TV – Dune (2000)

Dune, by Frank Herbert, was first published as two separate serials in Analog magazine in 1965. It won the inaugural Nebula Award for best novel and shared the 1966 Hugo Award (with Zelazny's This Immortal). This immediate success was sustained, Dune remaining in print ever since, making it one of the best-selling SF novels of all time. Why has it been so successful? Partly because it has an original (if rather complex) plot; partly because it is extremely well-written by any standards, with evocative descriptive passages, excellent characterisation and perceptive dialogue; and partly because of the detailed world-building, including a quasi-religion and a detailed planetary ecology. In my judgment, this is probably the best SF novel ever written, leagues above the usual standard of the time. I reviewed it a decade ago on this blog (I advise reading that first unless you are already familiar with the story, otherwise some of what follows won't make much sense).

The success of Dune prompted Herbert to churn out several sequels: Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune. I think I read most of those at the time but only kept the first, and haven't yet given that a second reading; the standard fell away sharply. In fact, nothing else Herbert wrote compared with the original Dune, so he remains one of those authors remembered for only one book; but with a book as good as this one, that is still a notable achievement.

A feature-length movie of Dune was made in 1984. In a word, it was disappointing. As I said in my blog review of the book: "…that's what you get if you try to compress a densely-plotted book, which takes me around seven hours to read, into just over two hours." Recently I became aware that a US television adaptation of the book was made in 2000, so I bought the DVDs and have now watched them. Some spoilers follow.

I was hopeful about this one as the total running time (three 1.5 hr episodes) is double that of the 1984 film, which should have allowed enough time to make a decent job of the adaptation. However, I was wincing right from the start as characters and locations were introduced in a kind of box-ticking session. It did get better (or maybe I adjusted my expectations) and the extra time was put to some good use later on.

For the most part, the TV series followed the book quite closely. Curiously, some new scenes were introduced and one character was upgraded from peripheral to central: Princess Irulan. In the book, only the occasional explanatory extracts from various of Irulan's writings appear (a very good form of infodump IMO) until right at the end of the story, when as part of a deal with the emperor she becomes the nominal wife to the hero Paul, who prefers his Fremen girlfried, Chani. In the film Irulan makes a much earlier appearance and has a number of her own scenes as she pursues Paul, among other things. The problem with this is that Irulan (Julie Cox) is not only considerably more attractive than Chani (Barbora Kodetová), she also has a strong and lively personality whereas Chani is a bit of a nonentity. Frankly, any man would pick Irulan - it's a no-brainer. In the book this problem doesn't arise because Paul had been committed to (a much more appealing) Chani for years before meeting (an ice-maiden) Irulan, but in the film he meets a captivating Irulan first. To digress for a moment, I was reminded of the film of Lord of the Rings in which Aragorn rejects the overtures from Eowyn (a strong and powerfully appealing performance from Miranda Otto) in favour of Liv Tyler's bland, colourless Arwen. Those who pick the cast and direct the films need to be careful to keep the relationships credible.

Another less dramatic difference is that the screen Paul is years older than in the book, yet has been given a somewhat less mature and controlled personality; to start with he appears to be a relatively ordinary (if well-trained), but maybe somewhat spoiled, young man; perhaps a deliberate choice to allow more of the audience to relate to him.

One aspect of the story – in both book and screen versions – which seems slightly uncomfortable today is that the nearest current equivalent to the culture of the Fremen, the idealised desert fighters, would probably be found among traditional Arab tribes. Even some of the language is the same, as Paul is worried that his leadership of the Fremen might cause them to engage in a holy war – a jihad.

All in all, the TV series is sort-of worth watching but don't expect the experience to match that of reading the book – it doesn't come close. To be fair, I suspect that Dune is a particularly difficult tale to transfer to the screen, because there is such a lot of explanation incorporated into the text which can't be conveyed just through dialogue and expressions or body language. This could only partly be alleviated by voice-overs, because some scenes contain so much about what various individuals are observing and thinking. For example, a formal dinner held in Arrakis takes about 20 pages to describe, with spoken conversation being only a part of it. This leaves the screen version part-way between the book and a comic strip (sorry, graphic novel...) in that it consists of visual images with some words for extra information, with all of the subtlety and sophistication of the writing being omitted. To be blunt, the book is for adults, the screen version for a younger audience.

