have been deliberately erased, even while they are compelled to relay whatever information is needed. That's the central mystery here but from another perspective Malzberg does a neat thing and turns the typical curiosity of the human race that you normally see in SF into something much darker. The aliens are kept in a prison with no hope of escape, bribed with treats and perks and made to work against each other to keep everyone in line, all so the humans can strip-mine them of knowledge and use it for their own purposes, all the while claiming its for the good of the human race. He grasps the tediousness of prison, the mundane routines, the decisions between being comfortable and being free, and that little bit of Stockholm Syndrome that starts to creep in when you look at your captor and think maybe he isn't so bad, maybe he's just doing his job, maybe all this information can really help them so you're doing a good thing after all. When he's capturing those shifting mentalities, the book really comes alive as it attacks the notion that we're always the good guys and we always have the best interests of everyone at heart. It doesn't turn the humans into total aliens, but it does turn us into total jerks.
As the notions of escape and the mystery of why the aliens have been sent start to take over the narrative, it becomes that much more important for the novel to give us a really interesting twist and while I thought I had some pretty decent theories (they're tricking the earth into softening the planet for an invasion, they're from the future and trying to make sure its brought about) the end result winds up being strangely straightforward, not that far away from something Kurt Vonnegut would have done, a build-up to an absurd whimper but a bit of a "let's kick him while he's down" thrown in. It winds up not being as revelatory as you hope, but there's a charm (if that's the word) in the desperation of getting there.
The title story is probably the most cracked, as Commander Folsom and his small crew land on another world to integrate it into the Federation, their mission to communicate with the local aliens and educate them, get them ready to deal with Earth. Except things have already gone wrong, or maybe they haven't, the crew is acting strange, or maybe the Commander is just seeing them as strange, and Earth isn't being helpful at all, sending back odder and odder messages (my favorite being: "Is something seriously wrong with you" in response to a rather mundane question). The natives are somewhere between learning and being taught, or maybe they're teaching the crew. Oh, and there's a magic rock. This one comes the closest to being Malzberg in his prime, with a narrator who is quite possibly out of his mind and with everything filtered through that perspective you either have to go with it or puzzle out what is really going on. Which, given you're on alien world in the future, means you have about zero frame of reference. The Commander is convinced the weird stuff is all perfectly normal and the normal stuff is the mission going off the rails, and with the tensions rising between the crew and the natives and him you realize that none of this is going anywhere good. The fact that Malzberg makes this readable is his insistence on keeping everything from Folsom's perspective and winding the crazy tighter and tighter so that by the time things go really nuts you're already so immersed that its both familiar and inevitable. It's like being psychedelic without the drugs so you don't get the benefit of being high while everything goes bizarre around you. Space makes you crazy, Malzberg seems to suggest, but you'll be the last one to recognize it. The ending muffs it slightly, bringing in a twist that is sort of telegraphed but actually seems normal compared to all the wackiness that preceded it.
It seems odd to recommend something that isn't the author's finest work, but even second-tier Malzberg is worth reading, especially with the scarcity of his in-print material. But there's a focus here on the underside of SF, not just the seamy, gritty end of things but the flip side of the shadows created by the bright ideas and the boundless optimism. In his world, other planets are okay and the future, too, as long as you're adjusted to it. But the only way to really adjust is to become unhinged. If any of that sounds appealing, then he's for you. He's one of SF's most distinctive voices, influential in one of those ways that few people get to achieve: you reach a point where everyone sounds like him, and no one sounds like him.
With that said, having three of his novels in one place at least gives the reader a chance to figure out whether his style is worth the hunt. None of these are his best work (for one, all of them are marred by so-so endings, but we'll get to that) but it gives you a good cross-section of what he's capable of, all of which seem to have a theme of people not succeeding, even while they're pretty sure they are succeeding. Spoiler alert: they don't succeed.
