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| Cover art by Rick Sternbach |
| Manseed Jack Williamson New York: Ballantine Books, September 1982 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-345-30742-2 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-345-30742-9 | 217pp. | HC | $10.95 | |
The little ship drifted for millennia, its fusion engines disabled by a chance collision with some bit of interstellar debris. But it still had power, and its computer was functional enough to generate a Defender. Product of advanced genetic engineering, partly man, partly machine, this being represented the ultimate hope of survival for the human race. Its powers made it a veritable superbeing: Needing no air or food, it was essentially immortal and far more resistant to damage than the humans after which it was modeled. Yet it faced formidable obstacles. Some of them were internal: It lacked its own source of energy, though it could absorb energy from sunlight or any electromagnetic radiation. Also, its composite mind threw up memories of the five men whose abilities had been tapped for its programming — memories that constantly beset it with the tangled emotions they had known in life.
The Manseed Mission (my term) was to prevent humankind's extinction by scattering human colonies throughout the stars the little ships could reach. Powered by fusion, fitted with advanced computers and sensors, carrying sophisticated genetic laboratories, they were sent out in large numbers. This would be a huge accomplishment for the entire Earth; but in Williamson's tale it's done by five men recruited by a wealthy eccentric woman. In addition to the incentives of high pay and a chance to work on their dreams, they all fall a little bit in love with her. This is revealed in glimpses of work on the project that Williamson interleaves with the main story.
That action takes place about a million years in our future. We never learn whether Manseed was necessary, or whether Earth survived the intervening time unscathed. It's all about this one particular Defender struggling to get a colony going on the planet his ship picked out. The reason he has to struggle was a surprise, but inherent in the logic of the story.1 Coming on top of the originality of Williamson's basic concept, it made the story doubly enjoyable. Along with super-high tech and plenty of action, Manseed's novel ideas make for an engrossing read.
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