PLANET

In Garmisch’s SF series starter, a humanoid people called Quantums fight a centuries-old war with a neighboring world and an onslaught of genetically engineered monsters.

In a star system “about 24,990 light years from Earth,” enclosed in an impenetrable web of trapped asteroids, are three spacefaring civilizations. Quantums, who are much like humans but with extra thumbs, once neared extinction. Now they live a harmonious way of life that sustains themselves and their planet; they exert perfect mental control over their bodies (and, consequently, sculpt themselves into conventionally attractive bodybuilder and centerfold-model types) and can live for millennia. Their enemies, with whom they’ve been fighting a 5,000-year war, are the greedy Strokes, who aim to conquer and exploit the star system. The primatelike Imeons are in thrall to the Strokes but nurture their own ambitions, driven by profit and obsessive sexual reproduction. Quantums are organized into husband-and-wife teams, with none more formidable than rugged Alboro and “blonde bombshell” Vesta. The latter is heroically killed in action, but not before investing Alboro in a divinely inspired plan (involving God and Satan themselves) to smite the Strokes and rehabilitate the Imeons. The Imeons’ DNA manipulations spawn monstrous Biotoap life forms, which pose an even worse threat. Garmisch delivers an elaborate, lively yarn that has a thoroughgoing, often-comical Tom Robbins-like tone, featuring tributes to Laurel and Hardy, crude jokes, and characters who talk like cartoon cowboys. Violent, hard-combat SF is also present, and the first act firestorms with exotic, sometimes-phallic weapons; ships, tactics, and troop movements; and action-scene rumpuses featuring frequent capitalization, random italics, some boldface text, and barrages of exclamation points. In more relaxed intervals, the dialogue effectively expounds on the fateful, difficult path that led the Quantums to spurn consumerism and conventional government for a “Spirit-of-Life” ethic—an aspect that seems crafted to sway today’s Earth-based readers. However, lest those same readers think that this an apocalyptic climate-change sermon, the author also includes a “Closing Note” that targets what he calls “Fictitious Lying” about global warming.

Foot-stomping SF with a complex cosmology beneath its boisterous facade.