Of the three, "Scop" is the one that goes over the most familiar ground, a short novel where the title character spends his time attempting to stop terrible assassinations of the twentieth century, and repeatedly fails. Most of the assassinations were ones that were recent for the time (both Kennedys, MLK) but Malzberg attacks them from unfamiliar angles (a brief scene with RFK dying in the hospital is particularly affecting) and while he gets some initial mileage out of the depressing hilarity of a time traveller failing again and again, but in different ways, Scop's determination eventually becomes somewhere between crazy and noble, a desperate attempt to prevent his own future and what he sees is a history built entirely on murder. Less SF than commentary on the twentieth century and the mess it eventually became, he sees the people becoming less people than abstractions representing ideas as the gap of history keeps putting us further and further away from the events themselves, and in some ways the only way to stop them is to cause them all over again. He packs a lot into a scant number of pages, switching perspectives and locations frequently and if the story more ends than finishes, that could be commentary itself or just Malzberg tacitly admitting he painted himself into a corner. Fair enough. I probably couldn't have done any better.
For me, "In the Enclosure" has the best central premise, even if it was probably more radical when the story was first written. A ship of aliens crash-lands on Earth and are immediately captured and stuck inside an enclosed camp while therapists and scientists pump them for every last stray bit of information about their technology. Every day. For years. The problem is that the aliens don't remember their own world and are aware their memories have been deliberately erased, even while they are compelled to relay whatever information is needed. That's the central mystery here but from another perspective Malzberg does a neat thing and turns the typical curiosity of the human race that you normally see in SF into something much darker. The aliens are kept in a prison with no hope of escape, bribed with treats and perks and made to work against each other to keep everyone in line, all so the humans can strip-mine them of knowledge and use it for their own purposes, all the while claiming its for the good of the human race. He grasps the tediousness of prison, the mundane routines, the decisions between being comfortable and being free, and that little bit of Stockholm Syndrome that starts to creep in when you look at your captor and think maybe he isn't so bad, maybe he's just doing his job, maybe all this information can really help them so you're doing a good thing after all. When he's capturing those shifting mentalities, the book really comes alive as it attacks the notion that we're always the good guys and we always have the best interests of everyone at heart. It doesn't turn the humans into total aliens, but it does turn us into total jerks.
As the notions of escape and the mystery of why the aliens have been sent start to take over the narrative, it becomes that much more important for the novel to give us a really interesting twist and while I thought I had some pretty decent theories (they're tricking the earth into softening the planet for an invasion, they're from the future and trying to make sure its brought about) the end result winds up being strangely straightforward, not that far away from something Kurt Vonnegut would have done, a build-up to an absurd whimper but a bit of a "let's kick him while he's down" thrown in. It winds up not being as revelatory as you hope, but there's a charm (if that's the word) in the desperation of getting there.
The title story is probably the most cracked, as Commander Folsom and his small crew land on another world to integrate it into the Federation, their mission to communicate with the local aliens and educate them, get them ready to deal with Earth. Except things have already gone wrong, or maybe they haven't, the crew is acting strange, or maybe the Commander is just seeing them as strange, and Earth isn't being helpful at all, sending back odder and odder messages (my favorite being: "Is something seriously wrong with you" in response to a rather mundane question). The natives are somewhere between learning and being taught, or maybe they're teaching the crew. Oh, and there's a magic rock. This one comes the closest to being Malzberg in his prime, with a narrator who is quite possibly out of his mind and with everything filtered through that perspective you either have to go with it or puzzle out what is really going on. Which, given you're on alien world in the future, means you have about zero frame of reference. The Commander is convinced the weird stuff is all perfectly normal and the normal stuff is the mission going off the rails, and with the tensions rising between the crew and the natives and him you realize that none of this is going anywhere good. The fact that Malzberg makes this readable is his insistence on keeping everything from Folsom's perspective and winding the crazy tighter and tighter so that by the time things go really nuts you're already so immersed that its both familiar and inevitable. It's like being psychedelic without the drugs so you don't get the benefit of being high while everything goes bizarre around you. Space makes you crazy, Malzberg seems to suggest, but you'll be the last one to recognize it. The ending muffs it slightly, bringing in a twist that is sort of telegraphed but actually seems normal compared to all the wackiness that preceded it.
