Triple Detente

by Piers Anthony

Earth and Kazo have created a unique peace. Kazo administers Earth, and Earth controls Kazo. Nothing is really complicated until both humans and Kazos discover the existence of a third intelligent race in the galaxy and try to bring them into the newly developing peace..

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Ebooks, Speculative Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published September 17, 1974

About the author

Though he spent the first four years of his life in England, Piers never returned to live in his country of birth after moving to Spain and immigrated to America at age six. After graduating with a B.A. from Goddard College, he married one of his fellow students and and spent fifteen years in an assortment of professions before he began writing fiction full-time.

Piers is a self-proclaimed environmentalist and lives on a tree farm in Florida with his wife. They have two grown daughters.

Reviews

[Karl]

DAW Collectors #118

Cover Artist: jack Gaughan

Name: Jacob, Piers Anthony Dillingham, Birthplace: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK, August 1934.

Anthony is most famous for his long-running novel series set in the fictional realm of 'Xanth'.

I quite enjoyed his "OMNIVORE" series.

In this book The question is how to make good government and self-interest congruent, and begins when Earth and another world ...conquer each other.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Triple Detente is an expansion of a novelette called The Alien Rulers which was the cover story of the March issue of Analog SF magazine in 1968. The cover was a very good one by Frank Kelly Freas. DAW published this expansion in September of 1974 (with a very bland Jack Gaughan cover) in September of 1974. I thought Anthony added a lot of social speculation and political philosophy and governmental gobbledygook and didn't expand the story itself very much, and that he should have just left it alone. It's not bad, it just drags and gets a bit dry, although his themes of diplomacy and war and the economy of genocide is really quite ambitious. It's not a good starting place for anyone wanting to give Anthony a try, but worthwhile for established fans.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my weekend reading project - I have had a bit of a slump in reading so I decided to get myself back on track. So where to start - I have been reading Piers Anthony on and off for as long as I have been reading - and I have seen he can swing between playful whimsy to high ideals and concepts. Sometimes they were together and other times they don't. I am not sure about this one - the book has the premise that an idea is presented and then challenged - and then a new solution is presented. it does get a bit wordy at time, when speeches are given and you wonder are they more for the storyline or for the reader (or in some cases for the author to hammer home what he is trying to say). Its not one Anthony's more famous books and you can see why but it is thought provoking and shows the more risqué side of his work - something which at times is over looked

[寿理 宮本 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book got me in trouble.

To be clear, putting forth a position on a theoretical issue ("What would you do if you ruled the world?") that mirrored some of the tactics used in this book got me in trouble.*

On one hand, the premise is that leaders from each of two (later, three) planets took on the role of Bad Cop for the other planets in order to commit eugenics/genocide so the remaining populace could live better is the laziest governing and makes no effort to actually improve the lives of the citizens beyond, "Well, less fighting over limited stuff."

This is why I also hate Endgame, because Thanos has ALL THE POWER and, instead of using it to make more resources for everyone so that no one has to fight for stuff as much, KILLS HALF THE UNIVERSE.

...

Er, spoilers?

On the other, that I recognised my impressionable nature (that WAS what I would have done had I ruled the world, but now I know better, even though the idea of ME ruling the world is stupid in the first place) and am now able to confidently declare such a strategy as unimaginative dictatorship means a lot, especially when Dr. STONE echoed the strategy I came up with: Use SCIENCE to enable the world to support everyone (terraform Mars, for instance, or STOP DESTROYING GOOD FOOD FOR PROFIT MARGINS). But I have a hard time being thankful for a bad influence being bad, like I have a hard time thanking the uninsured motorist who nearly killed my mother by running a stop sign for the out of court settlement that paid my way through college.

Anyway, two stars for spite. Even if I learned something from it (not from reading the book).

*The internet being what it is (or was--thankfully, no one in that forum quite stooped to the level of "swatting" that comes up in more recent times, over much less), it wasn't really "trouble" so much as being SEVERELY DISAPPROVED OF, although since I was slightly anonymous, it was still half the trouble I got into for a much less abstract declaration that I have since renounced and have been overcompensating for... but that's another story.

[Dean Howell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read a lot of Anthony, but this was mostly incoherent. In 1984, Orwell successfully disguises social ideas into a compelling story. In this book, Anthony disguises ridiculous social ideas and genocide into 250 pages of complete nonsense.

[Pierre Eklöf · Rating 2 out of 5]

En intressant idé. Resten skit.

[Colette · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.... The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. I am, as you know, unreasonable. What alarms me is my suspicion that the king is less reasonable than I."

Triple Detente is extreme space politics. Kinda dark. Kinda weird.

[Brent Moffitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really a sci-fi book at all. Interesting exploration of violence and revolution, but not much of a novel.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dull, needlessly convoluted early SF effort by Anthony.

[5greenway · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good fun for all its Malthusian, eugenicky, genocidey backdrop

[beentsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Piers Anthony was my first SF/F author and his books opened a huge new reading world for me. You never, ever forget your first.

I rather loved the socialist overtones in this book, and the interesting sense of equality allotted to females, but was more than a little horrified at the wholesale slaughter of sentient creatures to return planets to resource balance.

Also, I feel a distinct need for cake after reading this one. :)

[Sean Randall · Rating 2 out of 5]

though fascinating, this seems more a treatise on governance than a novel. The story is thin and the ending holds a flavour of deus ex machina. Scifi for the logician, maybe, but by no means hard by conventional parlance.

[Myq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Politics are easy from a child's viewpoint. Its the crazy adults that get everything backwards.

[Adam Steele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good old Anthony sci-fi, using some strange socialist ideas.

An analogy involving cake will solve any problem.

[SciFiOne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grade B+

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Young adult 10-15

[David Johnston · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a crackpot theory about how to fix society disguised as a novel, one of those utopias that would be a nightmare to actually live in.

[Therese]

to read!

[Howard]

14