GARBAGE WORLD: The SF Ecological Classic

by Charles Platt

Rubbish Dump Of The Galaxy

Life on teh small asteroid Kopra, the dumping ground whose sole function was to receive specially packaged waste material from surrounding pleasure worlds, was harsh and dirty. Carefully avoided by Off-Worlders for centureies, Kopra and its rough and ready, filth encrusted inhabitants suddenly became the object of extrodinary interest to officals of the United Asteroid Belt Pleasure World Federation. What happens when the two opposing cultures meet; the super-sanitary citizens of the Pleasure World and the filthy, underfed villages makes an adventure as exciting as it is bizarre.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

162 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1967

About the author

From wikipedia:

Charles Platt (born in London, England, 1945) is the author of 41 fiction and nonfiction books, including science-fiction novels such as The Silicon Man and Protektor (published in paperback by Avon Books). He has also written non-fiction, particularly on the subjects of computer technology and cryonics, as well as teaching and working in these fields. Platt relocated from England to the United States in 1970 and is a naturalized U. S. citizen.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

See:

Charles Platt, born 1869

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 1 out of 5]

It all boils down to a culture clash between the germaphobic United Asteroid Belt Pleasure World Federation and the...not-so-fastidious Kopra inhabitants. And if you look at "Kopra" and consider the root of "coprophagia", then you are on the right track but not quite that extreme.

There's some skulduggery on the part of the Asteroid people, but that's not terribly important. It's all just stuff.

None of this is a good idea, but with skill and diligence it could achieve the level of a gloriously stupid idea. The question is if it will attain that before the average reader declares it a just-plain-stupid idea, which was the direction it was trending before I pulled the plug.

In my defense, the two protagonists were engaging in sex in a deep, feculent, and profoundly unhygienic mud pit. After that I decided the story could not possibly go in any direction I would care to follow.

Could it have become gloriously stupid? Well, the movie Soldier certainly is, and it's built of the same stuff.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

"You're so damn clean-minded you got no idea about the good part of being filthy. You can't even imagine it no more. I pity you, you poor sap. Life here must be unbearable. Always worrying over how clean you are, not getting your clothes dirty, having to brush your teeth and comb your hair, wash your ears...Sounds like some kind of living hell to me."
-Garbage World, by Charles Platt

A decidedly unique sci-fi tale (and some rumblings of the burgeoning ecological movement) can be found in GARBAGE WORLD. Kopra is an asteroid that serves as a massive trash dump for every other planet in its solar system; the residents of which cannot even stand the sight of the garbage they produce. Kopra is also inhabited by people, who most of the rest of the planets regard as subhuman and unimportant. When the asteroid gets so heavy with waste that the powers-that-be decide to detonate it, it's up to one "offworlder" to save the people he has befriended.

[Ian Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started really well with a fair amount of commentary on our attitude to waste and how people of lower status are treated by those responsible for their situation but it descended quickly into a bog standard white hat/black hat space opera. A fun, easy read, though.

[Margaret Killjoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, this book is awesome. It's awesome because it's a proto-hippy science fiction book about someone who learns to love living in filth with a society of scavengers. It's got brilliant class politics and it's entertaining as hell.

It's also pulp. It's not terribly well-written, but instead of being overly verbose or complicated, it's overly simple... which is a good way to err, if you ask me. The gender politics are certainly imperfect. But did I mention the filth? Hell yeah.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

The United Asteroid Belt Pleasure Worlds Federation is a group of prisitne pleasure worlds on asteroids in a certain star system. What do they do with their garbage? Recycle it or burn it? In specially packaged containers, they rocket it to the asteroid Kopra, whose sole function is to act as the Federation's garbage dump.

Kopra brings new meaning to the word "disgusting." The layers of trash are miles thick. The smell is overpowering. It has artificial gravity and an artificial atmosphere, so a few hundred people live on top of the trash. They are just as dirty as their surroundings, but they grew up there, so they like it.

