Cannon's Orb

by L. Warren Douglas

Cannon's Orb was in trouble: pirates blockaded the planet and threatened to invade, supplies were running out, and throughout space other human colonies were dead or dying. Only help from the aliens called psatla could salvage the planet. But psatla were colony intelligences whose pheremonal communication wreaked havoc on human behavior - and, inreturn for their help, the psatla insisted that they take up residence on the Orb.

So the Orb's leader sent his son, Ben Cannon, on a difficult mission: go to the planet Phastillan to learn alien ways, and return as an emissary between the species. But back on Cannon's Orb, a leader more powerful than Ben was emerging. As Ben took lessons from psatla, a young Orber named Estelle Mason formed an inhuman alliance with one - and discovered in herself the ability to grasp the Orb's problems...and how to fix them.

Ben returned to face pirate raids, riots against psatla, and a society shaken to its core as it questioned its deepest assumptions about humanity. He set out to prove himself fit to save a planet, unaware that someone else had already started the job...

Genres: Science Fiction

332 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1994

About the author

Born November 3, 1943, Douglas's earliest memories are of a military air show on V-E Day in 1946 or 1947. He attended Sigsbee School in Grand Rapids, MI, where he distinguished himself as a distance runner and a Cub Scout. His favorite hobby was a collection of Devonian and Silurian fossils. Douglas attended Ottawa Junior High in Grand Rapids for 2 years, then the prestigious Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, MI (often called "the Phillips Academy of the Midwest"). He is reticent about his expulsion from Cranbrook, but it may have had something to do with a black eye sported by the scion of a Major Corporate Family, or with an unseemly incident in a nearby college's womens' dormitory. He graduated in 1962 from the Leelanau School (often called the Cranbrook of the North Woods) a few miles from the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Glen Arbor, MI, winning honors in History, Poetry, English, and Art. At Leelanau he became an inveterate backwoods skier, and his love of woods and wilderness is reflected in his fiction.
from: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/l-...

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was tempted to rate this two stars - it isn't entirely horrible - but honestly the bad aspects are overwhelmingly bad.

It's hard to believe that this came from the 90s, the science and politics are so dodgy that the 70s are more of a fit. It's full to the brim with the worst gender essentialism I have ever seen in a novel (with a splash of transphobia) and Canon's Orb itself is basically the 1950s in space. Only one out of the three subplots is interesting (Estelle, and to a lesser extent the alien Psalta when they aren't a mouthpiece for pseudoscience) as most of the characters are either wildly inconsistent (Ben Cannon's personality largely depends on how much he is getting laid because pheromones...) or flat. So ultimately there isn't much going on to redeem it from the more bizarre aspects.