Philip Athans’s Reviews > Invasion From Space > Status Update

How do you know an author is flailing his way through a plot? When he writes a sentence like this:

Rhodan decided to ignore the mysterious beings.

The giant dinosaur was fun!

…and then the default sexism, also in Base on Venus:

They established thirty hour time periods, and during two of them they advanced about fifty miles. This was a remarkable accomplishment, considering that they were traversing impenetrable jungles and were burdened with the presence of a woman.

Sneaking in a chapter of this book here and there between editing sprints.

Phil will READ again!

Perry is stealth building a fleet of FTL warships in different factories only making incomprehensible parts not knowing what they’ll eventually do when assembled:

"You see what undreamed of potential can be put into reality by mankind once they forget their differences. Of course, the world does not have any idea about all this, and it might be wise to keep this information to yourself for the time being."

I'm actually starting to struggle with the "benign" fascism at the heart of this series, which depends on this one guy (Perry Rhodan) effectively assuming complete political, military, and economic control of the entire world because he has access to advanced alien technology and is just a super cool hero guy.

Creepy.