One day, a survey ship from the Federation lands on Kopra. Larkin, and Oliver, his assistant, tell the residents that a temporary evacuation is needed. The gravity generator needs replacing, requiring the drilling of a hole into the center of the asteroid, and installing a new one. If not, some of the trash could fly off of Kopra, and land on the pleasure worlds (heaven forbid). Anyone left on the asteroid could be killed by the new gravity generator, before it stabilizes. That's the official story, but, as Oliver discovers, it's not the real story.

Larkin thinks of the Koprans as little better than animals, for choosing to live like this, but Oliver isn't so sure. He volunteers to take a truck into the wilderness, to collect anyone he can find, to get them off the asteroid. Oliver takes Isaac Gaylord, headman of Kopra's only village, and Juliette, his daughter, along as guides. The truck breaks down miles from the village (sabotage), and after barely escaping from a giant mutated slug living in a mud lake, the three have to walk back to the village. By this time, any inhibitions or phobias that Oliver may have about cleanliness are long since gone; falling in love with Juliette certainly helps. When they get back to the village, Oliver discovers the real reason for getting everyone off Kopra. It involves turning the residents into "good" Federation citizens, with help from some personality surgery.

There are very few novels of any genre that take place in a garbage dump. This belongs in that large gray area of Pretty Good or Worth Reading.

[Tommy Verhaegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science-fiction is het zeker, vol humor, subtiel en gewoon platvloers door mekaar en ook nog eens spannend. Dat belooft en de auteur maakt deze belofte meer dan waar.
In een asteroïdengordel in een niet nader bepaalde hoek van het heelal in een niet nader bepaald tijdvak. Men heeft op de pretplaneten het afvalprobleem heel erg simpel opgelost: het wordt in grote containers afgeschoten en zo op een centraal gelegen afvalasteroïde gedumpt. Die is bewoond en in de loop van de generaties hebben de bewoners zich aangepast aan de afvalberg waarop ze wonen. Beide groepen van mensen kijken vol verachting op elkaar neer. Dan blijkt dat de afvalplaneet op springen staat wegens vol = vol.
De aankomst van de smetteloze Roach (slang voor kakkerlak) en de kennismaking met de smerige bewoners van Kopria is direct al grappig en eindigt er uiteindelijk mee dat hij zelf vies en vuil zijn directe chef razend maakt. Dan volgt er een tocht door de jungle waar ze in direct levensgevaar komen en waar Roach een opmerkelijke transformatie doormaakt. Langzaam wordt de humor meer en meer vervangen door spanning. De climax wordt bereikt wanneer ROach en de Koprioanen achter de ware bedoeling van de glansplaneten komen en in een race tegen de tijd een gevecht op leven en dood moeten leveren.
Het onderliggende thema is de strijd tussen twee uitersten: super hygiëne en properheid tegen ongecontroleerd vuil en onverzorgdheid.
De sympathie van de lezer kan niet anders dan bij Roach liggen. Toch merk ik dat ik er genuanceerder naar kijk nu ik het boek na 30 jaar opnieuw gelezen heb. Het blijt een topper die iedere sci-fi lezer en iedereen die van absurde humor houdt zou moeten lezen. Bovendien stemt het thema in genuanceerde vorm tot nadenken waar we met onze huidige maatschappij naar toe willen.

[James Hoff]

Garbage world is a nice little satire from the late 1960s. It's not especially ambitious, but it mostly succeeds in entertaining, and is briskly written, and fun.

Spoilers ahead:

The setting is simple: the asteroid belt has become a vast hub of luxurious pleasure worlds, using one asteroid, Korpa as their dumping ground for all of their garbage and waste. Apparently it has become an eyesore to the other asteroid, which needs to be remedied, possibly even eliminated. Trouble is, a few hundred years back, some people were stranded there, and now they have built a small rather repugnant society based on the garbage which continuously drops for the sky to them.

Platt pulls no punches here. Kopra is a disgusting sounding environment. The characters are unwashed, reek of foul body odor, and the whole of the place smells like rotting garbage. Even the very ground they walk is composed of layers of packed garbage.

