borrowning from CMSIX, a man is given a chance to move to a new world with a wheel-barrow full of goods. The bad news is the people transported before him are mostly brutal criminals.
Size: 176 KB (33,779 words)
Genre: Science Fiction
Sex Contents: Some Sex
Tags: Ma/Fa, Consensual, Science Fiction
Review by richardshagrin [other reviews by richardshagrin]
Reviewed:
This story is partly typical Howard Faxon. He tells you how to cook things, how to make things, how to grow things and there is very little sex. But the new and interesting part he blames on Cmsix, aliens abduct the hero (after a medical emergency kills him) and abduct lots of other earthmen, some of them (including the hero) get to take what they can carry, if they find it in one hour, to a new planet where stone age lizard men are the natives.
Naturally earth type civilization has broken down, every mans hand is raised against the others, and slavery or death is common. Much of the story is how the hero deals with this situation, finds caves to live in and a woman and children to live with. Towards the end it gets ecologically significant, the abducting aliens are replaced by other aliens who set up replicator stations to provide a wide variety of goods and foods. Our hero figures out how to deal with this new challenge and educate the natives to help them deal with new conditions. A great deal of thinking has gone into this story, and if you read it, you may want to do some yourself. I'm not sure this is a strong recommendation to read the story as it's not so much entertainment as it is cause for reflection.
I only get to give it a ten for plot, it's more complicated than any other story I can recall reading on SOL and it might deserve higher than a ten. There are some minor issues with technical quality, call it a nine. As a story with entertainment throughout and a satisfactory ending, I rated it good, which is a seven. Six is average, Seven is good. Eight is very good. Nine is outstanding. I try to give one ten a month.
There are reviewers who only review stories they love so tens abound. I try to review stories that are interesting and worth reading. If I only reviewed tens, other reviews would have already been written about most of those stories and mine wouldn't do readers all that much good. This story will make you think. I can't say that about all the stories I review.
