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Title: Lucky Starr and the Oceans of
Venus
Series: Lucky Starr #3
Author: Isaac Asimov
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 174
Format: Digital Edition
Series: Lucky Starr #3
Author: Isaac Asimov
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 174
Format: Digital Edition
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Synopsis:
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The Science Council
has had a call for help from the domed Cities of Venus. They sent in
a top operative but they received a letter of recall from the Head of
the Science Council on Venus accusing the man of corruption. Lucky
knows this man and doesn't believe a word of it. He heads to Venus
but receives a radio communique from said operative warning him away.
Lucky and Bigman
barely make it to Venues, as their pilots mysteriously black out and
almost crash their craft. Lucky begins his investigation and is shown
a whole slew of incidents where rational people have performed very
irrational acts and then had no memory of it. The Head of the Local
Council is convinced it is a Syrian trick so as to steal the rare
Venus yeast formulas.
Lucky thinks
otherwise and after some hair raising adventures in the oceans, finds
out that telepathic frogs are the culprit! But the mystery doesn't
stop there. It turns out one of the engineers on Venus has learned
how to control the v-frogs (venus frogs. Get it? Pretty clever
right?) and has been planning to become dictator of Venus.
Thanks to Lucky and
Bigman, said Engineer is brought to Justice and the benevolent rule
of the Science Council continues apace. Heil Scyenze! * salutes *
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My
Thoughts:
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Maddalena
pointed out in the comments of the previous book that this was
written for middle graders. So when I went into this, I deliberately
kept that in mind and you know what? It worked wonders for my
expectations and how I read the book itself. I had a lot more fun
this time around. I could see myself as a 5th grader
eating this up with a spoon. I wish I had known about these way back
then but oh well.
A good rousing adventure tale. It also shows unabashedly, or perhaps
unknowingly(?), just how strong a belief in science as a force for
good permeated the society of the 50's. Science was going to solve
every problem, only the best of men would be scientists and they
would all get along because obviously, once you know something you
have to act rationally and logically to that knowledge. Phraaaaack,
what a naive outlook. Makes me wonder what Asimov was thinking at the
end of his life, as he was a humanist and from what I understand
didn't believe in God or any sort of afterlife.
Anyway, with that aside out of the way, this book gave me some hope
that I was sorely lacking from the previous. I am now looking forward
to the next couple of volumes instead of dreading them. Ha!
★★★☆½
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