Interstellar Patrol II: The Federation of Humanity - A Review

Anvil, Christopher. Interstellar Patrol II: The Federation of Humanity. Compiled and edited by Eric Flint. Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2005. 648 pages. Afterword by the editor. $26.00.

Christopher Anvil is a prolific science fiction writer with a long career. Most of his work was published in magazines, where it is unlikely to be available to twenty-first century readers. The stories in this collection had their first publication between 1958 and 1990 in such venues as Amazing, Astounding/Analog, If, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Eric Flint and Baen Books have, therefore, done us a service by issuing a series of compilations of Anvil’s work. Interstellar Patrol II: The Federation of Humanity is the third of these collections, and follows Interstellar Patrol (2003).

The first six stories in this collection concern the Interstellar Patrol, and all but the first, “The Claw and the Clock,” star Vaughan Roberts, sometime con-man and self-proclaimed nobleman turned secret agent. Since the sixth story in this group, “Warlord’s World,” is nearly 150 pages long, the Interstellar Patrol does fill almost half of the volume. These are stories in the fine tradition of adventure tales, whether horse opera or space opera, with an emphasis on cleverness, rather than sheer physical power and bravery. Roberts and his three sidekicks, Hammell, Bergen, and Morrissey, use disguise and trickery before they kick the doors down and charge into battle.

“Warlord’s World” is, as mentioned above, a long story, and it features one of the more interesting villains I’ve run across, Duke Marius. The Duke is whiny and self-pitying, as well as self-justifying, but he comes up with counters for every one of Roberts’ clever schemes to establish the rightful heir on the throne of Festhold. The rightful heir, Harold William, is brave, skilled with weapons, but bound by Festhold’s rules of chivalry, and limited by the Duke’s efforts to undermine and debauch him. It’s a good thing that Vaughan Roberts is there to take over Harold William’s mind –sort of.

What makes the Interstellar Patrol stories, and, indeed, many of the stories in this collection worth reading is their humor. Anvil reminds me in some ways of Robert Scheckley, whose “The Gun Without A Bang” is a classic of humorous science fiction. All of Roberts’ clever schemes keep failing because the Duke has arranged his defenses in depth, and seems to have an answer for every challenge. Eventually the Duke is worn down, but it is personal qualities, not technology, which defeat him.

The group of five stories in the Soldiers and Scholars section provide skeptical, and sometimes acerbic, portrayals of the failure of pure theory when it meets the “real world.” “Facts to Fit the Theory” and “Cantor’s War” both involve theorists whose theories fail to overcome the nature of reality. “Uplift the Savage” does the same thing more elaborately, and with a more explicit statement of the author’s viewpoint. Anvil here assails most development aid projects as being designed without regard to the psychology and social structure of the recipients. Since most “primitive” peoples understand perfectly well that there are no free lunches, they look askance at new technologies provided out of sheer altruism. The answer is to make them want the new stuff by making it hard for them to get it. A nicely done story that, by the way, ties in with some of the research I did for my Master’s degree.

The Trouble with Cargoes section includes five stories on the travails of interstellar shipping. These stories have a lot in common with any number of seafaring stories, with the officers trying to manage their fractious crews over long, boring voyages, with dangerous cargoes and irritating officials at every turn. I thought the best of the lot was “Trial By Silk,” a story about temptation. Paradise may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, at least not over the long run. “The Low Road” also has a good punch line.

The seven stories in The Trouble with Colonies section reminded me powerfully of Robert A Heinlein’s young adult novels Tunnel in the Sky and Farmer in the Sky. (The latter of which could have been retitled A Boy Scout in Space.) It’s pretty obvious that Anvil is familiar with the stories of the Plymouth and Jamestown colonies, as well as other frontier situations. Being a pioneer involves a lot of hard work and danger, and the danger isn’t always the nice, exciting kind that gets your adrenaline pumping. Being snowed in for weeks at a time, hit by unfamiliar plagues, let down by members of your own group, and having your crops ravaged by pests are bad enough. A shortage of women can be even worse!

As in the Interstellar Patrol stories, a lot of these stories find their resolution in the cleverness of the protagonist(s). “Leverage,” for example, is pretty much about what the title says: how to use the leverage you can get to overcome obstacles that are bigger than you are. “The Sieve,” on the other hand, is a grim little story drawing the moral that you can’t help the weaklings, and you can’t let them draw you down with them. “When the supply rocket landed next spring, the crew found eight healthy men and women, three babies, and on the edge of the clearing, ten neat graves with flowers growing around them.” One benefit of this collection is that Eric Flint has pulled these stories together in a group, and the cumulative impact is very impressive.

There are things Anvil doesn’t deal with at all in these stories, race being the most obvious issue. Perhaps that’s why Anvil chose to write stories of the far future, when all these problems will have been settled. This collection is as lily-white as any bunch of cowboy stories, and as all-male, too. Women are, by and large, sex objects and not players. The protagonists are all men with names like “Bart,” “Dave,” and “Al.” I’m not complaining; I liked this collection a lot. But if you are looking for diversity, this is not the place to look.