I suspect everyone who reads fantasy or science fiction knows who Marion Zimmer Bradley was, whether it’s because of The Mists of Avalon, the Darkover series, her Sword and Sorceress anthologies, or her magazine. Anyway, she’s passed away, leaving Elisabeth Waters and Diana Paxson to guide her empire, but she’s also left about a zillion books spanning at least 45 years for us to read. This one, an early SF title intended for YAs, is available through Project Gutenberg as well as Manybooks.com (the first link, to Manybooks, takes you directly to this novel). It doesn’t appear that the copyright was ever renewed, and therefore is has passed into public domain.

Bart Steele has just graduated from the Starfleet Academy, and his father, who owns an interplanetary shipping company, was supposed to meet him at the station. Instead another man, clearly not his father but pretending to be, meets Bart and tells him to play along, or his life will be in danger. The Lhari, the aliens who made first contact with humans, appear to be looking for his father. Those same Lhari are the only race in the known universe that has discovered the warp drive, and they control all interstellar travel and transport. Why are they looking for Rupert Steele? What has he gotten himself into?

This book was published in the ’60s, and it shows. I don’t mean that in a bad way; it’s certainly a period piece. The science part of the science fiction isn’t bad, although there’s no accounting for relativity with faster-than-light travel — it all happens in real time like in Star Trek, as opposed to Orson Scott Card’s Ender. The ’60s-ness shows itself in random bits of dialogue, though. Bart says things like, “Would I!!” and is called ’son’ a lot. He reacts like Tom Swift, or the Hardy Boys, or perhaps Timmy from Lassie. Luckily, it’s cute and not annoying or terribly unenlightened.

One part of the science is definitely pure vintage, though: when Bart first sees the panel of instruments he will use as an astrogator (a stellar navigator), he stares at the rows of switches and knobs in awe. Well, by the time Star Trek: The Next Generation came around, science fiction had realized that probably we wouldn’t be using quite so many switches and knobs, like a World War II submarine, in the future. Had this novel been written today, obviously, he’d be staring at touch screens and monitors.

It’s a shortish work; it clocks in at just over 40,000 words. That doesn’t necessarily make it less than a novel, though, or not worth reading; it’s got a full and complex plot, with multiple characters and a couple sub-plots. I’d call it compact, perhaps; she manages to invent a whole world, a problem, and a solution in 140-ish pages. There’s a brief, out-of-time introduction that I thought was a bit unnecessary, but other than that, the book dives right into Bart, his world, and his story. It moves quickly, with very few points of repose. Readers who enjoy a lot of movement and action in their stories will definitely like this one.

Prior to this, the only MZB works that I’d read were The Mists of Avalon and a couple of the books with titles ending in -light: Ghostlight and Witchlight. If this work is representative of her early and/or science fiction works, I should probably read more of those. The novel calls itself “a juvenile science fiction novel”, and it would be appropriate for nearly all ages. Younger readers might find it slightly dated, but not even very much. 4.5/5 stars.