Monday, January 19, 2009

Whipping Star-Frank Herbert

Whipping Star
Frank Herbert
Tor, Jan 20 2009, $14.95
ISBN: 0765317753

In the future mankind has met several alien species; forging the ConSentiency alliance to govern interrelationships. However, to control the dictatorship of perfect democracy run by bureaucrats, a top secret agency was formed. The mission of the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) is to cause problems for the ConSentiency government and its bureaucracies to fumble in reaction to their tossed figurative hand grenades with exclusions granted to individuals and to those agencies considered critical to everyone’s well being.

Someone is whipping stars; killing them. Now this sadist is targeting a star whose death will have consequences throughout the galaxy and probably the universe. When a Caleban beach ball lands on a remote planet, BuSab sends its best troublemaker Agent Jorj X. McKie to communicate with the life essence living inside; no sentient race has been able to communicate with the Caleban. Likewise the Caleban have tried also. They need help to save the universe from a bad legally bound contract they signed with a human sadist Miss Abnethe. The Caleban have become her victims of pain and death based on the contract. They need McKie to find a way out of the binding contract before the universe is whipped to death by Miss Abnethe.

This is a reprint of a 1970 science fiction thriller that seems so timely with the economy freefall while extracting moral objectivism to the extreme. Amusing and satirical, fans will enjoy McKie’s efforts to save the universe in between his divorce proceedings while trying not to become a masochistic victim of the wealthy sadist destroying the universe one Caleban whip at a time.

Harriet Klausner

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