James Nicoll Reviews

After Doomsday
Poul Anderson
Baen, 1986 [1961,1962]
209 pages

Synopsis: The U.S.S. Benjamin Franklin has returned from a three-year mission to the galactic core to find the Earth utterly lifeless, far beyond the current known abilities of humans. The obvious suspects are some species of intelligent extra-terrestrial, with whom the Earth has been in contact since the 1980s. There are a number of suspects in this SF mystery, from the imperialistic Kandemiri to some group of humans using extra-terrestrial technology.

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The Byworlder
Poul Anderson
Signet, 1971,160 pages

Synopsis: it is somewhere between around 2002 and 2010. No significant wars have been fought in ages. Technology is advancing nicely and significant breakthroughs have occurred in the technology of teaching. The relative international calm was broken three years before the book opens by the arrival of a Bussard ramjet from Sigma Draconis. The ramjet is a hybrid ramjet/photon drive of extreme power, and the great powers are very interested in not letting the ship fall into any one nation’s hands, since the drive could be used to erase whole cities from existence casually. To everyone’s immense frustration, the ​“Sigman”, as the ET is called, is apparently not very interested in communication with humans, spending far more time zipping around the solar system than trying to talk to humans.

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