Monument

by Lloyd Biggle Jr.

Lost Eden

It was a world of dazzling but deadly beauty, where pleasure was man's most precious birthright. In this lost colony the inhabitants had forgotten the very existence of earth. Only one man remembered. He foresaw the awesome consequences if this paradise were ever rediscovered.

Monument

The novel of a frightening future - a planet in mortal combat with an alien universe.

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Monument is a science fiction novel about destructive tourism — a serious subject, but as usual with Biggle, handled in a lighter vein, and at times frankly humorous. A classic science fiction novel from the author of ALL THE COLORS OF DARKNESS.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Classics, Fantasy, Novels

173 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Biggle was born in 1923 in Waterloo, Iowa. He served in World War II as a communications sergeant in a rifle company of the 102nd Infantry Division; during the war, he was wounded twice. His second wound, a shrapnel wound in his leg received near the Elbe River at the end of the war, left him disabled for life.

After the war, Biggle resumed his education. He received an A.B. Degree with High Distinction from Wayne State University and M.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. Biggle taught at the University of Michigan and at Eastern Michigan University in the 1950s. He began writing professionally in 1955 and became a full-time writer with the publication of his novel, All the Colors of Darkness in 1963; he continued in the writing profession until his death.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is an old favorite. It's a nice story about about a primitive (?) society caught up in a legal battle against corporate greed. It's very well written and has several clever twists and engaging characters. It's fun and thought-provoking; this is how the Prime Directive should have worked.

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light, feel-good, SF novel with an emphasis on conservation and the foibles of corporate greed.

Monument was published in the 1970s but it stands in charming contrast to many of its peers during a period when Science Fiction was, stylistically, starting to dabble with the dark side, and flirting with the more controversial topics of the time.

Not much more to say. I found it entertaining and fun, even though it isn’t the fastest paced book I have ever read.
It’s a clever little book, in its way. Recommended for those who like SF deep dives, and discovering the little gems in the rough.

I came across it watching “Ten Neglected Science Fiction Writers/Novels: Two Grumpy Old Men Who Discuss Science Fiction” on the Outlaw Bookseller Youtube channel.
I loved the cover art, and was fortunate enough to find it used online fairly quickly.

Recommended.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.7⭐
I have no idea how long ago I read this short novel, but it sticks with me, as do many of Biggle's stories. A space traveler is marooned on a lost colony world where the humans have forgotten where they came from. The world is a paradise and the people are unsophisticated but at peace with themselves and their planet. Knowing that unscrupulous developers would exploit the colonists, he devises a plan to save them. A nice little story.

[Katie Montgomery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely CANNOT understand why this book is not better known. This book is now officially part of my Evangelism List. Watch out, unsuspecting passersby looking for SF book recs.

[Michael Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful and provoking story of a primitive culture needing to be saved from civilization. It was hard to put this book down despite the lack of action of any sort. Mostly what we have here is information and descriptions of nature. Many of the characters come and go throughout with the bulk of the conflict hinging upon the decisions in a far-distant courtroom. Monument has left me with a better feeling than just about any other book I've read in recent months.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun light-hearted take on the natives vs. modern culture theme. The law as 'attorneys face off with URLs in front of a master computer' is typical of the often humourous sometimes thought-proking concepts thrown around.

[Angela Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sci-fi paradise meets intergalactic lawsuit. Fun and cheery way to detail a very likely inter-planetary scenario.

[Chris Sudall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book! I must've stumbled across it in a charity shop, and I couldn't leave a book with a cover like that behind!
Anyway! I am slowly building up my bookshelves and have a LOT of books to read, so I thought I would use Goodreads to select the next one. I was surprised that this was top but I set off...
I was grabbed from the outset, it is beautifully written with believable characters and a is a classic story of good vs greed. There are no truly evil characters, just selfish calculating people in power, similar to modern society.
I won't give the plot away, but the natives in paradise's fight vs the colonisers is revealed in careful stages and you want to reach the end to see if they can succeed. It's an absolute cracker!
Finished in a lockdown Christmas!!!