The conclusion – read the book!

Journey to the Centre of the Earth, book and 1959 film

This novel by French SF writer Jules Verne was first published in 1864, and is regarded as a classic of the genre. I probably read it as a young lad – it was the kind of book I devoured – but could recall nothing about it, so I decided to rectify this lapse in my memory.  I was prompted to do so by the fact that the well-known 1959 film version (there have been several others) was recently shown on UK TV, so I took the opportunity to compare them.

Readers of this blog who have only seen a screen version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth may be surprised to discover that the main characters of the book are in fact German: Professor Liedenbrock is the leader and driving force of the expedition, although the story is told in the first person by his nephew and assistant Axel. It begins in their shared home in Hamburg (which, technically speaking, was at that time an independent sovereign state of the German Confederation – Germany did not become a nation state until 1871). The professor discovers an old book by a legendary Icelandic explorer which includes a coded message giving directions to the centre of the Earth. Without wishing to give too much away (although the book title provides a clue!) the professor, Axel and Icelandic guide and assistant Hans Bjelke manage to find the route, following natural tunnels in a dormant volcano. It will be a long time, and only after many adventures, that they see the sky again.

This and other SF novels by Verne were best-sellers in their day (and have remained in print ever since) but were more than just entertainment. Verne was an enthusiast for the scientific developments of the time, and was writing in the aftermath of fundamental discoveries. Geology was a new science, with an understanding of the great age of the Earth, and the identification of geological periods, having largely taken place in 1820-1850; while Charles Darwin's sensational On the Origin of Species was published in 1859.  Verne's aim was to educate as well as entertain, so the story is packed with references to geological ages, fossils the development of life, and other scientific matters. While there were still considerable errors and uncertainties in the scientific understanding of some aspects of geology (without which this plot would have been impossible – particularly concerning an ongoing debate about the temperature deep in the Earth) Verne did his best to ensure that his story reflected current scientific thinking; I was in fact surprised at the detail and accuracy of much of the science in the book.

That does not mean that the story is just a large infodump. Verne was a skilled story-teller and draws the reader into the tale. His account of the journey from Hamburg to Iceland and his description of life among the Icelanders makes a fascinating historical travelogue in its own right; in fact, this is so convincing that he must either have visited the country, or had access to an extremely detailed source. There is room for character development too, despite the modest length of 184 pages: the professor is impatient and irascible, keen to press on regardless of the difficulties and dangers. Axel, on the other hand, is a timid and fearful young man who only wants to marry his sweetheart and live a peaceful life in Hamburg, and is appalled to be dragged into the adventure. The nearest to a hero is the impassive and imperturbable Hans, who saves the expedition from disaster on several occasions. There is also room for the occasional spark of dry humour, for instance when Axel qualifies his uncle's enthusiasm for old and rare books: "…but no old book had any value in his eyes unless it had the virtue of being nowhere else to be found or, at any rate, of being illegible."

One incidental source of amusement in my edition (Wordsworth Classics) is the occasional footnotes by the (unnamed) person who translated the story from French to English. These point to various inconsistences in the text, e.g. concerning conversions from metric to imperial. There is a particular problem with Verne's use of "leagues" to measure distance. The normal English custom (assumed by the translator) was that a league = 3 miles, but I note from Wiki that the measurement meant different things in different parts of Europe, and could be anything between 2.4 and 4.6 miles, which presumably added to the translator's confusion. It is worth mentioning that there are several different translations into English, of varying quality. These are discussed at http://jv.gilead.org.il/evans/VerneTrans(article).html

To most modern readers, Journey to the Centre of the Earth stands alone in its plot, but it the idea was not original. As mentioned in my review of Science Fiction: A Literary History posted on this blog in January 2018; "there was a separate sub-section of "hollow earth" stories about adventures underground – Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth was really a late revival of this". It was also about the last time that such a plot could have been used with any pretence of scientific credibility, before the Earth's structure and temperatures deep underground were understood.

Verne's story has certainly gripped the public imagination ever since, with other stories being influenced by it (most notably, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which was itself the inspiration for the Jurassic Park film series) and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar stories. It has also received a number of screen treatments, the best known being a Hollywood epic which emerged in 1959.

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The 1959 film is a widescreen spectacular in glowing colour, nearly 2¼ hours long, and was a financial success. The basic plot remains the same, with various alterations and additions to appeal to a wider (and specifically US) audience. The principal characters become Scottish instead of German; the young man in the expedition (played by Pat Boone) is bold rather than a wimp, and is keen to take part; there are not just one, but two, rival explorers trying to beat the professor (James Mason) to the entrance of the underground world, with murder and other shenanigans resulting; the expeditionary group is expanded to include an attractive woman (Arlene Dahl), and a pet duck (uncredited) for comical effect. And the film makers could not resist chucking Atlantis into the mix.

Missing from the film is the richly detailed information about Iceland, and much of the detail about science in general and geology in particular. Together with the inherent lack of a viewpoint character, these changes soften the focus of the story. However, the result is probably more family-pleasing entertainment than a straightforward following of the text would have been. For myself, I would be much more interested in reading the book again than watching the film.

According to Wiki, other screen versions include a 1993 TV movie, a 1999 TV miniseries, and a 2008 release in versions for both TV and the cinema which has led to sequels based on other Verne stories. I have no information about any of those, so comments would be welcome!

Wayfarers series, by Becky Chambers

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is the start of the Wayfarers series. The setting is in a future in which, having trashed the Earth, what is left of humanity is divided between settlements on Mars, and the huge Exodan fleet cruising a galaxy which is populated by several different space-going races; members of the Galactic Commons, which humanity had joined. The first viewpoint character is Rosemary Harper, a young woman who is fleeing some initially unspecified personal disaster. She joins the crew of the Wayfarer, a somewhat cobbled-together vessel which specialises in creating hyperspace tunnels for use by space ships, drastically shortening the time required to travel between star systems.

The story has that favourite SF theme – an old ship travelling the galaxy with a small but wildly assorted crew including representatives of several different alien races. Apart from the humans (the captain, Ashby Santoso, mech experts Kizzy and Jenks, and Corbin, in charge of the algae fuel supply) there is Sissix the pilot (from the lizard-like Aandrix race), Dr Chef the Grum (a doomed, six-limbed race) and Ohan the navigator, a Sianat pair – a race which was infected by the Whisperer neurovirus which made it able to track an accurate course even in the "sublayer" which had to be traversed until a tunnel was set up on the route. Finally, there is Lovey the AI, who runs the ship for them as the crew direct.

At the start it seems that Rosemary will be the principal character, but in fact she blends in with the crew and the viewpoint keeps hopping around between members of the crew and even the aliens they meet later; sometimes the viewpoint is that of a separate narrator rather than any of the characters. This means that the story loses a certain amount of focus, being more of a collective enterprise.

The story has a leisurely pacing at first, with time-outs taken for occasional infodumps in the form of long conversations between characters, which both fill out their personalities and explore social and ethical issues – a theme running through the novel.

Wayfarer is given the job of creating a new tunnel to a planet which is being fought over by different sections of a violent race. As they approach their goal the tension ramps up and the pace of the action accelerates. The conclusion is an emotional ride, paving the way for the next volume. By the end of the story, the reader has come to like and care for the disparate characters; perhaps oddly, the captain remains the least well-known of the crew, apart from his unusual relationship with a member of a different alien race, the beautiful Aeluon. I enjoyed the ride, and will be buying the next volume in the series – although I do have one belated reservation, as mentioned in the review of Volume 2 below.

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The strange thing about The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet which I did not realise until I came to pick up the second volume, A Closed and Common Orbit, is that I had forgotten what it was about within weeks of reading it; I had to read my own review in order to recall it. Even stranger, I read the first forty pages of Volume 2 one evening, and could recall nothing about it in the morning. Now, you may say that my advanced years are catching up with me and I don't doubt that is true; but even so this is a rather extreme example. I'll see if the story makes a greater impact on my memory as the series develops.

Reviewing Volume 2 necessarily involves some spoilers concerning the ending of  Volume 1. Incidentally, the story plunges straight into the action without any hints as to what had happened previously, so anyone who tries to start this series with the second volume will have trouble working out what is going on.

A Closed and Common Orbit is a rather strange sequel, being more like a spin-off, in that the Wayfarer and its crew scarcely get a mention, even though the story does follow-on immediately from the end of the first volume with Lovelace, the rebooted ship AI, being transferred to an artificial body which for all day-to-day purposes can pass as human. This is highly illegal, which leads to a certain frisson, especially as Lovelace (now renamed Sidra) is hard-wired to answer truthfully any questions put to her.

