Rogue Star

Starchild #3

by Jack Williamson, Frederik Pohl

Third in the Starchild Trilogy, which also includes The Reefs of Space (1964) and Starchild (1965). Here, a future is depicted wherein mankind is ruled by a brutal authoritarian totalitarian government known as the Plan of Man, enforced by a computerized surveillance state.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space Opera

213 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

John Stewart Williamson who wrote as Jack Williamson (and occasionally under the pseudonym Will Stewart) was a U.S. writer often referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction".

Reviews

[Raj · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is set some distance in the future from Starchild, after the Plan of Man has collapsed. Humanity has entered the galactic community (although they're still regarded as barely civilised) and many humans have joined with a group of sentient stars as parts of a group mind. Andreas Quamodian is a Monitor of the Companions of the Star - not part of the group mind, but working for it and doing what it cannot do. A call from Molly Zaldivar, the woman he loves but who has left him, brings him back to Earth to try and stop an ex-colleague from creating an artificially sentient star - one that could go rogue and try to destroy the whole solar system and beyond.

This was easily the weakest in the 'Starchild' trilogy with an incoherent plot, unlikeable characters and poor characterisation. Quamodian spends large chunks of the book running around being a lovestruck buffoon and throwing hissy fits whenever something gets in his way. I didn't particularly enjoy this one.

[Rich Meyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was quite possibly the worst Frederik Poul novel I've ever read. Every single one of the characters is unlikeable and annoying. The main female character switches her romantic allegiance several times for no apparent reason, and the main male character constantly pines for her, amid a LOT of whining. There's nothing resembling science in this one, the plot and very story is hard to follow, bandit really is not up to the standards of the author who wrote Gateway. And it has preciously little to do with the other two books in the Starchild Trilogy besides trite happenstance. A very disappointing read.

[Lars Dradrach · Rating 2 out of 5]

By far the weakest novel in the trilogy, it’s like all attempts at coherency or structure has been dropped at this point, like the previous novels it have an (maybe involuntary) parody feeling about it, this time mixed up with some attempts at grotesque humour, which falls somewhat flat.

I know some strange things went on in the late sixties (2001 was written in 1968) and a lot of stories were rather experimental, but not all classic Sci-if is vintage and the Starchild trilogy less than most.

I really liked Pohl’s Gateway and Eschaton novels, which are 10 and 30 years later than starchild, so I put this one down as an early attempt, as this is a collaboration with Jack Williamson (who I have never heard of before) it’s also a question how much each has contributed, I put the first novel as 80% Pohl, the second as fifty/fifty and the last as 80% Williamson.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever read a science-fiction book that was so bizarre, so way-out, that you said to yourself "How did the author ever think of this? What was he smoking? Did she possibly eat a Fluffernutter and headcheese sandwich, go to bed, and dream the whole thing up?" It's happened to me any number of times, with such novels as Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore's "The Well of the Worlds" (1952), Robert Silverberg's "Son of Man" (1971) and Philip K. Dick's "Lies, Inc." (1983). And it has just occurred most recently again, as I got deeper and deeper into Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson's third installment of their so-called STARCHILD TRILOGY, namely "Rogue Star." Not that the first two books in this series had arrived with a dearth of imagination on display...far from it! In Book #1, "The Reefs of Space" (1963), we'd been shown an Earth some 200 years in the future, in which a vast computer ruled all of humanity in conformity with its Plan of Man; an age in which the titular Reefs, composed of the fusorian life-forms that fused hydrogen and spontaneously created life, were discovered beyond the orbit of Pluto. In Book #2, "Starchild" (1965), we'd learned that those microscopic fusorians, when absorbed into the heart of a sun, could actually transform that star into a sentient being! Surely, some way-out concepts here for any reader, and yet even those two novels could not have prepared Pohl & Williamson's fans for what was to come next.

Like its two predecessors, "Rogue Star" initially shone forth as a three-part serial in the pages of the digest-sized magazine "If," for which Pohl himself worked as editor from 1962 to '69; in this case, the June, July and August 1968 issues. It would then be released as a 75-cent Ballantine paperback in 1969 and as a $1.25 Ballantine paperback in 1973 (inflation in a nutshell!). Internationally, the book would see reprints in Portugal ('71), the U.K. ('72), Germany ('76), Italy ('77 and 2002) and France ('80). For those smart shoppers who wish to purchase the entire trilogy between two covers today, please know that such volumes do exist, from Doubleday ('77), Pocket Books (also '77), Penguin ('80) and Baen ('86). So many options for those who would like to experience this truly mind-blowing set of books!