[SciFiOne · Rating 5 out of 5]

1986 Grade A+
2002 Grade A
2024 Grade A

Another enjoyable read by Biggle about commoners fighting for their lives against "civilization." This one is the natives of a limited but beautiful planet verses the government, the courts, and a money hungry corporation owner who wants to turn it into a giant resort. The natives win thanks to a plan and money left behind by an earlier crash landed pilot. It is a little slow and annoying during the courtroom crap, which I tended to speed read, but has an excellent twist ending.

Very Recommended.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 1 out of 5]

There seems to be an inexplicable consensus among readers that Lloyd Biggle, Jr., is an unsung genius of science fiction, and that his novels are actually good. This is the second I've read by him and like the first it was a waste of my time. While competent to tell a story, there is nothing that serves to differentiate him from the mass of lousy genre fiction writers. I really should never listen to people or take their opinions into account.

[Scott Somerville · Rating 5 out of 5]

simply fabulous!

Sweet, complicated, clever, and delightful! If you love stories about good guys winning and bad guys losing, you’ll love this one

[Ronnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written book about the way humans will go to any length to justify colonization as being “for the colonized peoples’ own good.” Love the twist that this book gave to things, and the way that everything the colonizers did was so realistically, revoltingly stupid.

[Lucretius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why Biggle isn't better known, I don't know. For my money this is his best novel.

[Andrew Brine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody lovely, sets out 'the plan' from the start and keeps you guessing for the whole book whether it's actually a plan and whether it'll work.
Enthralling David v Goliath story.

[Meadhbh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the summer of 1979 I saw Starlog Magazine for the first time. Being a trek fan, I promptly bought the issue. Topics covered in the magazine included the first Alien film, the (then) upcoming Star Trek film and Doctor Who. And then there was this article about an upcoming film called Monument, about a small cadre of low-tech natives taking on a huge megacorp. But the twist was, they did it in interstellar court, not on the battle-field. The movie never came out, of course, but I remembered the set-up and thought it was an amusing premise.

Fast forward to a several years ago when I happen to be in a used book store and see a copy of the original hardback release. I snatch it up thinking I'll read it, but not until I read these other books on my nightstand. After a recent move, I'm unpacking my books and see Monument again. So this time I finally read it.

It's not too long; you can read it in an evening if you're a fast reader. But the prose was well written, the text obviously benefiting from being published in an age where authors and editors were taken seriously. Much of my day is spent reading technical documents that have clearly been copied and pasted by an infinite number of semi-literate monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards. Actual English text is sort of a pleasure to see.

You can probably get the gist of the story from the description above: in the distant future the planets of the interstellar federation are bland and ugly. Few planets people have settled on are exactly Earth-like, so I guess you have to expect daily life in the federation to be like living in a shopping mall or a nuclear submarine.

And then an asteroid prospector crashes on an out-of-the-way world with sunshine and beaches and pleasant natives. It doesn't take long for the old prospector to realize he's crash-landed in paradise, and loses any interest of returning to "civilization." But he realizes the world will eventually be re-discovered and be exploited to the detriment of the charming natives who have welcomed him into their society. He comes up with "the plan," which he communicates to the younger natives. The plan is supposed to defend the planet against the worst aspects of colonization.

And thus the stage is set. The old prospector dies and shortly afterwards the planet is rediscovered by "civilization."

Told in non-omniscient third person, the tension in the story is more or less "hmm... what's the next step in the plan? what will the natives do next?" And it's enough to propel the reader through the narrative. There are no big battles and unfortunately little character development. The bad guys aren't *COMPLETELY* evil; their behaviour is understandable. The closest thing to outright war takes place in the courtrooms of interstellar justice.

And this is the charm of this book. By making the narration about gradual revelation of the plan, Biggle has set up a tale that keeps your interest without horrible antagonists. If anything, the worst antagonist is "the system" which allows for the exploitation of natural resources to the detriment of the aboriginal population. The character of the story is far from anti-imperialist. You can be a good capitalist and still like this book. It's framed more as "the natives are a lot smarter than you give them credit for; discount them at your peril."

So... a fun, quick, pleasant read. Four stars.

