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Tenebra has a gravity three times that of Earth, a day temperature at the equator of 380 degrees centigrade, an atmosphere of water mixed with other chemicals, and a constantly shifting crust. There is life, with intelligence, on the planet, and a scientific expedition has been attempting to make contact. The scientists have devised a remote-controlled unit that lands on the planet, takes away 10 youngsters from their tribe and teaches them to communicate with it - then, when they have grown up, they will be the means of contact with the other natives. All is going according to plan until two children of the political officers who are watching the experiment from an orbit 160,000 miles out climb into the bathyscaphe that has been designed to land humans on the surface of the planet. They accidentally set it in motion and it soon gets too close to the planet's atmosphere to be pursued and controlled. So instructions are radioed for it to land. The native group, through the control unit, are then set to trace the bathyscaphe and carry out the technical work necessary before it can return to the parent ship. But many weeks are to pass and many setbacks occur before the climax of the rescue is reached.Close to Critical could be described to a tee in the words used by Books and Bookmen when reviewing Cycle of Fire "Another of Clement's superb descriptive novels of a totally alien planet."… (more)
User reviews
The story is reasonably entertaining, offering a few nice twists and a reasonably satisfying conclusion which leaves the people who thought they were running the show suspecting they are perhaps not as important as they had believed. I had a hard time believing that Fagin's family had managed to evade contact with the other natives for so many years.
Having said all that, the basic premise of this book is almost comically politically incorrect. A scientific mission's explorer robot encounters intelligent, if primitive, alien natives. The robot steals a bunch of their eggs and proceeds to raise a family of alien slaves to facilitate his scientific research. Now, I will grant you that he is a benevolent master who gives his servants helpful knowledge, but still.
Clement is a pro at writing a convincing alien world and describing how the physics, geography, flora, and fauna all work. He also brings in a surprising amount of humor (the alien diplomat, for example, looks like a giant otter and no one knew his son was only 4 because he also looked like just as giant of an otter). There is definitely some paternalistic colonialism going on here, but, for the era, this one is relatively free of racism and sexism. The 12-year-old Earth girl is a fun and rich character, and the robot-raised Tenebreans get a lot of personality, especially Nick, their leader, who drives much of the action on the planet. There is a lot of action, and the book moves along quickly despite all the science and planetary descriptions, and the ending is satisfying. Very enjoyable!
(Thanks for passing this one along, pops!)
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| Fic SF Clement |