blundered at a kind of pseudo-scientific setting—really no worse than much current and a great deal of past science fiction—Willy Johns makes no pretense at logical explanation—what price such gems as the "unfamiliar smell" of empty space, or "gravity wicks" which “draw gravity out of the air when there was too much of it" with complementary "gravity wafers" which replaced it by evaporating?
His voyagers, bound for Mars, are dragged away by a comet and land on a planet in another galaxy. Here a handful of them are followed through their adventures in a series of societies which, much like those Gulliver encountered, are to be taken as broad commentaries on some of our own. The jungle theocracy of the half-worm half-vegetable Kodliks is either the most subtle or the most savage of these, depending on whether you conclude that Mr. Johns looks on the church-centered state with as much disgust as you do on the Kodliks. The Gromliks, on the other hand, with their capital of Mscv (no vowels), offer a wholly recognizable parallel to Soviet savagery, and the merchant culture of their Vimlik neighbors—which seduces away as many of our explorers as the Gromliks killed—is overly close to our own. Finally, in the Optlik utopia beyond the mountains, we have what may be the author's message: a society built on the six freedoms—Freedom from Marriage, Salvation, Progress and Contributions, Freedom of Difference and Laughter.
A lot of rich imagination has gone into these societies, and our hero and his friends go through a terrific number of physical adventures, but, except in the repulsive Kodlik episode, they're not very convincing.
Finally, in "Atta," by Francis Rufus Bellamy (A. A. New York, 216 pp. $3.00), we have a story with no particular pretensions at satiric significance, which somehow just doesn't come off. Its hero, Brokell, is suddenly reduced to the size of an ant—it takes him nearly half the book to recognize the fact. He befriends an actual ant, Atta, and they live together in a walnut shell for a while before they are taken prisoner by another breed of ants, escape, reach Atta's own people, and find themselves again in hot water. The plot structure itself is very close to the "Tarzan and the Ant Men" formula, right down to the evil overlords and priests and the good but stupid gladiators, with a few vicious struggles in the arena.
If this was intended to give a mite's eye view of ant society, it doesn't succeed at all: the ants—who by some coincidence call themselves by the Latin names of their species—are hopelessly anthropomorphized. If it is intended as a satire on human society, it's rather fumbling. And if it's just a story—just science fiction—it could be more skillfully told.
Far be it from me to put up any "Keep Off" signs around the science-
THE REFERENCE LIBRARY
143
