After Doomsday by Poul Anderson (book review).
If you want to start a story on a downer, try it the way Poul Anderson did with ‘After Doomsday’. The Earth has been attacked and destroyed. You can’t get worse than that. Fortunately, man has, with alien assistance, been to the stars, albeit in single-sex spaceships. The USS Benjamin Franklin has a 300-man crew. The Europa has a 100-female crew.
Neither spacecraft is aware of the other, let alone who attacked the Earth, until two-thirds of the way through the book. I hope the men enjoy polygamy. They’ll have to, as they need to widen their genetic pool. Even so, they still need to decide where to regroup, whom to trust, and whom to contact. Certainly, earlier, the Franklin had the bigger problems with a slight mutiny and half the command crew killed.
They have a prime suspect, but things aren’t what they seem. Even the bird-like alien crew member, Ramri of Tantha, isn’t sure himself.
The end of the book is more chatter than deeds. I suspect, even back then, writers realising that they had to stay under 200 pages realised they had to compress towards the end. That is also pretty much a spoiler, but the plot is played somewhat as a detective story.
Poul Anderson (1926-2001) had an outstanding career as an SF author, and any of his books are worth a read. I picked this one at random with no idea what to expect. For a book that is under 200 pages, Anderson packs a lot in, but you are drawn into the events.
GF Willmetts
August 2025
(pub: Panther, 1962 although this paperback edition came out in 1965. 185 page paperback. Price: varies).