[John Loyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monument (1974) 215 pages by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

Obrien has a one man space ship and is a sometimes prospector, sometimes works in the gray areas, and when down on cash pulls into port and works until he can resupply his junker with fuel and supplies. He finally made a strike but crashed on an out of the way world (later named Langri). The humans are poisonous to the planet's native species and vice versa. The only thing the Lagrians can eat is Koluf, a large sea monster that the catch, bring to the shore and bury in dry sand for a day to make it safe to eat. The Langrians live an idyllic life just in balance with nature.

Obrien is now old and dying. He was confident that he could keep the native humans safe from exploitation if he was alive, but that isn't going to be the case now. Obrien is worried that some developer will come and try to build a resort on this idyllic world. A resort will drive the koluf away from shore and the Langrians will starve. So he goes to the Elder and asks for a few students from every village to learn from him. He comes up with the Plan. He teaches it to Fornri, Dalla, Banu and a few others, but as the weeks go by he has fewer and fewer students but he presses on teaching them the Plan, whether they have the prerequisite knowledge or not.

Obrien does die, a ship does arrive, and now it is up to Fornri to follow the Plan and save his people.

Late in the story when the koluf are scarce they make tests to see if the Lagrians can eat navy food. They find the Langrians have developed a dependency on koluf and get little or no nutritional value from the naval rations. Earlier Fornri had gone off world for weeks or months to hire the lawyers no mention of him not having koluf. Fornri is the great-great-grandson of Obrien so maybe he inherited the ability to use human food, but that is not mentioned in the book.

Anyway this is a very good story. The characters were likable and believable. The Plan might be pushing plausibility but that could be the fun part.

[Lance Eaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The people of Langri have the Plan. And the Plan will hopefully be their salvation, even if no one else actually understands what the plan is all about. Langri was a largely unexplored planet with a human population that lived a mostly primitive (at least by the Federation's standards) life. But somewhere along the way, a visitor gave them the knowledge to be prepared for when the Federation discovered their planet and wish to take advance of the near-paradise conditions. One such person does appear, Wembley, and he works ceaselessly and illegally to swindle the natives out of their land and resources.

Biggle's novel is a fun story where the underdog, not only wins but knows they are going to win from the near beginning (ok, maybe about a third of the way). It has echoes to the present (some 40 years later) in the ways in which indigenous folk work hard to protect what is there and inevitably, businesses are always scheming to upend their resources, lands, and rights. As a science-fiction book, it's focus is not on first-contact but the technical, cultural, and legal complications of how such encounters can lead to integration. In that regard, the novel shows some of the legitimate threats even in peaceful conditions as well as aspects that may not have been widely covered in the 1970s. And while it's more general science-fiction than hard science-fiction, Biggle's depiction of how the law works is a fascinating consideration. When Wembley's and Langri's lawyers battle their cases, they use an interface where they put out their court citations and the machine will determine which cases have stronger merit. It's essentially a quantitative and technical way to run law, which is interesting and relevant to today as we increasingly see AI in criminal justice but not one that seems particularly effective. Still, the novel proves quirky and intriguing enough that it's definitely worth reading.

[Kaus Wei · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had initially picked this book up to read in July, but could not get past the first page. Something about the tone, or style, or font selection would put me off of continuing, and so I would move on to some other book. But when I finally got past the first page, I found myself unwilling to put the book down. In hindsight, this is a tad surprising as there are no action-packed space-battles, evil monsters, or other such stuff that move the plot along. Rather, the battles take place in the courtrooms of a world distant from the one the primary protagonists inhabit, while the natives engage in passive resistance against the efforts of a newly landed venture-capitalist seeking to build resorts (and later on, golf courses).

The book does suffer from numerous information dumps (the longer ones coming at the start), though they rarely exceed more than half a page, but on the positive side, there are few (if any) 'as you know' or 'somehow' tropes (which is a nice change from the last two books I have read).

The characters are kept true to their nature, with no obvious character assassinations having been committed. The greatest crime perpetrated is the introduction of various secondary characters through the course of the story, that come briefly to the fore, only to disappear without a trace. Excepting that, the primary characters are all presented well enough that I actually felt personally invested in the outcome of their struggle.

In all, it reminds me of Ecce and Old Earth, but briefer, less legally intricate, and with more rapid pacing.

[Sandra Molnar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite book for years.