A starship lands on Kopra, letting the people know that they must temporarily evacuate their home for maintenance to a gravity generator. But all may not be as it seems...

Garbage World is no match for any of the great SF works of the sixties (i.e. Chthon, Nova, The Man in the Maze, The Witches of Karres etc. There are so many!), but it did entertain me enough to give a solid 3 stars. Had to subtract one as things were far too rushed, and a few plot points not resolved to my satisfaction near the end. Good fun stuff, but not great.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Touch-a touch-a touch-a touch me/I wanna be dirty,” sang Janet Weiss, played by Susan Sarandon, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It could very well be the theme song of Roach, a character in Garbage World by Charles Platt since it fits his transformation from neat-freak to filth monger as the plot progresses. Roach is the pivot on which the novel turns. It is a book with a simple and unoriginal plot, and it makes a definite statement about class conflict, but it isn’t an entirely serious book and if you read it thatv way, it can be rewarding.

Somewhere in outer space there is a political entity called the United Asteroid Belt Pleasure Worlds Federation. While the asteroids these people inhabit are never fully described, we do learn that they are a high-tech civilization with high living standards, and an abundance of wealth. Their biggest problem is waste disposal. What they do is fill up blimps with garbage and then drop them on another asteroid named Kopra, which is also the Greek word for “feces”. The problem is that so much trash has been dropped on Kopra that the asteroid is fracturing under the weight and will soon break into pieces, spreading all the garbage throughout the immediate surroundings and ruining the cleanliness of the more developed asteroids in the federation.

Roach arrives in a spaceship with his commanding officer Larkin with plans to move the inhabitants of Kopra off the asteroid until they are able to fix it to prevent the catastrophe. The people living on Kopra are led by Gaylord, a giant bearish man with no sense of cleanliness or refinement. He earned his status as leader by accumulating the biggest hoard of junk which he has organized and labeled like pieces in a museum in his basement. His hoard makes Gaylord powerful because he is resourceful enough to know what to do with all his garbage when the time requires it. Larkin and Roach are anal-retentive germaphobes, but Gaylord finds common ground with Roach and a friendship grows between them. Roach also falls in love with Gaylord’s daughter Juliette. Gaylord also has a son named Oliver who leans a little bit more to the clean side and secretly agrees to help Larkin who has not been entirely honest about their mission on Kopra.

Roach is a bit of a humanitarian whose job is to collect information about the inhabitants of Kopra. He goes about studying them like an anthropologist. By that I mean he studies them with all the haughtiness and contempt that anthropologists in the colonial era studied so-called “primitive societies”. Still he cares enough about the Koprans to want to save them from their dirty and lowly status in the universe. Larkin, however, cannot be trusted and his plan is to exterminate the people there along with his efforts to prevent Kopra from exploding and polluting the entire asteroid belt with the filth his people have dumped on Kopra.

There are other inhabitants on the asteroid they call the Nomads. They live in the jungle under much rougher conditions and also survive by scavenging the junk that falls in blimps from the sky. Roach sets out with Gaylord and Juliette to find the Nomads so they can bring them back to the spaceship to be taken away while the asteroid of Kopra gets repaired. However, somebody sabotaged their vehicle and they come close to death, but the nomads save them from disaster. T o their surprise, the nomads turn out to be peaceful and hospitable people. The whole middle section of this novel is a series of adventures in the strange and dirty landscape of Kopra. Along the way, Roach begins to respect the Koprans more and more as he becomes accustomed to being dirty and gradually adapting to the environment of filth.

Roach’s transformation is complete when he falls into a warm mud pit with Juliette and the two get it on, having some truly dirty sex. This was actually my favorite part of the novel; Platt’s description of love making while submerged in warm and slimy mud was actually quite arousing. It wasn’t overly described either. There was just enough there to give you the tactile sensation necessary to make Kopra seem like it could actually be a nice place to visit. Needless to say, Roach has gone native at this point and, for him, there is no turning back.

Beyond that, I will just say you have to read the book to find out what happens.

