Rogue Star: “Have you ever met that funny reefer man?”

Rogue Star by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

Have you ever read a science-fiction book that was so bizarre, so way-out, that you said to yourself “How did the author ever think of this? What was he smoking? Did she possibly eat a Fluffernutter and headcheese sandwich, go to bed, and dream the whole thing up?” It’s happened to me any number of times, with such novels as Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore’s The Well of the Worlds (1952), Robert Silverberg’s Son of Man (1971) and Philip K. Dick’s Lies, Inc. (1983). And it has just occurred most recently again, as I got deeper and deeper into Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson’s third installment of their so-called STARCHILD TRILOGY, namely Rogue Star. Not that the first two books in this series had arrived with a dearth of imagination on display … far from it! In Book #1, The Reefs of Space (1963), we’d been shown an Earth some 200 years in the future, in which a vast computer ruled all of humanity in conformity with its Plan of Man; an age in which the titular Reefs, composed of the fusorian life-forms that fused hydrogen and spontaneously created life, were discovered beyond the orbit of Pluto. In Book #2, Starchild (1965), we’d learned that those microscopic fusorians, when absorbed into the heart of a sun, could actually transform that star into a sentient being! Surely, some way-out concepts here for any reader, and yet even those two novels could not have prepared Pohl & Williamson’s fans for what was to come next.

Like its two predecessors, Rogue Star initially shone forth as a three-part serial in the pages of the digest-sized magazine If, for which Pohl himself worked as editor from 1962 to ’69; in this case, the June, July and August 1968 issues. It would then be released as a 75-cent Ballantine paperback in 1969 and as a $1.25 Ballantine paperback in 1973 (inflation in a nutshell!). Internationally, the book would see reprints in Portugal (’71), the U.K. (’72), Germany (’76), Italy (’77 and 2002) and France (’80). For those smart shoppers who wish to purchase the entire trilogy between two covers today, please know that such volumes do exist, from Doubleday (’77), Pocket Books (also ’77), Penguin (’80) and Baen (’86). So many options for those who would like to experience this truly mind-blowing set of books!

Sharp-eyed readers of Rogue Star will note that this book is set a good 1,000 years following the events of Book #2; a time so far removed from the age of the Plan of Man and the all-powerful Planning Machine that those facets of human history are barely remembered. Mankind has spread itself not only across the Milky Way but across the nearby galaxies, as well. The bulk of humanity has chosen to accept the fusorian symbiotes into their own bodies, not only ensuring an exemption from disease and even death, but becoming able to be as one with all the other galactic citizens, robots and sentient stars similarly blessed. Yes, the result is a certain loss of individuality and assertiveness, but surely that is a small price to pay, right? A religion has sprung up that venerates the sentient star Almalik, spokesperson/spokestar of a 13-sun grouping in the Cygnus constellation, while an organization called the Companions of the Star (whose members remain clearheaded individuals by dint of never having received the boon of the symbiotes) exists “to do things for the members of the multiple citizen Cygnus that they are not free to do for themselves.” Against this backdrop the reader is introduced to a short, balding Monitor of the organization named Andreas Quamodian, who is stationed on planet Exion Four, a few galaxies over. Andy and his colleagues had been studying so-called “rogue stars” … sentient stars that for whatever antisocial inclination of their own have decided to not become mentally linked to their fellows. Five years earlier, two of Andy’s team, his beloved Molly Zaldivar and his nemesis for her affections, Cliff Hawk (I wish my name were Cliff Hawk!), had returned to Earth, and as this Book #3 begins, Andy receives a desperate appeal for help from Molly. It seems that Hawk had decided to create a miniature rogue star in a laboratory setting, and that his incredibly dangerous work was now very close to completion!

Wasting absolutely no time at all, Andy goes into full hero mode. He takes his flyer to the nearest “transflex station,” to be warped across the light-millennia to Earth. After an inadvertent marooning on another planet, on which he finds a similarly marooned Monitor named Clothilde Kwai Kwich, Andy arrives on Earth (we gather that he is somewhere in the Southwest of what used to be the U.S.A.) and, with the help of a local kid, Rufe, ascertains Molly’s whereabouts. But he is unfortunately just a wee bit late. Hawk, along with his Viking-like, blond-bearded associate Reefer (gee, I wish my name were Reefer!) – so called because he hails from those Reefs of Space – has just about completed his work. But disastrously, a sudden lab accident destroys the cave they had been working in, and the miniature rogue star is set free. When Hawk succumbs to his injuries following the explosion, the rogue absorbs him, and gains a bit of his thought patterns. It thus becomes somehow attracted to the organized bit of organic matter known as Molly! When Molly is injured after our own sun (previously thought to have been nonsentient) hurls a series of solar flares at the cave mouth, the rogue cares for her. And like a lovesick schoolboy, the rogue – growing ever larger, more powerful and more knowledgeable as it assimilates the organic and inorganic matter around it – decides that it just cannot bear to be without its Molly. Eventually, it determines that it must now destroy the star known as Almalik, of which it has become aware, and that it will have Molly beside it as it lays waste to Almalik’s multiple planets! It would seem that little Andy Quam, the redheaded kid called Rufe, and the burly Reefer man surely have their work cut out for them…

As you might be able to tell, Rogue Star really is a work of unfettered imagination by these two future sci-fi Grand Masters. In the final section of the novel, when our young rogue is grabbing on to a planet and tossing moons about in abandon, all in furtherance of its plan to smash an entire solar system, Williamson almost seems to be paying homage to his old friend , Edmond “The World Wrecker” Hamilton, in a segment that should appeal hugely to all fans of Golden Age sci-fi. The authors’ description of a rogue star is quite fascinating, too: The rogue can’t be placed