Most of the rest of the novel consists of two threads followed in alternating chapters: one concerns Sidra's attempts to find a place for herself in the multi-species environment of the plant Coriol, where she is being looked after by Pepper (a skilled technician who we met in the first volume); the other follows Pepper's childhood as a cloned scrap-sorter known as Jane 23. Jane escapes from the recycling factory at the age of 10 and spends the next nine years living among piles of scrap which cover this part of a planet. She is aided by the AI (known as Owl) of an abandoned shuttle craft which becomes her home. Eventually Jane escapes the planet in the repaired shuttle, and becomes Pepper (not a spoiler, this is signalled at the start).

It has to be said that there isn't a great deal of action going on. Jane 23's existence among the scrap-heaps is certainly memorable, largely as a result of a substantial part of the book being devoted to describing it in great detail. Meanwhile, Sidra's own existential issues as she struggles to "find herself" do rather resemble a typical teenager's experience, down to the fits and sulks which seem inappropriate for an AI.  As with the first, the second volume has various social/ethical issues scattered through it, giving an impression that the author is plugging her personal views. The most memorable concerns the child-rearing practices of the advanced Aeluons, who regard this task as far too important to leave to amateurs who have other things to do, so their babies are handed over to full-time professionally-qualified child-rearers.

The story was interesting enough to hold my attention even though it was really not what I expected of a sequel. Although somewhat lukewarm about the development of the series, I would probably have bought the third volume Record of a Spaceborn Few (this completist habit is hard to break!) but I have been tipped off that it involves yet another set of new characters and is rather disappointing, so I'm unlikely to be reading it.

The Tide Went Out, and The Darkest of Nights, by Charles Eric Maine

Charles Eric Maine (real name David McIlwain, 1921-1981) was a British author who published sixteen SF novels between 1953 and 1972, plus half-a-dozen detective stories using the pseudonyms Richard Rayner and Robert Wade. Four movies were made from his stories: Spaceways (1953); The Electronic Monster (1958); Timeslip (1956); and The Mind of Mr Soames (1970). In a comment on his entry in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, he said:

"I have always tried to find a theme or situation which no other author has thought of….most of my SF books are short-term projections from present-day fact and technology, looking, perhaps some 10 to 50 years ahead. I am particularly interested in the social and psychological impact of advancing science on crude Homo Sapiens."

In a review of his work in the same encyclopedia, Carl B. Yoke starts by saying that his "writing is distinguished primarily by its original and imaginative concepts" and concludes: "Maine is a journeyman writer who has created some excellent novels, but even if he were far less skilled, his ideas alone would make reading his works worth the effort."

Mike Ashley, in his usual informative introductions to the novels under review, noted that like contemporary British writers such as John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids), John Christopher (The Death of Grass), John Blackburn (A Scent of New-Mown Hay), and J G Ballard (The Drowned World) – all of which I recall reading in the 1960s – Maine wrote a lot about surviving global catastrophes of one kind or another. Both of the novels reviewed here fit into this category, which I regarded with mixed feelings as during my adolescence I was sated with doom and gloom fiction (mostly to do with World War 3 which, to be fair, was expected to happen any day). However, since the British Library was kind enough to send me their recent reprints of these two books in their commendable effort to make classic works available to new audiences, I hunkered down in my panic room surrounded by an arsenal of weapons and a year's worth of food and water (only joking!) and started reading.

                                                        

The Tide Went Out (first published in 1958) certainly has an original plot. The principal character is Philip Wade, a London-based journal editor, who finds himself the unwelcome centre of attention when an article he has written, linking reported oceanic disturbances to H-bomb tests on the sea bed, is abruptly withdrawn from his magazine. He finds himself drafted into a new government organisation concerned with censorship – controlling which news is allowed to be released to the public. Wade learns that his article was accurate; the H-bomb tests have cracked the oceanic crust, a progressive failure which is allowing the world's oceans to drain away into voids underneath the crust. That means no rain, no rivers, no seas, no ships bringing imports, and eventually no accessible water left at all – the world will become a lifeless desert. Except for the polar regions, with their vast quantities of ice.