Sharp-eyed readers of "Rogue Star" will note that this book is set a good 1,000 years following the events of Book #2; a time so far removed from the age of the Plan of Man and the all-powerful Planning Machine that those facets of human history are barely remembered. Mankind has spread itself not only across the Milky Way but across the nearby galaxies, as well. The bulk of humanity has chosen to accept the fusorian symbiotes into their own bodies, not only ensuring an exemption from disease and even death, but becoming able to be as one with all the other galactic citizens, robots and sentient stars similarly blessed. Yes, the result is a certain loss of individuality and assertiveness, but surely that is a small price to pay, right? A religion has sprung up that venerates the sentient star Almalik, spokesperson/spokestar of a 13-sun grouping in the Cygnus constellation, while an organization called the Companions of the Star (whose members remain clearheaded individuals by dint of never having received the boon of the symbiotes) exists "to do things for the members of the multiple citizen Cygnus that they are not free to do for themselves." Against this backdrop the reader is introduced to a short, balding Monitor of the organization named Andreas Quamodian, who is stationed on planet Exion Four, a few galaxies over. Andy and his colleagues had been studying so-called "rogue stars"...sentient stars that for whatever antisocial inclination of their own have decided to not become mentally linked to their fellows. Five years earlier, two of Andy's team, his beloved Molly Zaldivar and his nemesis for her affections, Cliff Hawk (I wish my name were Cliff Hawk!), had returned to Earth, and as this Book #3 begins, Andy receives a desperate appeal for help from Molly. It seems that Hawk had decided to create a miniature rogue star in a laboratory setting, and that his incredibly dangerous work was now very close to completion!

Wasting absolutely no time at all, Andy goes into full hero mode. He takes his flyer to the nearest "transflex station," to be warped across the light-millennia to Earth. After an inadvertent marooning on another planet, on which he finds a similarly marooned Monitor named Clothilde Kwai Kwich, Andy arrives on Earth (we gather that he is somewhere in the Southwest of what used to be the U.S.A.) and, with the help of a local kid, Rufe, ascertains Molly's whereabouts. But he is unfortunately just a wee bit late. Hawk, along with his Viking-like, blond-bearded associate Reefer (gee, I wish my name were Reefer!)--so called because he hails from those Reefs of Space--has just about completed his work. But disastrously, a sudden lab accident destroys the cave they had been working in, and the miniature rogue star is set free. When Hawk succumbs to his injuries following the explosion, the rogue absorbs him and gains a bit of his thought patterns. It thus becomes somehow attracted to the organized bit of organic matter known as Molly! When Molly is injured after our own sun (previously thought to have been nonsentient) hurls a series of solar flares at the cave mouth, the rogue cares for her. And like a lovesick schoolboy, the rogue--growing ever larger, more powerful and more knowledgeable as it assimilates the organic and inorganic matter around it--decides that it just cannot bear to be without its Molly. Eventually, it determines that it must now destroy the star known as Almalik, of which it has become aware, and that it will have Molly beside it as it lays waste to Almalik's multiple planets! It would seem that little Andy Quam, the redheaded kid called Rufe, and the burly Reefer man surely have their work cut out for them....

As you might be able to tell, "Rogue Star" really is a work of unfettered imagination by these two future sci-fi Grand Masters. In the final section of the novel, when our young rogue is grabbing on to a planet and tossing moons about in abandon, all in furtherance of its plan to smash an entire solar system, Williamson almost seems to be paying homage to his old friend , Edmond "The World Wrecker" Hamilton, in a segment that should appeal hugely to all fans of Golden Age sci-fi. The authors' description of a rogue star is quite fascinating, too: The rogue can’t be placed "...in any normal pattern, even for sentient stars. Its power is unlimited. But its motives are incomprehensible. Its sheer intelligence is just about absolute. But its ignorance of other beings--especially of human beings--is nearly total. Its resulting behavior can be appallingly naïve, or stunningly clever, or simply insane...." Of course, that description that Clothilde gives to Andy is valid for an eons-old mature star; our infant rogue here is a far different proposition, and one of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is getting to see the universe from the monster's (that's Molly's preferred term for it) nascent POV. Imagine a child's budding awareness, but here, we have an all-powerful child capable of seeing things as waveforms and energy fluctuations, and able to control them! Thus, our monster casually picks up and moves enormous pieces of equipment, teleports a refrigerator from a house 20 miles away so Molly can have something to eat, and takes mental command of the Reefer's pet sleeth (a flying, squidlike creature bred to attack and kill the pyropods of Books 1 and 2)!

