- Publisher : Tandem
- Publication date : January 1, 1971
- Language : English
- Print length : 128 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0426052234
- ISBN-13 : 978-0426052234
- Author: Poul Anderson
Planet of No Return by Poul Anderson is probably hard to come by unless it happens to be in your library. Originally published in the mid-1950s, this story covers the second expedition to a possible Earth-like world. The goal is to try to determine if it is a likely place for human colonization, and, what happened to the first ship that came here and never returned. The expedition is plagued with problems even before it begins with probable sabotage of the ship during construction, and a crew that seems destined to not get along. Once on the planet, they encounter a small group of natives, the Rorvan, that are at the flintlock stage of industrialization. Their language is difficult to decipher, and the psychomed officer is the only one who can make even partial translation. The Rorvan are enigmatic. They do not seem hostile, but do not seem really friendly either. Once a base camp is established, a few of the humans decide to go with the natives back to their village, which is a long trip that must be done on foot.
At a little over 100 pages, this book doesn’t have time to go deep, but it does a good job of inspiring thinking about what it means to be human and some of the prejudices and fears that come with humanity. It’s also an interesting peak into the past at the mindset of Anderson and other authors like him at the dawn of the space age and their thoughts on what that might mean for humanity. I have been working the shelves at my local library visiting and revisiting more of these classic Science Fiction stories. I would not go out of my way to find this out-of-print story, but I highly recommend you visit your library shelves and look for some of the old dusty books that look like they haven’t been checked out in years. You may find some treasures there that give you a glimpse of tomorrow…which is of course now, today, or maybe yesterday.
Matt Truxaw is the author of the hard science fiction thrillers: “Plastiphobia: aka Plastivore” and “Anthrophobia: A Teacher’s Tale”
They are both available on Amazon in Paperback, Kindle and are free to read with Kindle Unlimited.
When you read either, he would really appreciate a review/rating on Amazon or your favorite book seller/book reader site.
More about Matt:
He was born in Orange County California many years ago and he still lives there. He has been reading books for most of those years and writing up book reviews for the last few years. He gets most of his books out of the library so expect a lot of old science fiction classics book reviews and other science related reviews in addition to newer books he comes across.
If you want to be ‘in-the-loop’ on these and other works, you can follow his author’s page on Amazon or his Facebook page.
For more reviews and articles by Matt here on Amazing Stories (Click here).