It seems odd to recommend something that isn't the author's finest work, but even second-tier Malzberg is worth reading, especially with the scarcity of his in-print material. But there's a focus here on the underside of SF, not just the seamy, gritty end of things but the flip side of the shadows created by the bright ideas and the boundless optimism. In his world, other planets are okay and the future, too, as long as you're adjusted to it. But the only way to really adjust is to become unhinged. If any of that sounds appealing, then he's for you. He's one of SF's most distinctive voices, influential in one of those ways that few people get to achieve: you reach a point where everyone sounds like him, and no one sounds like him.
March 10, 2020
An intense and immersive experience! With so much stilted and overly technical sci-fi out there, it was refreshing to get into speculations on the mental effects of space travel. A sense of mystery and foreboding permeates the narrative, as you feel both anxiety about this unknown planet and come to question the protagonist's trustworthiness.
There's a Harlan Ellison quote on front the cover that says, "...makes what the rest of us do look like felonies." Naturally, I was intrigued to find out what could provoke such a hyperbolic statement. I think it's the visceral writing style, not just the subject matter or quirky gadgets. There really is something striving and literary in the way that Malzberg writes—and compelling enough that you're willing to overlook some of his exuberant embellishments.
There's a Harlan Ellison quote on front the cover that says, "...makes what the rest of us do look like felonies." Naturally, I was intrigued to find out what could provoke such a hyperbolic statement. I think it's the visceral writing style, not just the subject matter or quirky gadgets. There really is something striving and literary in the way that Malzberg writes—and compelling enough that you're willing to overlook some of his exuberant embellishments.
March 30, 2016
Malzberg...never again
December 10, 2021
Another exceptional, albeit forgotten, novel by Malzberg.
July 20, 2018
It was okay, I guess, I mean, I liked the writing, which consisted of very long sentences, as long as half a page it seemed at times, put together by many phrases, one after the other, but actually went together very well. I think this book could've earned a four star rating, but it suffered from a couple problems. First off, there were two significant editing issues. The first involves a character switch, an early chapter starts with Folsom heading out with Closter, but then a couple paragraphs later he is with Stark. I read the passage several times to see if I missed something, but I'm convinced it's an actual error. The other occurs later in the book where there is a scene describing Folsom showing the runic stone to Nina for the first time. However, earlier in the book, the author describes Folsom showing the runic stone to the other members of the team right after he finds it. The other problem is that the later third of the book becomes needlessly abstract to the point of making one wonder just what the heck is going on. At least for me.
February 4, 2024
I made it to page 76, chapter X before taking pity on myself and DNFing it.
This is the most ludicrous, steaming pile of bollox I have tried to read since last time I read Malzberg. Never again! I get that many people liked him, this stream-of-consciousness style of florid, posturing, naïvely pompous nonsense may appeal to people who enjoy PKD stream of consciousness writing, but I can't imagine anyone else getting through it.
A few gems of idiocy include; A mission to a far, inhabited planet three years distant. The crew sleep through it. Apparently on beds and in one case with entangled limbs. Three years. How they sleep is never gone into - maybe they took a nice Valium or something and just lay down on a bed.
When they get there, they find natives (utterly undescribed, no idea what they look like) who have HORSES... anyone else shaking their head at the fact that none of the intrepid team worry about that?
Folsom (who is fulsomely full of himself) finds a 'rock' that was not previously there. That is hollow. That is light. It has electronic writing scrolling across it. Folsom still thinks of it as a 'rock' several chapters later. He tells his team of linguists about it and they are not interested. Then they ask him a few chapters later why he did not tell them...
About, that intrepid team of four.... One geologist who never does any geology, one linguist one barely mentioned team member and the Captain- who has no skills at all. This is not sci-fi. There is no 'sci' in it. What it is is an EXTENSIVE alternating mental diarrhea of Folsom's inner thoughts or a vomit of external perspective on Folsom. Not interested.
