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WesternSFA

Now to the Stars
Timothy "Tiger" Clinton #3
by Captain W. E. Johns
Hodder and Stoughton, 190pp
Published: August 1956

This is the third of Captain W. E. Johns's interplanetary adventures with Prof. Lucius Brane and his crew and it's easily the least of the three. It has to be said that they're all inherently dated, given that Johns started writing them in 1954 and we really didn't know a heck of a lot back then about our own solar system. However, his inevitably doomed attempts to get solar science right weren't that awful in 'Kings of Space' and only a little more so in 'Return to Mars', if we're forgiving about how much he crammed into them. Here, on the other hand, he goes full-on planetary romance.

Initially, it's pretty grounded. Prof. Brane's Spacemaster II has fallen apart on reentry into Earth's atmosphere, what with being, you know, welded and all, so these next adventures happen in alien spacecraft. He's well-liked enough by the powers that be on Mino, one of the larger asteroids, or planetoids, as Johns calls them in this series, that they send Gator Faro of the Minoan Interstellar Exploration Squadron over to pick them up like his ship, the Tavona, is a space taxi. And then they borrow that ship for a tour of the planetoids, as authorised by the Minoan High Council. Note: the planetoids are the stars of the title. Johns knows they're not stars but he calls them that anyway, for romantic reasons only.

Given that the Minoans have been flying around the solar system in their spaceships since before the planet Kraka exploded to form these planetoids, it's pretty safe to assume that they're, well, pretty safe. What's less safe is the fact that Rex, who's growing up and getting philosophical, had decided to bring a kitten for his girl friend (if not strictly girlfriend) Morino, only to carelessly lose it on Mars. It wanders over to the canal and eats something infected by the professor's chemical solution to kill off the mosquitos plaguing the planet and so grew to massive size. Now, cute little Snowball is an exquisitely dangerous apex predator snow leopard.

Side note: given that, how do they think the ducks and chickens that they brought deliberately to start restocking the animal kingdom on Mars are going to fare? I don't know about you, but I'd be a bit wary about facing down a giant chicken on an alien planet. So much for learning lessons.

Well, they do learn a lot of lessons on their grand tour of the planetoids, even though there are a few wiser and more experienced heads on board to limit the damage. The captain is Borron, who also happens to be Morino's father, and Vargo, their old telepathic friend from Lentos, tags along as interpreter. That's all fine, but this is where the novel frustratingly shifts into episodic mode as they can't spend long on any individual planetoid until the one on which they're inevitably stuck. After all, this is ultimately adventure fiction over science fiction and that way lies adventure.

While this plays out relatively aimlessly for the characters and in consistently varied fashion, it's clear that Johns had something in mind for us and it's always dangerous when that becomes the driving force behind a book. Sure, books always tend to be written for the readers, at least those which aim to be commercially successful, but the characters go where the characters go, often to the annoyance of the authors writing them. If the author wants them to go here but they want to go there, then any author worth their salt will let them go there rather than here and adjust the rest accordingly. In this book, Johns limits where they want to go to "lots of planetoids" and then crafts all of those specifically for us.

Thus there's a pretty clear pattern. Borron flies the Tavona to [insert planetoid name here], they land and encounter [insert something weird here], so they can realise that [insert Earth-related relevance here] while also having to deal with [insert adventure-based danger here]. Eventually, of course, they manage to take off again and they can rinse and repeat on the next planetoid on the list. Some of these are quite fun and others not so much, but every visit is as fleeting as it has to be to make way for their next. It's like doing a two-week bus tour of the entire British Isles. It's certainly fun, but how much can you accomplish in "Next stop: York. You've got half an hour!"

At least Johns keeps these planetoids varied and invariably populated. While we're well aware in 2024 that we're likely alone in our solar system, unless there's something under the ice on Europa, Johns went the other way and suggested that life is abundant everywhere. That, combined with a Mino High Council non-interference policy makes this planetoid tour feel rather like a cruise to all the most dangerous spots on the planet to outsiders, visiting headhunters in Papua New Guinea, primitive uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Caprona (the Land That Time Forgot) and so on.

Except, of course, that Johns can vary aspects that he wouldn't be able to do much on our planet, like gravity level, light accessibility or the availability of important elements. Thus, he sets up his series of planetoids as being covered in ice or water and made of salt or glass, each of which has a fundamental effect on whoever lives there. This one's populated by three-foot-tall cannibals who identify as one of two tribes, constantly warring on each other with their emerald-tipped spears. That one, however, is populated by small men armed with crappy weapons made out of gold and big fast lizards with many legs. And the other one there is populated by immensely strong people who live in holes in the ground but don't eat meat so become preyed upon by a species they never ate.

Given this approach, Johns could have gone on forever, racking up hundreds of pages of planetoid after planetoid without any gain to the story except his ability to parallel something on Earth that he can warn us against. Fortunately, he was writing in 1956, so this book is only a hundred and fifty or so pages long, but it still feels like too much. At least he finds a way out of the other end of this planetoid cruise loop only halfway through the book by introducing a supernova.

It's not here, I should add. We still have our sun! However, its effects are notable to any ships out there in the gaps between everything. They have to stop and wait for these effects to pass, just as we do in Arizona when a haboob hits while we're driving. However, when that passes, we can still see the road we were on; the Tavona doesn't have that luxury and the crew have no idea where it has left them.

Fortunately, they land on a planetoid to figure things out and it turns out to be host to a spaceship from Ando that's been stranded there for two years, so they have the opportunity to help and gain from the experience of the Andoan crewmen. Unfortunately, it's on an elliptical orbit that's going to take it towards the sun and this particular circuit may be its last. No wonder Rex is getting a bit prone to melancholy. He's coming of age at a point where he's realising that planets can blow up and entire civilisations can be wiped out on a cosmic whim.

While I was generally disappointed with this third book, it has its moments and Johns does keep a broader story arc moving forward. However, it's very possible that its greatest achievement is to fill the gap between book two and book four, which I'm hoping will bring the series back up a level or two in quality. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by Captain W. E. Johns click here

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