Garbage World is a lot like the pulp science-fiction adventure stories of the 1920s and I am sure the author was aware of that. Those stories often had a colonialist mentality either latent or overt. A courageous spaceman travels to another planet or another dimension and encounters tribes of dangerous creatures that often bear the physical characteristics of non-European people. The hero falls in love with a local female and manages to escape before getting chopped up and eaten, killed by bug-eyed monsters, or flayed with primitive lasers. Garbage World turns this whole fictional paradigm on its head. In the post-colonial 1970s, there were more than a few social scientists pushing the idea that colonial subjects were just as human as the colonists and deserved to be treated as such. Charles Platt obviously took a cue from this change in attitudes and wrote Garbage World. It is an obvious critique of the way people in developed countries treat people in the Third World. The people of Kopra are portrayed as being resourceful and intelligent enough to make the most of their living conditions, even thriving on Kopra, finding happiness and the full realization of their human potential. Meanwhile the neat-freaks who invade their territory are the ones who created the conditions on Kopra and then plot to destroy them for being dirty, useless, and primitive. The dirty people of Kopra are the good ones while their technocratic adversaries reveal a link between colonialism, fascism, and obsessive cleanliness. By the end of the book, dirtiness is a virtue and Kopra looks like a borderline utopia. This book also reflects the growing concerns over ecology and environmentalism of the times in the 1970s.

Charles Platt’s Garbage World is a simple book on the surface. It was written primarily for entertainment. But when looked at in the context of the time when it was written, and the chronological space it holds in the progression of science-fiction writing, it makes a definite humanitarian statement. Despite the statement it makes, it is not a serious work of literature and it should not be approached as one. But if read solely for fun, the morality of the story may come out a lot more strongly. So go ahead and read it for fun and see what happens. Just don’t hide it under your mattress so your mother won’t find it; it’s not that kinds of a dirty book. And if anybody ever wants to have some filthy sex in a warm mud puddle, remember this book and don’t deny yourself that opportunity.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a completely, embarrassingly stereotypical, old school pulp sci-fi novel.

Anyone my age, plus minus a decade or so, will be familiar with these stereotypes:
Badly written,
Readership of teenage boys,
Lurid and unbelievable
ect ect...

This book wallows in those stereotypes to the point that if you finish it, as I did, you might be rather awed at how indecently stereotypical it is. This is not a case of 'so bad it is good' this is just bad! But, I finished it, in the same way as you cannot look away from a car crash while it is happening...

Described repeatedly by reviewers, jovially as 'scatological satire' I can only assume they did not read it, or maybe they read it and could not get their head around it (can't blame them).
-There is no excrement, though the author uses garbage instead.
-Satire, meaning of: 'the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or illogical behaviour.'
So, not really satire, since it is not targeting anything observable. It does try for humour and it is certainly well up on the exaggeration.

It mostly feels like it was written by a teenager FOR teens or children; you know, nasty little boys of all genders who like to snigger over the words 'poo' and 'dirt'.... that is basically what this book feels like; one, large, ten year old snigger.

The story takes place on an asteroid called Kopra (which will delight any of us who, in our childhood memorised the word 'copralite' and sniggered over how smart we were) . This asteroid is in a belt of 'luxury' asteroids and it is the dumping ground for all their waste. Our story starts when a space ship carrying two officials from the rest of the asteroid belt arrives. One is a minister and is stereotypical bad guy, the other is his assistant, stereotypical 'our hero who goes over to the enemy who are actually the good guys' guy.

They are there to evacuate the planet while a new generator is installed. The garbage layers have got so thick the generator can no longer cope, the hundred or so residents will be evacuated while this happens and returned to their homes after. Minister and assistant contact the village (made of garbage 'snigger') where everyone who lives survives on scavenging garbage and eating garbage and is very very smelly. snigger. Everyone is disgustingly dirty 'snigger snigger, yuk yuk'. The head man of the village is called Issac Gaylord – which I admit, will never NOT be funny to a 2000's person in a way I doubt would have registered to anyone in the 60's.