Folsom, is misogynistic, rapes his partner, homophobic and enjoys tying people up and listening to them scream (the 'native' they are meant to be inducting first, then one of the homosexual members of his own team later). Possibly this is a manifestation of the fact that Malzberg wrote 'adult' content far more than anything else at the start of his career, but it is pretty gross. In the other book by this author that I read, I wondered if I was missing a point about homophobia, or rape culture, or misogyny. It seemed too unbelievable that anyone could actually print something like this unless it had a subtlety I was missing.
Nope. I was wrong, I don't think there is any subtlety, just a very unpleasant book.
This is the most ludicrous, steaming pile of bollox I have tried to read since last time I read Malzberg. Never again! I get that many people liked him, this stream-of-consciousness style of florid, posturing, naïvely pompous nonsense may appeal to people who enjoy PKD stream of consciousness writing, but I can't imagine anyone else getting through it.
A few gems of idiocy include; A mission to a far, inhabited planet three years distant. The crew sleep through it. Apparently on beds and in one case with entangled limbs. Three years. How they sleep is never gone into - maybe they took a nice Valium or something and just lay down on a bed.
When they get there, they find natives (utterly undescribed, no idea what they look like) who have HORSES... anyone else shaking their head at the fact that none of the intrepid team worry about that?
Folsom (who is fulsomely full of himself) finds a 'rock' that was not previously there. That is hollow. That is light. It has electronic writing scrolling across it. Folsom still thinks of it as a 'rock' several chapters later. He tells his team of linguists about it and they are not interested. Then they ask him a few chapters later why he did not tell them...
About, that intrepid team of four.... One geologist who never does any geology, one linguist one barely mentioned team member and the Captain- who has no skills at all. This is not sci-fi. There is no 'sci' in it. What it is is an EXTENSIVE alternating mental diarrhea of Folsom's inner thoughts or a vomit of external perspective on Folsom. Not interested.
Folsom, is misogynistic, rapes his partner, homophobic and enjoys tying people up and listening to them scream (the 'native' they are meant to be inducting first, then one of the homosexual members of his own team later). Possibly this is a manifestation of the fact that Malzberg wrote 'adult' content far more than anything else at the start of his career, but it is pretty gross. In the other book by this author that I read, I wondered if I was missing a point about homophobia, or rape culture, or misogyny. It seemed too unbelievable that anyone could actually print something like this unless it had a subtlety I was missing.
Nope. I was wrong, I don't think there is any subtlety, just a very unpleasant book.
July 23, 2024
This is a five star book only let down - slightly - by the landing.
Folsom is sure something is wrong. His paranoia is growing into distrust of his crew mates and he is descending into murderous delusions. What’s gone wrong? And why?
The way the author handles the meltdown and gets us inside the crumbling psyche of Folsom as he falls from delusions of grandeur into despair is masterful. That’s two Malzbergs I’ve read this year and both of them are going to sit with me for a long time to come.
Folsom is sure something is wrong. His paranoia is growing into distrust of his crew mates and he is descending into murderous delusions. What’s gone wrong? And why?
The way the author handles the meltdown and gets us inside the crumbling psyche of Folsom as he falls from delusions of grandeur into despair is masterful. That’s two Malzbergs I’ve read this year and both of them are going to sit with me for a long time to come.
April 11, 2023
I really enjoy Malzberg. I don't know what he's doing, but I like it. This is another of his seemingly standard SF novels—a basic First Contact scenario—but featuring an increasingly unreliable narrator (and author, probably), stuffed with his own infallibility, interpersonal conflicts, and then a fractured sense of time and place, and then of meaning.
September 1, 2025
As expected, mad genius from Malzberg. Finishes particularly strong. A pitch perfect deconstruction of the star commander ubermensch.
January 19, 2024
I’m not much of a fantasy person so I did not completely enjoy the book. Some parts were a bit hard to follow due to the switching of the POV. However, the plot was very interesting and I enjoyed the inclusion of moral qualms and the rebellion of people against their federation.
August 23, 2011
Unmemorable science fiction novel picked up at the Bridgman Public Library for a quick read on the beach.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews