THE STARCHILD TRILOGY

Reviewed 9/26/2011

The Starchild Trilogy, by Frederik Pohl

THE STARCHILD TRILOGY Frederik Pohl Jack Williamson New York: Pocket Books, December 1977				Rating: 5.0 High
ISBN-13 978-0-671-82284-?
ISBN-10 0-671-82284-3	442pp.	SC	$2.50

"Locked alone in his office, Ryeland went to work. A surging elation had swept away all his fatigue, and even the fear that Horrocks had brought. That single substitution of momentum for the unknown quantity in his own cosmological equations had given him the theory. A simple transformation described the field conditions required for the creation of new mass and the equivalent momentum. The problems of material and design were more troublesome, but by Sunday noon he had set up the complete specifications for a reactionless propulsion system with an effective thrust of half a million tons."

– Pages 148-9 (emphasis added)

And then, for some reason, Ryeland forgot he had made this breakthrough.1 He was declared a Risk — a danger to the Plan of Man — and forced to wear the iron collar given to all Risks (a substantial population): a collar fitted with 80 grams of high explosive, sufficient to decapitate him. It could be triggered by a radar signal at any time or, if not removed or reset, would end his life at the end of one year when its internal timer counted down.

But the most remarkable feature of this first novel in the trilogy, The Reefs of Space, is an entire ecology in the outskirts of the solar system. Inspired by Hoyle's Steady State Theory,2 it boasted a food chain based on "Fusorians": tiny creatures that fused the elemental hydrogen continually created in those empty spaces into heavier elements, releasing light and heat. These nourished a host of larger creatures, including the spacelings and predators that fed on them. The spacelings3 were the existence proof of that reactionless propulsion system. Not only did it move them around, but it kept a bubble of breathing air with them.

Reefs is the best part of the trilogy, in my opinion. Below are plot summaries of the three novels.

Plot Summaries
The Reefs of Space	© 1963	Steve Ryeland had always believed in the Plan of Man, and his brilliant engineering work had greatly aided its progress. But now, suddenly, he was branded a Risk, made to wear the Security Collar, treated like a slave, finally sent to the Body Bank to become spare parts for others faithful to the Plan. As he formed up with the others every day, waiting for the call to give up an arm, a leg, or some vital organ, he dreamed of escape to the place where freedom was still possible — the Reefs of Space. Most everyone said it was a myth, but he knew better. But what could he do about the Collar? Why was the Planner's daughter taking an interest in him, and what was her interest in the captive spaceling brought back from the Reefs?
The Starchild	© 1965	The Togethership, an enormous and heavily armed star cruiser, was assembled under direction of the Machine that implemented the Plan of Man. A duplicate of the Machine was placed aboard, and it was sent out to the Reefs in a bid to conquer or eliminate them. It was never heard from again. What happened to it? Where had the Writ of Liberation come from, and who was the Starchild, its supposed author? Some subversive faction must be behind this treason to the Plan. Surely the Starchild was a fiction, his threat to turn off the Sun for half an hour if the Writ was not honored an empty one!
Rogue Star	© 1969	The Plan of Man is no more. It's now well known that some stars are sentient, and capable of feats that make them essentially equivalent to deities. The races of many galaxies are united under Almalik, the star we know as Deneb, linked together by a symbiotic species of Fusorian, able through transcience gates to cross the enormous distances that separate their worlds in an instant. Yet there are heretics. Cliff Hawk is one. Hiding in a cave on Earth, a forgotten enclave of the Plan's military research, he is plotting disruption. He means to create a rogue force that only he will control — a rogue star!

And in fact Cliff Hawk succeeds, twice — a success that dooms him. The two rogues he creates ultimately engage in a battle royal that eliminates one, but does not end the story. (I probably should point out that these are not literally stars in the sense of bodies of gas and plasma thousands of miles in radius, fusing tons of hydrogen per second at their cores. Rather, they are clouds of electrons organized into coherent minds — small and of rudimentary intelligence in the beginning, but capable of growing in both intelligence and power very quickly. Stars are their natural habitat.)

This third novel provides puzzles and cliffhanger scenes in plenty, but I found it inferior to the first, due to some plot inconsistencies. The second novel seemed the weakest. All three are enjoyable (as is any work from Pohl & Williamson, after all!) but look to Reefs for a truly gripping and well-plotted story.

All the novels are Copyright © Frederik Pohl, but I think I see the influence of Jack Williamson more strongly in the second and third. They echo his theme of a man resisting a beneficient unifying force, but ultimately deciding he was wrong to do so, that I first met in Williamson's classic The Humanoids.

1 Actually, he was made to forget. For there were those who did not wish the Plan of Man to acquire the space drive Ryeland had conceived — at least not until they controlled the Plan. (And note that Ryeland, in the grand tradition of Arcot, Wade, and Morey, could all by himself make a fundamental breakthrough in physics and reduce it to practice in a few days.)

2 Now discredited, this theory of cosmology by the late astronomer Fred Hoyle posited the continual creation from nothing of individual hydrogen atoms in sufficiently empty regions of space. It was an alternative explanation for the expansion of the universe. (Recall that The Reefs of Space was written in 1963.)

3 Spacelings were portrayed as about as intelligent as dogs. In appearance, they somewhat resembled large seals: smooth-bodied, with golden fur and big, soulful eyes. I'm not sure, but I think there's a distant relationship to A. E. van Vogt's Nat Cemp — the Silkie of Space.