The Survival Game by Colin Kapp
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction at 12:08 on 5 February 2012
Science Fiction Book Club, 1976, 184p
I have fond memories of this authorâs 1972 novel The Patterns of Chaos which had some humorous aspects. The Survival Game is from four years later and unfortunately shows its age.
Two star kings are in dispute over whether or not to join those aligned with Earth in a federation. To resolve matters they agree to have their respective champions engage in a game of survival on the dangerous planet Avida. King Oontara chooses an Earthman, Colonel Bogaert, as his (unbeknowing) champion. His rival King Xzan has chosen a former resident of Avida as his. Meanwhile a Pretender to the throne of the emperor Kanizar has taken advantage of his absence to launch an attack against his capital planet. Kanizarâs wife and children escape and accidentally become Bogaertâs companions while they are trying to get to safety on Earth and stow away on the ship on which he is hi-jacked to Avida.
I suppose we are to take from the bookâs title that the bigger game in which all the civilisations (I use the word loosely) in the novel are engaged is of survival but the treatment can not carry such a weight. Neither is the staleness of the premise the only problematic feature, the characterisation is uniformly minimal – not to say non-existent. There is an attempt at humour, of a sort, as Bogaert is sometimes referred to as âColonel Bogeyâ.
The Survival Game is the sort of story where people from Earth are called Terrans and are infinitely resourceful and competent, effortlessly running rings around other inhabitants of the galaxy. In the past 35 years we have, thankfully, gone beyond that.
Itâs just possible that this was a send-up of a style of writing around at the time, but if so I do not recall it and it does not read as pastiche. File it in âof its timeâ and move on. Perhaps I should not go back to look at The Patterns of Chaos.
PS I noticed on Library Thing that The Survival Game has 4½ stars. Come on guys! You have to be kidding.
Tags: Colin Kapp, Library Thing, Patterns of Chaos, Science Fiction, Terrans
Paul Fraser
7 February 2012 at 10:51
I got this as as I was a member of the SFBC at the time. Didn’t think much of it then (77 or 78?) and I’d enjoyed the first part of The Chaos Weapon in Vortex, a SF mag of the time (subsequently got the entire novel but, IIRC, it didn’t hold up over its entire length).
Think there is better stuff you could probably still go back to: some of his shorter work was quite good including the Unorthodox Engineer series and some of the later NWISF stories.
Maybe he is just one of those writers you can’t go back to (Eric Frank Russell. Anyone) after reading 30 odd years of subsequent SF and mainstream fiction. Quite hard to cut from, say, Birdsong or Atonement to that.
jackdeighton
7 February 2012 at 19:09
Thanks, Paul.
I probably won’t go back to more Kapp, though.
Eric Frank Russell? Oh dear. Won’t Next of Kin stand up to a re-read? I remember finding it very funny at the time but I’ll admit he was never one for much characterisation.