This reader has always been a sucker for the parallel story-line device, and the authors here do give us a doozy. Thus, we continually shift between Molly's plight with the rogue star, and Andy's efforts to do something, anything to help her. In truth, the book does not provide the reader with as many action-filled set pieces as had the head-scratcher that was Book #2, but there are yet some memorable ones. To wit: Andy and Clothilde marooned on that planet with a giant red star hanging in the sky; the rogue taking Molly deeper into the cavern system, where the ancient Plan of Man once harbored an installation, now dangerously radioactive; the rogue taking control of an entire world to hurl into Almalik; and a look at the primary city on Almalik's third planet, and its citizens from all over the galaxy endeavoring to escape their imminent demises by getting into the transflex station. The book is also brimming with numerous instances of futuristic superscience, including Andy's air flyer, complete with very chatty computer; those wonderful transflex stations (go anywhere in five galaxies by just having someone punch in your coordinates...who needs a starship?!); and the musical instrument that Molly's aunt is seen playing, which transforms the player's emotions into sound, colors and scents. And the book also gives us a host of remarkable aliens to wonder at. Thus, three of Andy's fellow Monitors include a cloudlike, pink bubble gentleman; a "multiple citizen" consisting of a dozen, green springlike coils turning in orbit around one another; and a creature combining the physical attributes of an elephant, a shark, a kangaroo and a star-nosed mole! As I said, what were these guys smoking?

"Rogue Star" is also interesting in that the Reefs of Space, so fundamental an aspect of the first two books in the series, are barely touched upon here, and neither is Book #2's Starchild. Perhaps these three books might be more appropriately referred to as the FUSORIAN TRILOGY; at least, those microscopic entities do feature in all three of the novels. Another interesting aspect here comes when Andy wonders if retaining his individuality is a reasonable trade-off for sacrificing the perfect peace, health and communion that becoming one with the fusorian symbiotes brings. I'm really not sure which way I'd go, given the offer. Remaining me or becoming one with billions of other entities...that is a poser! And the authors' work here is also interesting in that, going against the reader's expectations, Andy, though he does his darnedest to be Molly's heroic savior, ultimately does not affect the outcome of events one way or the other. His intentions are good, but surprisingly, of little or no avail. Still, likeable and sympathetic as he is, we cannot help but root for him.

This final book in the trilogy does happily resolve some of the many questions left unanswered in Book #2, but not all. And it raises some conundrums of its own, as well; I'm still wondering why Clothilde and Molly are described as being almost identical. A consolation prize for Andy, perhaps? Pleasingly, this final installment does end with a couple of nice surprises regarding our own sun and Molly's ultimate fate. I'll wager no reader will ever see those coming!

I have very few quibbles to raise concerning Pohl & Williamson's hugely imaginative work here. Oh, there is the occasional bit of faulty writing (as when Cliff Hawk's face is described as "showing animation again for the first time"), and some of the hard-science patter verges on technogibberish...to these ears, at least. Take this passage, for example, in which Hawk describes the steady-state universe to Molly:

"...Truly infinite. Endless. Not only in space and time, but also in multiplicity...The exploding galaxies called quasars were the first proof of that--galactic explosions, resulting from extreme concentrations of mass. Space is distorted into a curved pocket around a dense contracting galactic core. When the dense mass becomes great enough, the pocket closes itself, separating from our space-time continuum...The visible quasar explosion...results from the sudden expansion of the remaining shell of the galaxy, when it is released from the gravitation of the lost core. Each lost core, cut off from any ordinary space-time contact with the mother galaxy, becomes a new four-dimensional universe, expanding by the continuous creation of mass and space until its own maturing galaxies begin shrinking past the gravitational limit, budding more new universes...."

Got all that? Dunce as I am regarding all things cosmology, I can't tell if this is made-up gobbledygook or actual theory based on, say, astronomer Fred Hoyle's research. Perhaps one of you will be able to tell me.

