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    The Wailing Asteroid: A Classic of Science Fiction
    The Wailing Asteroid: A Classic of Science Fiction
    The Wailing Asteroid: A Classic of Science Fiction
    Ebook156 pages4 hours

    The Wailing Asteroid: A Classic of Science Fiction

    By Murray Leinster

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The first sounds came at midnight -- a plaintive scream from an unknown voice in the vastness of space. Within hours the entire world heard the eerie throbbing. And in billions of earthbound minds the horror grew. Hours later, to the ears of a helpless world, the second message came...Earth's days were numbered. A horrifying epic science fiction novel!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWildside Press
    Release dateSep 2, 2014
    ISBN9781479403622
    The Wailing Asteroid: A Classic of Science Fiction
    Author

    Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster was the pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975), an American science fiction and alternate history writer. He was a prolific author with a career spanning several decades, during which he made significant contributions to the science fiction genre.

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    Reviews for The Wailing Asteroid

    3.5/5

    19 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Fun classic SciFi. Leinster's books are always enjoyable reads.
    • 4/5
      This little, nearly 60 years old novel was actually a delightful surprise in my reading endeavours venturing into classic SF, especially after the Basses and Aldanis I read last year. First, it's an exciting, gripping story about the lone scientist (who isn't really a scientist in this case) saving mankind from incomprehensible dangers. Screw the actual science, it was plausible enough to appease my suspension of disbelief. Second, Leinster is actually good at characterisation. His hero is a sympathetic weirdo, his female characters are more than lampposts, and his depiction of one of the first computer geeks of literature is frighteningly close to what nowadays is accepted as an established lifestyle.Third, women. It deserves an extra mention, especially in regards to the era, but two of the five main characters are women, and they're actually a backbone of the story. Especially Sandy is amazing, she doesn't take shit from her boyfriend when he's being a weirdo and carries totally her own weight.Fourth, romance. It's there, but so far in the background that it's really not. The book starts with a borked marriage proposal, and the first kiss happens in the very last sentence. Inbetween, we know that there's something, but all characters are so preoccupied with saving their own and humanity's existence that there's really no time for feelz - just like it should be. I wish modern authors would follow that example more often.Fifth, background and worldview. Not much, but every now and then Leinster sprinkles in little reflections on the state of mankind, and they're strangely clear-sighted , especially as he doesn't make the mistake to position the story or his characters in a cold war scenario. And it seems the world hasn't changed much between 1960 and 2018:It was not a comfortable settling-down, because the consequences were not likely to be pleasant. Earth was beginning to be crowded, and there were whole nations whose populations labored bitterly with no hope of more than subsistence during their lifetime, and left a legacy of equal labor and scarcer food for their descendants. There were hydrogen bombs and good intentions, and politics and a yearning for peace, and practically all individual men felt helpless before a seemingly merciless march of ominous events. At that time, too, nearly everybody worked for somebody else, and a large part of the employed population justified its existence by the length of time spent at its place of employment. Nobody worried about what he did there.In the richer nations, everybody wanted all the rewards earned for them by generations gone by, but nobody was concerned about leaving his children better off. An increasingly smaller number of people were willing to take responsibility for keeping things going. There'd been a time when half of Earth fought valiantly to make the world safe for democracy. Now, in the richer nations, most men seemed to believe that the world had been made safe for a four-card flush, which was the hand they'd been dealt and which nobody tried to better.Then the signals came from space. They called for a showdown, and very few people were prepared for it. Eminent men were called on to take command and arrange suitable measures. They immediately acted as eminent men so often do; they took action to retain their eminence. Their first instinct was caution. When a man is important enough, it does not matter if he never does anything. It is only required of him that he do nothing wrong. Eminent figures all over the world prepared to do nothing wrong. They were not so concerned to do anything right.
    • 3/5
      What an odd stew. Published in 1960, the plot and male characters would have fit right in a 1930s pulp. Like other early SF, there's an undeniable draw to the initial mystery set forth -- what is this signal from space and why has it been a part of Burke's dreams since childhood? How does he know how to invent a "negative inductance" space drive in his garage? Leinster plays fair and answers those questions, along with a trip to an asteroid long abandoned by some alien race, a lot of speculation about what happened and invading fleet of aliens bent on destroying our solar sytem. Short though the novel is, it would have been better even shorter, as Leinster hammers every plot point home several times. A few ingredients make this forgotten novel interesting, not counting that it was filmed by Hammer, from a script by John Brunner, that changed at least half of the story. First, there is the care with which Leinster develops the engineering of the space drive, and an impressively prescient passage where Burke describes to his crew mates the kinds of information useful for creating a private code to communicate with the US government. Unfortunately, this level of care is dropped when a techno-babble is needed to save the solar system at the end. Second is the portrayal of the two female characters. The social roles and conventions are solidly pre-1950s: hey are "the girls" and referred to by first name, Sandy and Pam, while the other three crew members are "the men" and referred to by their last names, Burke, Holmes, and Keller. Sandy's arc begins when Burke is about to propose to her at the beginning of the book, and completes when she gets her man at the end. Yuck. And yet, throughout the book Sandy, and to a lesser extent Pam, are presented as clearly intelligent, and often far more observant and deductively astute than the men. The third interesting and oddest element is the opening pages of Chapter 7. Earlier in the book, in classic Space Race fashion, the Russians launch a manned probe to the asteroid. Little more is said about this, until Chapter 7 describes the lone astronaut aboard that craft, as he flies from one refueling station to the next, on a mission that clearly is taking him nowhere but into the emptiness of space. Then it's back to our heroes. An odd but moving sidebar.Recommended for those interested in the evolution of SF.

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