The plot exceeds the stereotypical into the completely nonsensical. The travel over the asteroid as a plot element is... rudimentary at best; it is the sort of thing that may work in a better book to showcase the world (which the author is clearly very proud of) here it does not. The dialogue is abysmally bad, teenage level bad. Various misunderstandings and misuses of gravity and physics – I suspect, and I really REALLY am not spending the time to investigate. And there is an ending, which is negligible.

I feel like I am being way to kind to it. But, it is a very cogent example of everything that was ever claimed about sci-fi back in the bad old days, when we had to defend our reading choices from people who had encountered THIS story and others like it.

[Passaniti · Rating 4 out of 5]

First,forget the blurb. The stories basically about someone who wants to develop a better way to dispose of the trash.
I also came very close to quitting this book about 2/3 the way through. But I was curious —it’s a very strange book.
Part of the book seems to be a reflection on racism on the level of Germany in the 1930s and of course first half of the 1940s. The insanely clean, but pleasure, loving people question the value of the insanely filthy, pleasure, loving people who live on the trash asteroid. The question arises, are the people on this trash asteroid, even still human given them their pathetic culture.
But maybe that’s wrong. Maybe it’s a fable of the establishment, uptight, and pristine, versus the down to earth (pun intended) nature loving people of the trash asteroid— sex love and TV hippies vs the uptight rich and clean
But that might be wrong. Maybe it’s a warning, the people who place too much emphasis on personal pleasure, and not enough on civilization. The asteroid people are parasites. The economy collapsed 100 years before, and they have no way of living except by living off the garbage of the rich sterile people. The asteroid peoples hostilities grow. They become angered when they find out the asteroid people… some of the Astro people… would prefer them dead. They seek revenge and find it. But the thing that struck me was the lack of remorse, or even consideration of those asteroid people who died
A strange book…

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"In 1980, 3,000 copies of Charles Platt’s SF novel The Gas (1968)—in which, the “eponymous gas, accidentally released over England, works as an irresistible aphrodisiac […]” and, according to John Clute at SF encyclopedia, contains “sex material” in “transgressively pornographic terms”—were seized by UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions in effect preventing a UK distribution [article].

Platt’s first novel, Garbage World (serialized 1966), feels like The Gas‘s SF juvenile little brother i.e. without the transgressive porn but all the intent to shock a 14 year old boy, although it’s never more than “the warmth of the mud mingled [...]"

[Paul Barnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

[Berkley Publishing Corporation] (1967). SB. 144 Pages. Purchased from al1chemist.

According to “The Independent”: “Some 15 million people live and work within sprawling municipal rubbish tips around the globe…” (18/03/2017).

This novel(la), the first such work by Charles Platt (1945-), is set on Kopra: “…a small asteroid coated with unimaginable filth in all shapes and forms…”

Ecology, pollution, wealth inequality and duplicitous authority feature prominently. Interesting sub themes include the perception of value and arbitrary process of succession to power.

The clock’s ticking; terrestrial horrors made celestial.

[Kevin Mombourquette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absurdly fun one. It has no business being as entertaining as it is. From action, to political intrigue to weird garbage mud sex, it has everything you didnt know you needed. How this never vecame a film in the 80's / early 90's is beyond me.

[extrantice · Rating 2 out of 5]

A grubby little book.

[Tom Fredricks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read. Strange unique story.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Steve Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not very impressive honestly

[Matt Rabski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a fine short read. Nothing here seems well thought out but the world is build very vividly and its satisfying to see the people stick it to the out of touch man

[Joey · Rating 2 out of 5]

horrible execution of an impeccable idea seemingly no one can make work. crazy of me to thus try my hand at it too....

[Hyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third book I’ve read by this author. Not exactly high literature or soaring space opera, but he definitely captures some thing of the late sixties/early 70s era. The three novels that I have read by him (The Gas, Death Of The City & Garbage World) practically vibrate with anger and hostility towards the social order. He’s not really a social justice warrior though. He doesn’t seem to be motivated by rage towards a system he perceives as unjust. Instead, he seems to be extremely resentful at the thought that society has any right whatsoever to impose rules upon him. In “The Gas” he takes this attitude to its logical extreme and presents us with what is practically and overindulgent a long diatribe of sex and violence. In “Garbage World” his approach is similar, but instead of sex and violence, it is filth and garbage that are front and center. In reading his work, I often get the feeling I am watching an emotionally unstable teenager having a screaming rage tantrum.

He is a decent enough writer though. The story is coherent, nicely paced, with a clear, beginning, middle and end, and satisfying resolution. The characters are two dimensional and nondescript (except for Gaylord, the leader of the Koprans, the small community that lives on the Garbage Planet), but they get the job done.

The premise and world building are interesting enough. The artificial asteroid called Kopra is the garbage dump of the pleasure worlds that orbit the local star. A couple of hundred people live on Kopra, scavenging the garbage dropped from blimps arriving from the entire system. The off worlders look down on the Koprans. They are filthy, smelly, illiterate savages, barely human at all.

Oliver Roach and his boss, Larkin, arrive on an expedition ship on a mission to the garbage asteroid. They are supposedly there to stabilize the gravity field on the asteroid, which has begun to malfunction. In reality, Larkin has a secret plan, unbeknownst to Oliver. He intends to have his crew place a bomb at the core of the asteroid, perfectly calibrated to split the tiny world into four smaller and uninhabitable asteroids. The residents of Kopra are to be lobotomized.

During the course of the story, Oliver gets stuck in the wilderness of the garbage asteroid with Gaylord and his beautiful (if filthy) daughter, Juliette (whom he, of course, falls in love with, after about of lovemaking in the filth and mud). Oliver switches sides, steals Larkin’s spaceship and takes all of the Koprans off the asteroid just in time as the explosion goes wrong, scattering billions of tons of garbage all across the pleasure worlds. From now on, they will all be garbage worlds.

The more I think of the story, the more I like it. Not as it is, which is kind of threadbare and basic, but as it could be. A good animation Director could make a pretty wild R-rated movie out of these basic building blocks, especially if they were to flesh out the pleasure worlds some more.

I would definitely give this thing a thumbs up, with reservations, for anyone who, like me, is obsessed with the sub genre of protest novels from that era.

[Tom Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mom got me this book for Christmas because I had taken to calling everyone garbage mouth. This book taught me a great truth. They have a big man culture. The big man gets first pickings of all the garbage that falls on the planet. He says, "May be a load of diamonds or a load of shit, but whatever it is, it'll be something worth having." The visitor says that it isn't fair that he gets first pickings and there's nothing left for the poor people. The big man says, "Look, the way I figure it, I've got the most, so I deserve the most. If you don't got nothing you don't deserve nothing, right?" I never realized that anyone could have such a ridiculous philosophy. It seemed unrealistic. Now, however, I pay 48 (Can I have been right when I wrote this? Well, a lot.) percent on my royalties for my books. This tax money goes to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest 1/2 of a percent of Americans and to give the poor, struggling oil companies a leg up by subsidizing them. The big man's philosophy became a very real thing and it is just as ridiculous in real life as in the book.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found this on sale for 25 cents at the book warehouse and thought it was interesting enough to pick up. A short read, an a novel concept but a little short-sighted with an unambitious, simple storyline. Interesting to see the space travel and technology concepts from the sixties - still using TVs, paper printouts, etc. This was even pre-Star Trek. The writing is a little too pulpy and plotting/dialogue a little cliched. It's pretty predictable, but not a bad read overall.

[Jeffrey Dannaldson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a prime example of "pulp science fiction". Totally cheesy and implausible, and yet I loved it. I mean, why dump trash on an asteroid when you could just jettison it into space? Not all SF needs to be deep or meaningful. This is just good, dirty fun.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just fun!

[Scott Golden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than its questionable premise might sound. Fun and interesting.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not disappointed! What an interesting concept and study on human nature. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It is a fast, easy read, just right for a rainy summer day :)