Irwin Allen (1916–1991)

Theodore Sturgeon was one of my first "favorite" SF authors. I remembered this novelization as being better than expected when I read it 40 years ago. Time to see if the "suck fairy" had done it's work. Happily, this still seems better than you could possibly expect for such unpromising source material. What I remembered was a lot more character development than Irwin Allen ever imagined, and the great opening line -- "At the end, the bottom, the very worst of it, with the world afire and hell's flame-winged angels calling him by name, Lee Crane blamed himself."

I got to talk to Sturgeon one-on-one in 1971 or so, and asked him about this book. What he remembered was being almost done but stuck trying to come up with a plausible replacement for the movie's Van Allen Belt catching on fire. He ended up calling Poul Anderson in the middle of the night and spending several hours on the phone working out something dimly plausible that would be consistent with the requirements of the plot.

That's what makes this book work. Sturgeon did his best to solve a multitude of problems with the script, both technical and human. He kept the skeleton but put all new muscles and flesh on the bones. In an interesting choice, Alvarez, the "mad man" the Seaview picks up on an ice floe who accepts everything as the will of God, is made a central figure but not seen on the page until nearly the end of the book.

This is not Sturgeon's best work, but neither is it his worst. Certain characters give multi-page speeches, mostly about human psychology. There's a disconcerting belief in the near-infallible great scientific mind. But I couldn't put it down and I enjoyed a great many set pieces.

Recommended, if you can find it.… (altro)