So governments have set up heavily defended, nuclear-powered settlements at the poles, reserved for those who deserve it most (starting with government politicians and senior bureaucrats, plus their relatives and friends, of course). The rest of humanity is certain to die, but it is important to the maintenance of social order that this be concealed for as long as possible – or, at least, until those chosen to survive have been safely transported to their new polar homes. Wade's job makes him one of the chosen, but means that he has to remain behind until the last moment; his wife and child are transported to the arctic settlement to await his arrival.

Inevitably, the truth gradually escapes and civilisation begins to break down. Wade and his colleagues become confined to a defended complex of buildings in central London. The gradual disintegration of society is paralleled by Wade's own moral decline as he wrestles with his conscience over what is happening, while worrying about whether the government really means to evacuate him. Eventually, he is driven to desperate measures to survive.

The Darkest of Nights (published 1962) has a more realistic background – a highly infectious and deadly virus has developed and is sweeping around the world.  The virus is found to exist in two forms with mirror-image protein structures, designated AB and BA; the former is invariably lethal, the latter is very mild and confers immunity against the AB version (while making the carriers infectious).  The problem is that it is impossible to know in advance which form the virus will take in your body.

The principal characters are Clive Brant, an executive involved in making TV programmes, and his estranged wife Pauline, a scientist working for the International Virus Research Organisation. The viewpoint keeps alternating between them throughout the story.

Arrangements are made to protect privileged people (this time including virus research scientists like Pauline as well as politicians etc etc) by housing them in protected bunkers with elaborate arrangements to keep out the virus. Given that those with BA virus only remain infectious for a couple of weeks, it is expected that the virus will die out having killed off half of the world's population, after which the privileged can emerge from their bunkers; a relatively benign outcome by Maine's standards! In the meantime, research continues into a vaccine which will immunise the uninfected.

Extensive international censorship plays down the scale of the catastrophe to keep the population calm, but news of the pandemic plus the protection of the privileged leaks out, leading to popular revolts which soon become organised into civil war. The outcome seems to be settled until a new anti-virus takes hold, with unexpected consequences. As you may have gathered by now, Maine doesn't do "happily ever after" endings, and so it proves this time.

To sum up, these are serious, well-written, adult books with complex characters, Clive Brant and Philip Wade being quite similar; competent but rather self-centred, and able to shift their moral attitudes to meet the changing situation. Ethical dilemmas are a major aspect of these books, with "what would you do?" situations cropping up frequently. As with John Wyndham's writing, the readership of Maine's books spread far beyond the usual SF ghetto and they were apparently more popular with mainstream readers than with SF fans.

In hindsight, Maine may be regarded as a member of a kind of "brutal reality school" of British SF, capturing very well the tensions of their situations and the despair and sense of doom (especially with The Tide Went Out) from knowing that the fate of nearly all of humanity is inescapable and imminent. The downside is that these stories reminded me why I went off such dystopian fiction a long time ago – it's just so depressing!

A Plague of Demons, by Keith Laumer (2)

I reviewed this classic SF tale on this blog over eight years ago, but as it has recently been the book of the month for the Classic Science Fiction discussion group ( https://groups.io/g/ClassicScienceFiction/topics ) it is worth reviewing in the light of points raised in that discussion. First, extracts from my review from 2010:

This novel, first published in 1965, was one of my favourites from the period and I still have my well-worn 1967 paperback. It's several decades since I last read it so I thought I'd see how it stood up today.

I've already posted one review of a novel by this author (A Trace of Memory, reviewed 15 December 2007) which I started as follows:

"Keith Laumer (1925-1993) was a prolific American SF author who specialised in fast-paced adventure stories (of which the Bolo series, concerning intelligent tanks, is best known) and comic satire, notably in the Retief books about an interstellar diplomat. A Trace of Memory, published in 1963, is a stand-alone novel in the former category."

A Plague of Demons falls into the same category, being a short (170 page) and exciting adventure thriller. It is set on a near-future Earth and features a government agent, John Bravais, who is tasked with investigating the mysterious disappearance of large numbers of soldiers involved in the formalised battles then being used to settle disputes. He observes a dog-like alien - one of the demons of the title - decoying soldiers away from a battle and attacking them. He is able to kill one of these extremely tough creatures and take back evidence of its alien origin. His task then becomes the investigation of what is going on, and to assist him he is given a new programme of internal biomechanical enhancements which greatly increase his strength, endurance and survivability. The demons are quickly on his trail, assisted by their ability to manipulate people's minds so they can appear to be ordinary humans, and what follows is a running battle which ends up off the Earth as Bravais desperately tries to fulfil his mission against heavy odds. I can't say more without spoiling the surprises for any new readers, but I will say that this is the book whose popularity inspired the Bolo series.

