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Collision Course:

It’s early but very competent Silverberg, a new wrinkle on the Cosmic Duel theme where humanity and one group of aliens are competing for control of our galaxy and a godlike force intervenes to force a settlement. Particularly entertaining in that the humans in Team Earth don’t get on with each other at all. Needless to say, no women characters appear except in flashbacks. ( )

“Collision Course” was written in 1958 and published in an Ace Double in 1959. It had been out of print for years before being re-released in 1982 as an Ace single.

Although I had read it many years ago, I was interested to revisit this “time capsule” of Science Fiction writing. Unfortunately, I found it suffers from superficial imagination and a plodding storyline. Impossible science fiction clichés such as instantaneous matter transmission and faster than light space travel are foundational elements of the story. On the other hand, more prosaic developments such as cell phones and desktop computers are missed.

The story begins after first contact with an alien life form. A team is dispatched to negotiate with the aliens. The team leader is a sociology professor with a specialty in sociometry. A religious neopuritan with a history of passionate disagreement with the sociometrist is included, as are a political understudy being groomed for an executive position in colonial affairs, and a biophysicist. The team seems to have been constructed by the writer for ease in creating conflicts. A more socially sensitive and realistic approach would have included a woman or women as team members (or at least featured them somewhere in the story). In a regrettable oversight, the author completely ignored the existence of women.

Numerous other anomalies abound. The five-man crew assigned to take the team to the negotiation is exhausted at the beginning of the voyage. The team had scouted the aliens on their previous journey and observed their activities on multiple plants without having been observed. The diplomatic mission lands 10-12 miles from the alien settlement. That requires a trek through the wilderness by negotiators who are used to instant matter transmission and have never walked such a distance under any circumstances.

The plot moves along at a plodding pace and most of the story is naïve and adolescent. “Collision Course” is best considered a mid-twentieth-century artifact that will be of interest only to scholars engaged in the study of the history of science fiction. ( )

Collision Course is a captivating short (under 200 pages) novel by Robert Silverberg. According to Silverberg’s introduction in the book, it was written in November 1958 and was first published in Amazing Stories, which at the time published short novels complete in one issue. In 1961, Ace Books published a paperback edition, which is the edition I have had on my book shelves for many years waiting to be read. In the year 2780 Earthlings had just developed a faster-than-light space vessel that had carried humans out of our solar system for the first time. The crew of that successful voyage of over ninety-eight hundred light-years discovered aliens for the first time. In addition, these aliens were colonizing planets, just as Earthlings planned to do. The Archonate, which consists of thirteen men who rule Earth and her network of dependent worlds, sends a team of envoys to negotiate a treaty defining which planets the Earth could colonize and which planets the aliens (Norglans) could colonize. Unfortunately, those negotiations do not go well for Earth, and it appears that a war between Earth and Norglan is inevitable. However, on their way back to Earth, the envoys discover that there is more to worry about then the unique and threatening Norglans. In addition, both the governments of Earth and Norglan are revealed to be unrighteous. However, each of the characters in the human team of negotiators and their flight crew are presented in a very personal and interesting way as they struggle with each other and with the aliens. I respected them, and even liked them. I was totally surprised by how much I liked this novel. I should have read it long ago, and I especially recommend it for any science fiction fan. ( )

Earth has expanded to the stars, colonizing planets left and right and traveling via "transmat" teleportation. However, someone has to first reach a planet "the slow way" via spaceship to set up the transmat device. When a faster than light ship is invented, the Technarch is excited that now even other galaxies are within reach. Unfortunately, the first test run encounters a race of aliens who are also colonizing outward, with the expanding spheres on a collision course for each other. A group of diplomats is sent to negotiate a treaty with the aliens with extremely unexpected results. What they find will challenge the firmly held idea of Earth's manifest destiny.
Big ideas are crammed into this short novel with much being made of the pride and arrogance of men, the cossetted and coddled elite who think a 17 hour journey of thousands of light years is interminably long, and how even the most rational and intelligent men can be led to prayer in a helpless situation. Silverberg has created characters mostly to advance these views: The Skeptic, The Diplomat, The Power Player, The Warmonger, The Religious Nut, etc. but you can't fault him for it since they do their jobs so well. The technology is somewhat taken for granted, and not unforseeable, given this was written in 1958. Today, it is much harder to believe these traveling devices will be forthcoming. That makes me sad, but it is pleasing to remember a time when we thought the stars would soon be forthcoming. ( )