Industrial Revolution (Review)
Industrial Revolution (Review)
was trapped. Lunch had fallen through (nothing else planned) and the doctor’s office called and said they could reschedule for today (always a wait there). Didn’t have my book. Didn’t have my tinytop. I’d have a couple of hours to kill and nothing to kill it with. I was entertainically unarmed.
Thank you, Project Gutenberg.
Hopped in and opened up Amazing or Astounding or something, downloaded it to my work computer, then stripped out a thirty page story. This I dumped into word, reformatted it and printed it into fifteen double-sided pages. And I was good to go.
So, yeah, this is a book review, right? Anyway, Industrial Revolution is a good story with a sixties feel to it, one where two partners on a shoestring budget have founded an asteroid processing station way out towards Jupiter. Everything is going great, ships are bringing them raw materials, everything good (outside of the usual jingoism Earth has towards its breakaways). But suddenly there is an Earth warship hanging around, sending officers to snoop. And then they launch a test missile by accident, one that will presumably loop slowly around and destroy the base. It must be evacuated.
The hero doesn’t think so. He thinks (correctly) that this is a trick to get his people off the station so it can be “salvaged”.
Yeah, as a socialist, usually I don’t care for stories where the heroes fight a repressive government. All this “live free or die crap” (you’ll take life as you get it and like it, I figure). But this one was pretty good and the hero came up with a sharp way of turning might back against itself. Also, the wording was clever – I particularly liked the line, “Leave the piratics to us”. Ha. But it was a good yarn from fifty years down the time hole, good for a couple of hours of space opera.
Wish I could tell you where I got it from – usually I include the link. But I just grabbed it out of a pulp magazine blind and don’t remember where I got it.