The story is told in the first person with the laconic hard-boiled style of a Mickey Spillane thriller, including one-liner gems such as: "I was as weak as a diplomatic protest". There is also something of the flavour of Eric Frank Russell's novel Wasp, reviewed here on 26 August 2007. The introduction in particular reminded me of the start of a James Bond movie - I could visualise the film scenes as I read. In fact, the whole book would make a good film, with little need to change anything. Inevitably, the complex plotting and character development which feature in most modern novels are notable for their absence, but in this kind of story they would only slow the pace.

Some of the issues raised in the discussion group have wider implications for the way in which we read and appreciate SF – especially the classic variety – so are worth exploring.

One complaint is that the story is set in a future (date unspecified) in which the general technology level seems not very different from ours, but there are some improbably advanced exceptions (e.g. medical science, recovery speed from operations etc). This surely should not be a surprise, something like it happens in reality. If it were possible to bring SF fans from 1965 into the present day, they would be astonished: blown away by the amazing capabilities of gadgets like smartphones, but appalled by the number of expected developments which have not happened. Where is the free nuclear fusion power?  Why haven't the computerised production machines freed people to work only part time? Where are the permanent bases on the Moon and Mars, or the manned explorations of the outer regions of the Solar System?  Why are we still lumbering around in subsonic passengers jets when in 1965 the Mach 2 Concorde was on the drawing board – surely we should be using hypersonic planes by now? Where are the very high speed maglev trains intended to revolutionise ground transport?  Why aren't flying cars or strap-on jetpacks not routine forms of transport? Even worse, travel on our urban roads is often slower than in their time due to the traffic densities.

Progress is always uneven, and can happen in unexpected areas, while expected developments often fail to happen at all and most things only evolve very slowly. And the further you are down the socio-economic scale, the more slowly your life changes.

Which raises the wider issue of what we are prepared to believe (or not) in SF. Some suspension of disbelief is almost always required (with the exception of Mundane SF, in which anything beyond known science is banned), but we are notably inconsistent in what we are prepared to accept, and what we are not. Logically, developments which are contrary to some fundamental laws of science as we understand them should be the hardest to accept: that would obviously include faster-than-light spacecraft (that's most of SF wiped out in one blow); time travel; and anti-gravity. It also includes "psi powers" beyond human capabilities (goodbye superheroes!). Next would come capabilities which are not contrary to scientific laws, but which we really can't see any way of achieving for now (that's most of the rest of SF gone, particularly anything with an AI capable of exceeding the capabilities of the human brain in all respects). Finally come things which we can't do now but can see a path to doing in the future (that's the Mundane stuff, like setting up a base on Mars). In practice, though, people sometimes seem more ready to accept "impossible" things in a story rather than those which are merely improbable.

So, to return to A Plague of Demons. It includes alien empires with FTL spacecraft, and an anti-gravity harness (not alien; made on Earth). But what has caused more comment (apart from the medical capabilities mentioned above) are issues like the ability of Bravais, trapped in his massive battle tank, to regain consciousness, make mental contact with the aliens and even control some of them. (For the record, the consciousness bit is explained earlier in the story, the result of hypnotic mental training to split off a personality fraction so that Bravais can see the Demons for what they are, while the mental contact is initiated by the aliens – it is their method of command and control – but it turns out to be a two-way system that Bravais can utilise.)

What it comes down to, in my view, is that if you are really enjoying a story you will be prepared to suspend disbelief as far as necessary and to swallow almost anything the author gives you. If you don't like it, then it's not difficult to pick lots of holes in it, because most SF relies on the suspension of disbelief to work at all.

All in all, I see nothing here which is out of line for this type of fiction written at this time, and no reason to change my previous verdict:

I can well understand why I liked this book so much and can warmly recommend it to readers who enjoy the style and pace of these 1960s SF thrillers. It's such great fun, with an added dash of nostalgia!