James Nicoll Reviews

G. C. Edmondson’s 1980 The Man Who Corrupted Earth is a stand-alone near-future space industrialization novel.

Screwed over by government and his back-stabbing son-in-law, Gus Dampier lost control of his company. Gus is not content to be put out to pasture. He and an ambitious Arab named Mansour have a cunning scheme that may make them billions, upend the economy and save oil-dependent Arab nations¹! If it screws over the WASP pricks who run the USA, all the better.

Their recipe for success begins ​“first, steal three derelict shuttles.”

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C.G. Edmondson and C. M. Kotlan’s 1984 novel The Takeover is a near-future thriller, written in those long-forgotten days when Americans were terrified that the Russians might somehow subvert America’s most basic institutions. Of course, these days we can look back and laugh at such ludicrous fears.

The Russian military adventure code named Cassandra was intended to exploit a moment of American vulnerability and win concessions for the Soviet Union. Even Cassandra​’s architect, Undersecretary of Agriculture and Commerce Pikusky, didn’t expect his little project to succeed to the extent it did. The Soviets wanted trade concessions. They got total conquest!

Or so it seemed.

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I expect that WWII-era Marine José Mario Garry Ordoñez Edmondson y Cotton (1922 – 1995), who published under the name G. C. Edmondson, is filed under obscure by this point. Twenty years after his death, the only book he wrote that may still have some currency is The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream, first published in 1965. Even this book has been out of print since 1981. Sic transit gloria mundi.

~oOo~

The Alice, based in San Diego, is one of the odder ships in the United States Navy. She’s a small sailing ship better suited to the USN of the pre-Civil War era than to the atomic age USN. What the Alice offers the USN is the proper test bed for Professor Krom’s experimental hydrophone array [1]. What the Alice offers its captain, Ensign Joseph Rate, is a chance to earn some points with senior staff by catching its crew using the ship as a party boat. The Navy is certain something hinky is happening, but, to its utter frustration, cannot prove it. It’s almost as if the ship manages to be in two places — out at sea, filled with naked women, and back in its slip where it is supposed to be — at the same time.

There is a logical explanation but the senior staff won’t like it.

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