Conscience Interplanetary: by Joseph Green

I've had Conscience Interplanetary on my bookshelf for years - it was a book I thought I'd never get around to reading, but a recent bout of flu left me in a restless frame of mind and sent me to the shelf specifically for this one. I had encountered Green before - not at novel length, but from his many short stories which would crop up quite often as I dipped randomly into vintage magazines.

Conscience Interplanetary consists of four such stories padded out with new material to comprise a full-length novel. The stories are quite good, if somewhat derivative of better work in a similar line by James White and Lloyd Biggle Jr; that is, cultural and anthropological surveys of alien worlds with a view to exploitation. Green's protagonist, Conscience Odegaard, is a member of the Practical Philosopher Corps, whose job it is to assess the intelligence of native species on newly discovered worlds. If the species is deemed intelligent, or has the potential of intelligence, the planet is designated protected; if not, the planet is open to the full horrors of colonisation, mining and general corporate mayhem. Of course, it is in the interests of business that as many planets as possible are open for exploitation, so the Practical Philosopher Corps face every kind of sabotage and subterfuge at the hands of the New Roman Party, which represents corporate interests. Odegaard must ensure that his professional judgments are also secure against unpicking by the New Romans, and this involves much politics back on Earth.

The original magazine stories are fine and, I presume, intact. They evince a good deal of sympathy and subtlety by the author on behalf of the disenfranchised universe; my own favourite was the alien plant which constructed from its leaves a woofer and a tweeter so that it might have a voice with which to protest. Where Conscience Interplanetary stalls somewhat is in its fixup material - it seems to conflict in tone and mood with the original stories, leaving the novel inconsistent. However, towards the end of the book the author manages an extraordinary turnaround, as Odegaard, returned to Earth, hunts a group of New Roman politicians who themselves are hunting Bigfoot in the American forest wilds. This is one of those thematic salvage points which are often to be found in genre fiction, and which transform ostensibly bad writing into good writing by sheer gall and wit, as well as being delightful.