{"id":4994,"date":"2009-12-28T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4994"},"modified":"2010-01-02T19:16:29","modified_gmt":"2010-01-03T01:16:29","slug":"book-report-jem-by-frederik-pohl-1979","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/28\/book-report-jem-by-frederik-pohl-1979\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Jem by Frederik Pohl (1979)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is not a book about the action figure<\/a>. Unfortunately.<\/p>\n

It’s a 1979 dark novel about power politics and national and bloc-level conflict. However, in this future, although people are still flying Trans World Airlines, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are part of a larger bloc called the Food Bloc which squares off against oil-producing countries (including Great Britain) and the populous countries (such as China and Pakistan). When astronomers discover a habitable planet with three sentient species on it, the three blocs send expeditions and the international tensions continue to rise until a shooting war breaks out on Earth and on the planet Jem.<\/p>\n

The book spends about eighty percent of the book introducing a number of characters of the different blocs and the different species, then about fifteen percent of the book killing those characters pretty offhandedly, and then ends with a small epilogue from some six generations later when the survivors on Jem have evolved into a new civilization that incorporates the species from the planet and a whole lot of proto-Gaiaist loving of Mother Jem.<\/p>\n

A pretty grim book, and unsatisfying. I think I’ll have to cleanse my science-fiction reading palate with some rocket-jockeying Heinlein.<\/p>\n

Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n