…in any normal pattern, even for sentient stars. Its power is unlimited. But its motives are incomprehensible. Its sheer intelligence is just about absolute. But its ignorance of other beings – especially of human beings – is nearly total. Its resulting behavior can be appallingly naïve, or stunningly clever, or simply insane…

Of course, that description that Clothilde gives to Andy is valid for an eons-old mature star; our infant rogue here is a far different proposition, and one of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is getting to see the universe from the monster’s (that’s Molly’s preferred term for it) nascent POV. Imagine a child’s budding awareness, but here, we have an all-powerful child capable of seeing things as waveforms and energy fluctuations, and able to control them! Thus, our monster casually picks up and moves enormous pieces of equipment, teleports a refrigerator from a house 20 miles away so Molly can have something to eat, and takes mental command of the Reefer’s pet sleeth (a flying, squidlike creature bred to attack and kill the pyropods of Books 1 and 2)!

This reader has always been a sucker for the parallel story-line device, and the authors here do give us a doozy. Thus, we continually shift between Molly’s plight with the rogue star, and Andy’s efforts to do something, anything to help her. In truth, the book does not provide the reader with as many action-filled set pieces as had the head-scratcher that was Book #2, but there are yet some memorable ones. To wit: Andy and Clothilde marooned on that planet with a giant red star hanging in the sky; the rogue taking Molly deeper into the cavern system, where the ancient Plan of Man once harbored an installation, now dangerously radioactive; the rogue taking control of an entire world to hurl into Almalik; and a look at the primary city on Almalik’s third planet, and its citizens from all over the galaxy endeavoring to escape their imminent demises by getting into the transflex station. The book is also brimming with numerous instances of futuristic superscience, including Andy’s air flyer, complete with very chatty computer; those wonderful transflex stations (go anywhere in five galaxies by just having someone punch in your coordinates … who needs a starship?!); and the musical instrument that Molly’s aunt is seen playing, which transforms the player’s emotions into sound, colors and scents. And the book also gives us a host of remarkable aliens to wonder at. Thus, three of Andy’s fellow Monitors include a cloudlike, pink bubble gentleman; a “multiple citizen” consisting of a dozen, green springlike coils turning in orbit around one another; and a creature combining the physical attributes of an elephant, a shark, a kangaroo and a star-nosed mole! As I said, what were these guys smoking?

Rogue Star is also interesting in that the Reefs of Space, so fundamental an aspect of the first two books in the series, are barely touched upon here, and neither is Book #2’s Starchild. Perhaps these three books might be more appropriately referred to as the FUSORIAN TRILOGY; at least, those microscopic entities do feature in all three of the novels. Another interesting aspect here comes when Andy wonders if retaining his individuality is a reasonable trade-off for sacrificing the perfect peace, health and communion that becoming one with the fusorian symbiotes brings. I’m really not sure which way I’d go, given the offer. Remaining me or becoming one with billions of other entities … that is a poser! And the authors’ work here is also interesting in that, going against the reader’s expectations, Andy, though he does his darnedest to be Molly’s heroic savior, ultimately does not affect the outcome of events one way or the other. His intentions are good, but surprisingly, of little or no avail. Still, likeable and sympathetic as he is, we cannot help but root for him.

This final book in the trilogy does happily resolve some of the many questions left unanswered in Book #2, but not all. And it raises some conundrums of its own, as well; I’m still wondering why Clothilde and Molly are described as being almost identical. A consolation prize for Andy, perhaps? Pleasingly, this final installment does end with a couple of nice surprises regarding our own sun and Molly’s ultimate fate. I’ll wager no reader will ever see those coming!

I have very few quibbles to raise concerning Pohl & Williamson’s hugely imaginative work here. Oh, there is the occasional bit of faulty writing (as when Cliff Hawk’s face is described as “showing animation again for the first time”), and some of the hard-science patter verges on technogibberish … to these ears, at least. Take this passage, for example, in which Hawk describes the steady-state universe to Molly:

…Truly infinite. Endless. Not only in space and time, but also in multiplicity … The exploding galaxies called quasars were the first proof of that – galactic explosions, resulting from extreme concentrations of mass. Space is distorted into a curved pocket around a dense contracting galactic core. When the dense mass becomes great enough, the pocket closes itself, separating from our space-time continuum … The visible quasar explosion … results from the sudden expansion of the remaining shell of the galaxy, when it is released from the gravitation of the lost core. Each lost core, cut off from any ordinary space-time contact with the mother galaxy, becomes a new four-dimensional universe, expanding by the continuous creation of mass and space until its own maturing galaxies begin shrinking past the gravitational limit, budding more new universes…

Got all that? Dunce as I am regarding all things cosmology, I can’t tell if this is made-up gobbledygook or actual theory based on, say, astronomer Fred Hoyle’s research. Perhaps one of you will be able to tell me…

All told, Rogue Star surely does make for an interesting capper to the so-called STARCHILD TRILOGY. It was the last trilogy that Pohl & Williamson would collaborate on, although hardly the last time that they would work together. For example, the two would soon come out with their SAGA OF CUCKOO series – consisting of the novels Farthest Star (1975) and Wall Around a Star (1983) – as well as the novels Land’s End (1988) and The Singers of Time (1991). And based on my experiences with their UNDERSEA TRILOGY and STARCHILD TRILOGY, I would love to read any one of them someday. But if those other books are anything like Rogue Star, I might need to start smoking pot again…