This is exactly the
type of story that I loved when I was a kid: tough guys in a
realistic future with a an exciting problem. It’s the sort of thing that filled up the junior anthologies I used to get from the school
library or the children’s sections of Titahi Bay and Porirua
libraries.
We've left the era of obscure journey men and we're into the Golden Age proper now. I wouldn’t say I was
ever a particular fan of Clifford D Simak, but his was one of those names I’d
spot in the contents list – alongside other reliables like
Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Pohl, Le Guin, Sheckley, Moorcock or Dick
that would indicate an anthology was probably worth picking up. It’s a name
that I associate indelibly with what I think of as ‘real’ science
fiction, and this is a great example of what I mean.
As regular readers will
know, I grew up in New Zealand. Because of the time and place I grew
up, my cultural background was one of colonialism. I suppose like
certain parts of America, we still felt a deep connection with the
heroic foundation stories of our nation, the whalers, the gold rush,
the New Zealand Company and the wave of immigration in latter half of
the 19th century. New Zealand’s recent history was like
the wild west – as you can see in Geoff Murphy's 1983 movie
Utu – and so we were primed for stories like that.
'The Asteroid of Gold' is
a story of prospectors and claim jumping. One might call it a
western, but I know that these same types of story were common in New
Zealand School Journals and primary school education. When we went on
holiday every small town had an early settlers centre (attached to
the library) where local tales of hacking civilization from the bush
were told and Maori were idealised as doomed noble savages (not
unlike the inhabitants of Mars).
SF is the ultimate
frontier fiction – I surely don’t have to remind you of the
credits of Star Trek here. That is one of the key reasons that SF
took hold so strongly in America. In the 19th century
America was driven by westward expansion, and in the early 20th
century science seemed to suggest similar frontiers, both the planets
in space and, as we’ve seen, the sub-atomic world.
This is a really great
little story in its own right. The main characters are optimistic
go-getters, forging a fortune from hard work and wits. The
antagonists are brutal and nasty, and the action writing is vivid and
real – these aren’t dignified biffs on the snoot, this is
a desperate fight for survival, not honour. In the end, the
characters survive through courage and scientific know how. Their
story is everything the deeply hidden machismo of my pre-pubescence
dreamed life would be, far away from the dreary business of rugby,
racing and beer that defined masculinity back then.
Themes: the frontier,
spaceships, futurism, capitalism, adventure, manliness.
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