REVIEW: The Universe Against Her
Feb. 6th, 2016 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Universe Against Her: James H. Schmitz Ace, April 1979
Set in the future among the most privileged, powerful people in the known universe as imagined in the late seventies, there’s a slight sense of paleofuturology about this story. The main character is Telzey Amberdon (all the names are a bit like that), a fifteen year old little madam, I mean genius-level law student. She’s confident she looks good in her cut-off shorts, which to me shouted male writer in the 1970s.
She’s also finding out that she can telepathically contact her pet Tick-Tock, who turns out to be a crest cat and is also a pawn in a family conflict, which Telzey capably resolves, using logic and her previously unrealised psi abilities. But on her return home, by which I mean to her home planet, she is identified by the secretive Psychological Service, which is interested in her, as it is in all Psis.
As Terzey makes several discoveries about her abilities, she has to battle an impulse, which she realises was placed in her mind, to get in touch with the authorities about them. Meanwhile, those telepathic abilities may allow her to help a friend who is in danger, but at what price?
The book is very interested in the ethics of psychic abilities – if it were easy to go into someone’s mind and rearrange personalities or implant compulsions ‘for the better’, and it was impossible to trace, why not? What else would you not stop to do?
This is set against a backdrop of a Federation of multiple planets where the law only applies so far – if rich and powerful members decide to register a private war against each other, as far as the Federation is concerned, it’s been registered and no prosecution for murder will apply. Terzey’s mother is a politician, her father a banker – he’s the less conservative one under a facade, part of the reason why she’s so self-confident, and he’s okay with discovering his daughter can communicate with non-human telepathic beings and go into people’s minds and tinker with what she finds there. One of Terzey’s problems is whether the Psychology Service she’s starting to deduce more and more about will be okay with her abilitie.
It’s a short book and a quick read. I didn’t find the main character that sympathetic until she finally started drawing a moral line in the sand. The dynamics and technologies of her universe are lucidly set out, even if the opening chapter leaves you confused – there’s a lot of ‘she used what to do what?’ as everything is new, and the technology, as I said, is what was imagined in the seventies (wrist communicators!). The psi stuff is described in metaphor, which works quite well. But the title is patently ridiculous. The universe is not against Terzey; it’s not as unfair a fight as all that.
Set in the future among the most privileged, powerful people in the known universe as imagined in the late seventies, there’s a slight sense of paleofuturology about this story. The main character is Telzey Amberdon (all the names are a bit like that), a fifteen year old little madam, I mean genius-level law student. She’s confident she looks good in her cut-off shorts, which to me shouted male writer in the 1970s.
She’s also finding out that she can telepathically contact her pet Tick-Tock, who turns out to be a crest cat and is also a pawn in a family conflict, which Telzey capably resolves, using logic and her previously unrealised psi abilities. But on her return home, by which I mean to her home planet, she is identified by the secretive Psychological Service, which is interested in her, as it is in all Psis.
As Terzey makes several discoveries about her abilities, she has to battle an impulse, which she realises was placed in her mind, to get in touch with the authorities about them. Meanwhile, those telepathic abilities may allow her to help a friend who is in danger, but at what price?
The book is very interested in the ethics of psychic abilities – if it were easy to go into someone’s mind and rearrange personalities or implant compulsions ‘for the better’, and it was impossible to trace, why not? What else would you not stop to do?
This is set against a backdrop of a Federation of multiple planets where the law only applies so far – if rich and powerful members decide to register a private war against each other, as far as the Federation is concerned, it’s been registered and no prosecution for murder will apply. Terzey’s mother is a politician, her father a banker – he’s the less conservative one under a facade, part of the reason why she’s so self-confident, and he’s okay with discovering his daughter can communicate with non-human telepathic beings and go into people’s minds and tinker with what she finds there. One of Terzey’s problems is whether the Psychology Service she’s starting to deduce more and more about will be okay with her abilitie.
It’s a short book and a quick read. I didn’t find the main character that sympathetic until she finally started drawing a moral line in the sand. The dynamics and technologies of her universe are lucidly set out, even if the opening chapter leaves you confused – there’s a lot of ‘she used what to do what?’ as everything is new, and the technology, as I said, is what was imagined in the seventies (wrist communicators!). The psi stuff is described in metaphor, which works quite well. But the title is patently ridiculous. The universe is not against Terzey; it’s not as unfair a fight as all that.
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Date: 2016-02-06 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 05:15 pm (UTC)The Witches of Karres is iffy for me because the set up has an adult man (the POV character) traveling with a girl who's somewhere between ten and thirteen (I forget exactly) and very powerful psychically/magically. The girl asserts pretty constantly that they are going to get married eventually. The guy finds that more than a little creepy and keeps trying to figure out how to take the girl home, but the book seems to support the girl's view.
Schmitz started writing in the 1940s, according to Wikipedia, and a lot of his stuff came out in the 1950s and 1960s. It looks like a good chunk of the Telzey stories came out of the 1960s.