#728 Operation Haystack- Frank Herbert

#728 Operation Haystack- Frank Herbert

This is another Frank Herbert story about an intergalactic Investigation and Adjustment team. We see some familiar characters like Umbo Stetson, and Lewis Orne. Instead of Orne being on some planetary mission, the story begins with him being transported back to the League Capitol planet or Marak in a life sustaining medical pod. His condition is critical, and it doesn’t look like he is going to make it.

Being mourned for his sacrifice and service, Orne impossibly held onto life. Little by little, he was patched up using “spare parts” and fourteen months later walked out under his own power. He was immediately given a new assignment spying on the High Commander’s family under suspicion for conspiracy of treason. There was a battle being waged between powers, planets, and genders, and with enough Herbert twists and turns to make any Sci-Fi reader satisfied.

Notable Passage: “No political compromise is ever totally right…You keep patching up things that always have flaws in them. That’s how government is.”

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#693 Missing Link- Frank Herbert

#693 Missing Link- Frank Herbert

After a ship crashes on a remote planet, two government sectors are racing to control jurisdiction and the fate of it’s inhabitants. Admiral Stetson is with a new recruit, Orne. They are part of an Investigation and Adjustment crew, but for the moment are preparing to visit the planet as an R & R unit (Rediscovery and Readjustment). This is a very high stakes situation and could go catastrophic at any time.

“We both know we’re going to rediscover one planet too many some day.”

Orne is dropped onto the planet to make contact, evaluate the local population and discover the fate of the lost ship. If he gets in any trouble, they come get him and blow up the planet. If he discovers a warlike civilization, they come get him and blow up the planet. If pretty much anything weird happen, they come get him and…well, you see the pattern. 

The whole operation rests on the wits and logic of a rookie operator.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#665 You Take the High Road- Frank Herbert

#665 You Take the High Road- Frank Herbert

Lewis Orne was on his first assignment re-discovering and re-educating a far off planet. He is to make sure there are no dangerous signs of a warring society. Without any evidence of war or armies or aggression he presses the panic button and reinforcements show up, but with no evidence, he is on the hot seat. He can’t prove that these people are violent, but he has a hunch, and has to prove that to the investigator from I-A. The I-A officer is skeptical, assuming that Orne is nothing more than a mere nervous first timer. When he asks what gave him a bad feeling, Orne responds:

“They have no spirit, no bounce. No humor. The atmosphere around this place is perpetual seriousness bordering on gloom.”

After investigating himself, the I-A team finds subtle but sure-fire evidence of military presence and Orne is validated and promoted. Would these people even know what peace was without war?

“The most important point on the aggression index: peaceful people don’t even discuss peace. They don’t even think about it. The only way you develop more than a casual interest in peace is through the violent contrast of war.”

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 27

#637 Old Rambling House- Frank Herbert

#637 Old Rambling House- Frank Herbert

It was a deal too good to pass up. The Grahams lived in a trailer, once finding it fun to ramble around. Traveling from place to place. Now Martha is pregnant and finds all the traveling too much. They have been contacted by a strange foreign couple—from Basque, they say—who wish to trade them their house for the Grahams trailer. It is an extremely unbalanced deal, the house is worth at least ten times the trailers value.

When they go with the Rushes to see the house they feel uneasy, but when they see it, they are overwhelmed. Once they agree to the deal, something strange happens. The house shakes and they are flying through space. The deal they made was not for the house but for their identities. They are now part of a galactic society in a different galaxy than earth. They must take over the Rush’s position in this society as traveling tax collectors. 

There is one final snag the Rushes did not take into account, and it will become a problem when the baby gets older.

Rating: 7-7-6-7 Total= 27

#609 A Matter of Traces- Frank Herbert

#609 A Matter of Traces- Frank Herbert

This is the official minutes for a meeting of “The Special Subcommittee on Intergalactic Culture.” They are convening to look into the finances of the “Historic Preservation Teams of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs.” Thankfully this story is more entertaining than such a meeting would actually be if it really existed.

The testimony relates the story about a cultural and planetary pioneer. On a new planet with strange vegetation and animal life he invented a devise to harness a large amoeba-like beast of burden to help clear land. The device is simple and obvious, but it wasn’t so obvious at first:

“Sometimes the obvious isn’t so obvious until someone’s showed it to you.”

More fun than the sci-fi look at fictitious planets, is the satire about government committees. This one has an official saboteur in order to have built-in excuses for not getting anything done.

Notable Passage: “People had to help each other…and they had to live honest because their lives depended on it. It’s only after we get civilized that we feel free to cheat.”

Rating: 7-6-7-7 Total= 27

#574 Cease Fire- Frank Herbert

#574 Cease Fire- Frank Herbert

Corporal Hulser was stationed at an Observation Post in a remote area. He used to be a chemist and was probably too smart to be a military grunt. At the moment, he was under attack by something that his sensors thought was too small to be a human. He survived the attack but was struck by a brilliant idea.

“It was one of those things that had to remain dormant until the precisely proper set of circumstances.”