All told, "Rogue Star" surely does make for an interesting capper to the so-called STARCHILD TRILOGY. It was the last trilogy that Pohl & Williamson would collaborate on, although hardly the last time that they would work together. For example, the two would soon come out with their SAGA OF CUCKOO series--consisting of the novels "Farthest Star" (1975) and "Wall Around a Star" (1983)--as well as the novels "Land's End" (1988) and "The Singers of Time" (1991). And based on my experiences with their UNDERSEA TRILOGY and STARCHILD TRILOGY, I would love to read any one of them someday. But if those other books are anything like "Rogue Star," I might need to start smoking pot again....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of speculative sci-fi....)

[Andrea Sacchi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mah, it's not too bad and with a surprisingly nice finale, but all in all, it's kind of disappointing and frustrating.
Knowing a bit about the author(s), it is entirely possible that the extreme ineptitude of the 'hero', is the fruit of a deliberate effort, but still... let the poor soul rest!
Finally, once more, the hands of the two authors are not well mixed and the result is not the grand utopian/dystopian work that it clearly aims to be.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main conceit here is sentient stars - that’s right - giant balls of fusing gas that can think and use pseudopods of plasma to manipulate objects. In this, the third book of the Starchild trilogy, we learn that Cliff Hawk and a Reefer have allowed their rampant curiosity enough rope that they have created an artificial intelligence of plasma - a rogue star. Uninhibited by any moral code however, the rogue grows by absorbing any matter and energy around it, even if it is other objects that can think, like humans. Having killed and absorbed Cliff Hawk the rogue exhibits some of Hawk’s traits, like his love for the female human Molly Zaldivar, which makes the nascent star’s thought processes unstable, to say the least. Sallying forth into the fray is the doting figure of unrequited love, Andreas Quamodian, who tries desperately to save Molly from the clutches of the rogue star, which now feels threatened by the combined intellect of thirteen stars known as Almalik. On a crash course with Almalik the rogue star must learn some form of restraint or both it and Almalik will be destroyed. Jack Williamson & Frederik Pohl have penned a page-turner which unfortunately is very hard to suspend disbelief about.

[Ian Martyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my very first Frederik Pohl book, and I apparently did not choose a good one. Although it contains a great premise that could have been like Hoyle's The Black Cloud or Benford's Eater, I should have realized that this is not a hard sci-fi book. The book never delves more than surface-level into the concept of a sentient star, something that I was really hoping it would do. Instead, we're presented with bland, one-dimensional characters. The protagonist is poorly developed and seems to have only one thought, a romantic interest, on his mind that supposedly drives all of his actions throughout the entire story. There is an interesting religion that centers around the idea of sentient stars that could have been developed further, especially since it has ties to real-world phenomena in this universe, but this concept is left without much explanation, and it does not seem to present any real plot in the story. Overall, this could have been better as a longer book if it had taken the time to develop its characters and ideas more.

[Tom Britz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rogue Star is the third and final novel in the Starchild trilogy by two of science fiction's Grand Masters. Sadly, as much as I wanted to like it, it read as a silly story. Somewhat of a blend of pre-golden age SF and 1950's SF. The main character comes across as a total dolt. I finished it, so that is as much praise as I can muster.

[Marco Brambilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scenario potenzialmente interessante e qualche idea buona, ma la storia è semplicistica e piuttosto banale con personaggi non particolarmente interessanti

[Michael Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Starchild trilogy definitely got worse over time. This one takes place eons after the events of the first two in the series and bears very little similarity to anything within them. Some stars are sentient and share a communal mind with (almost) all other intelligent beings in the galaxy in something like a religious experience. A rogue star is one that has gained intelligence outside of this community. Take a newly birthed entity with cosmic abilities and forces to play with and give it the mentality of a spoiled child... I think you can see were the conflict comes from here.

Most of the characters have the merest shadow of individuality, and the few that do stick out aren't very likable. Our 'hero' is a pompous love struck fool who spends most of the time complaining and throwing a tantrum when things don't go his way -- oh wait he sounds just like the Rogue Star. The love interest here is definitely out of balance, and she does redeem herself (while saving a solar system) in a way... but not really.

Read the first book of the trilogy and enjoy it. Read the second book to be disappointed that the hope and expectation that the first one ended upon came to nothing. Read this one to be left wondering what was the point of it all.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third and final volume of the Starchild Trilogy, following Reef of Space and Starchild. It isn't the best of them.

[Steven]

Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

1980 grade C-

Series book R3

(In the Starchild trilogy)

with Jack Williamson

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great older SiFi story by 2 of the masters of the genre. Very recommended.