I read this book for years ago and l loved it. I foolishly lent it to someone and couldn't find it for years because I couldn't remember the name. Obrien, an old spaceman crashed on a planet that is beautiful and perfect and he realizes what could happen to it and his people should some greedy scum come along. So he makes a plan to save everything and then doesn't think about it for years until one day he realizes he is dying and he has waited too long. Now he has to teach them a plan they don't understand and convince them to follow it no matter what, promising it will save them. I read it trying to figure out how they would be saved and wanting the natives to win. You can see the government finding in favor of the corrupt company just like they would now. It is an excellent book and I think everyone to read it in case they have to save themselves.

[Tom Britz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Monument by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. This was my second Biggle novel and I've enjoyed both. Back in the early 1980's I became a friend to Howard DeVore, a major personality in SF fandom, he happened to live near me and I would go to his house and ogle at his collection of pulp magazines and talk science fiction. One day he took me to nearby Ypsilanti, Michigan, for a meeting of a local science fiction group, and it was there that Howard introduced me to Lloyd Biggle, Jr. He was a nice man who made me feel comfortable and he was enjoyable to talk to.
Monument is a story of an Eden-like planet, that is off the "beaten path" of the space lanes. The natives are a quiet unassuming people that are totally dependent upon the environment and food sources. Along comes "civilization" and a greedy land developer with big dreams, which have a deleterious effect upon the natives. This is the story of the natives struggle to free themselves from civilization.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 2 out of 5]

My 4th SF by Lloyd Biggle Jr. The others have been 4* (The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets; The World Menders) Or 5* (The Light That Never Was), so I was sorry not to care for this one. It didn't have his trademark arts plot. Its treatment of space colonialism, this time, was an embarrassment. I might blame it on this being an early short story of his (1961), expanded into a novel years later.

[Darien · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I was in high school, kept the hardback copy for years and finally gave it away to find new fans. One of my favorite soft science fiction books that focuses more on the personalities, social setting and character than anything else. An anti-imperialist underdog story, it describes the ingenious plan to keep a paradise planet from corporate exploitation, by any means necessary including guerilla environmentalism. The author uses biting satire and sly humor to tell an engaging and action packed story that has the reader rooting for the planet natives and their goal to maintain their laid back lifestyle.

[Saski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another one of those books that works the best the first time through, due to the twist. It also seemed almost childish when read as an adult, though I don't think it was written as a YA. But maybe it's that at the time it was written, people hadn't considered the consequences of turning paradises into tourist resorts. Now it seems obvious, and thus not as enjoyable.

All I can say for sure is the first time through I loved it madly.

[Boulder Boulderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great little book I've had on my shelves forever (20 years?) but haven't read for ages. Nice story concerning a genius posthumously leading a native people to successful independence and protection of their way of life.

Bit of a wish-fulfilment probably, but incredibly fast paced and the number of characters and the amount of development packed what is not much more than a short story is phenomenal.

[Andrew Gifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

A random buy at a random used bookshop 3000 miles from home. Had never heard of Biggle before but am now an addict. This short, wonderful little book is actually somewhat timeless. A tale of galactic gentrification where bureaucracy is king, lawyers answer to computers, and downtrodden yet enlightened natives must do battle with gold course developers. My only regret is that Biggle didn't write a ton of prequels starring space adventurer-cum-Messiah Cerne Obrien!

[Barry Haworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book about a man wandering the galaxy who comes across a lost colony world on a tropical paradise planet. Realising that it can't be long before the planet is rediscovered by the rest of humanity, and the negative affects this will almost certainly have on the planets inhabitants, he comes up with a scheme to deal with the situation. The book is the story of that scheme playing out.

[Dan Holt · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Favorite Science Fiction Novel

Amazing storytelling! Great way of overcoming adversity in an unbelievable setting. Wonderful characterization and action. Thank you for an almost lost book.

[DOUGLAS J BERRY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amusing

The science fiction book club tricked me into buying this. It's a story of a commercial war where the civilized society doesn't automatically win. I finally got rid of my physical copy and bought this e version. Kind of miss the original cover.

[Peace · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most excellent novel.

[Lee Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Futuristic story about saving a culture from "civilization". Thought provoking.