It took some convincing by his superiors, but his idea, if successful, could end the war. He thought of a way to project onto a field, and explode any organic munitions, including gas, oil, coal, etc. This would make attacks by weapons using these things impossible. He was given the green-light to produce this projector in a project called Operation Big Boom.

When his invention proved successful, the military brass were not happy. They knew the harsh truth that better weapons didn’t put an end to war. Once one side made something, so would the other. This would only change the way war happened.

“Violence is a part of human life. The lust for power is a part of human life As long as people want power badly enough, they’ll use any means to get it—fair or foul!”

Rating: 7-9-9-7 Total= 32

#546 The Nothing- Frank Herbert

#546 The Nothing- Frank Herbert

The world is in an era of “Talents.” Due to radiation, some humans have developed advantageous mutations. There are at least eight of them such as Pyros, Prescients, Telepaths, etc. The problem is that evolution may be flattening all that out, making a natural type of correction:

“The direction of development was toward the average…Genius parents tend to have children less smart than they are.”

In other words, the talents are disappearing. When Jean, a Pryo, storms out of her father’s house to let off some steam at a bar, she is in way over her head. She tries to play a role from a movie she has seen but has trouble flirting with the man sitting next to her. He is Claude, a Nothing, a man with no talents; he has escaped from a local preserve and is on the lam.

A police force barges in and tales them both. Claude’s father is a prescient and sees into their future, they will be married. Their blood lines give them a 70% chance of having a mutant offspring. They are trying to save the mutatios and avoid slipping back to a “pretalent civilization.” The problem, as they say, is choice.

Rating: 7-7-6-7 Total= 27

#518 Occupation Force- Frank Herbert

#518 Occupation Force- Frank Herbert

In the classic style of a Frank Herbert Sci-Fi story, we open with a General being awoken and told that an alien ship is orbiting earth and is about to attack. Now all the leaders of the world have gathered. Unaware of the alien ship’s intentions there is a break of two camps:

-Majority opinion: a hostile ship on a mission to conquer earth.

-Minority opinion: a cautious visitor from space.

When a scout ship arrives and asks for landing instructions the communication is surprisingly polite and spoken in perfect English. The “aliens” that greet the General also appear to be human. When the visitors begin talk of colonization of Earth, it is not at all what the General thinks. Surprise…mind=blown!

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total=28

#490 Pack Rat Planet- Frank Herbert

#490 Pack Rat Planet- Frank Herbert

Coogan has been recalled to his home planet, where he is the successor to run the library of congress. “It is the repository for all the reported doings of every government in the history of the galaxy.”

He finds out that there is a new government, aptly named the Gentle Ignorance Party run by Leader Adams (don’t you just love the names given by Sci-Fi writers?) This government has sent down a man to investigate the need for a knowledge repository. The Library takes up the whole planet and it’s motto is:

“This planet is devoted to knowledge and research.”

That offends the new government that believes: “Since knowledge is unhappiness, even the word is distasteful when used in a laudatory manner.”

Coogan is promoted when the director is killed by the government, and now it is Coogan’s main focus to save the library and knowledge from decimation. He does so by a clever gambit of semantic and obeisance.

Notable Passage: “Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total= 31

#469 The Gone Dogs- Frank Herbert

#469 The Gone Dogs- Frank Herbert

This story is about man’s unstoppable need to control the natural world, the hubris to think we can do it without consequence, and the destructive power of material desires.

An amateur biologist makes a horrible decision. He used radioactive carbon egg to mutate hog cholera and then implanted it into a coyote, releasing the infected animal back into the wild. Not understand some basic tenets of natural science, he thought that he could eliminate the dangers coyotes pose to ranchers without doing any damage to other animals. Instead, the entire canine population on earth is about to be wiped out, coyote’s, fox, and the most important to humans, dogs.

“Each man kills the thing he loves.”

Humans reach out to their alien connection on Vega who specialize in bio-genetics, but a series of political snafus and human selfishness makes saving dogs near impossible. With the death on one species, another may be born.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#448 Looking For Something- Frank Herbert

#448 Looking For Something- Frank Herbert

The Chief Indoctrinator for Sol III (earth) has come back from a vacation to find that his replacement has inadvertently allowed a human a glimpse of reality. Paul Marcus is a hypnotist, and while performing his mind tricks one night he came across a dangerous thought:

“What if this—our whole lives, our world, everything we see, feel, hear, smell, or sense in anyway is more of the same. A Hypnotic delusion!”

Both he and his subject had the same thought, boring into their consciousness, a thought that was dead on the money. Humans have been put under strong hypnosis by an alien Denebian race, and now it was being threatened by this lapse in “indoctrination.”

Those two were put straight, given stronger hypnotic commands, and the threat is gone. But alas, just as that problem was fixed, another threat pops up:

“A Hindu creature has seen itself as it really is…The creature went insane as per indoctrination command, but most unfortunately it is a member of a sect which worships insanity. Others are beginning to listen to its babblings.”

Frank Herbert, ladies and gentlemen!

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34