Berkley Books, 1982, 429 p.

“Dana Ikoro, smuggler, stood facing Monk the drug courier across the floor of the starship Treasure.”

So begins this novel, the second have read by this author – and almost certainly the last.

More or less from the start of this I felt soiled by reading it. Not by the writing, even though it has to be said it is not the best crafted of works (that “smuggler” in the first sentence is an especially awkward piece of journalese, Ikoro’s occupation ought to be introduced to us much more subtly,) but by its content. We are implicitly asked to sympathise with a drug-runner as protagonist and later, by extension, with slave-holders – and therefore the system of slavery as a whole. Even worse, the character in the book who works most against the institution of slavery, indeed plots to overthrow it, Michel A-Rae, is presented as deranged.

Given these reservations I suppose the plot is well-enough worked out, the human motivations reasonable enough – though another of the main characters is a psychopath with incestuous leanings, which is a bit extreme. The writing, though, is passable at best with the info-dumping being particularly crude and intrusive.

As background we are told that centuries ago aliens had come to Earth and handed over hyperdrive equations and hence access to the galaxy. Moreover, “Repossessed of a frontier, humans set out to …. and to colonize (sic) the stars.” I note that humans here seems to refer only to those feeling the loss of a frontier. That’s me – and billions of others – counted out. Lynn goes on, “In most colonies criminals were either killed or ostracised,” (harsh) but one, Chabad, set itself up as a planet which would take offenders from the local sector, Sardonyx, and keep them as slaves. Hence the need for dorazine to pacify them.

Main viewpoint character Dana Ikoro has had his cargo of dorazine stolen from him by another drug-runner who turned up at the drop-off before him with the correct access code. This leads to a desperate attempt by him to rescue the situation by travelling to the planet Chabad, the sole market for dorazine, where it is used to the slaves submissive. He is apprehended and convicted (the evidence on his ship of dorazine storage suffices to incriminate him of smuggling) and enslaved on Chabad to the Yago family where he gets involved peripherally in the dynastic affairs of Chabad’s four ruling families and Rhani Yago’s schemes to gain direct access to the manufacture and supply of dorazine as well as Michel A-Rae’s plots.

Once again, and despite the appearance here of computers and something which is very much like Skype or Zoom but more akin to a video analogue of a phone call, we have tapes as the information storage medium of choice. The future is always different in ways unforeseen.

Pedant’s corner:- ostenstatiously (ostentatiously,) “permission to birth” (berth, spelled correctly later.) “They landed on Chabat” (rest of sentence was in present tense; ‘They land on Chabad,) hiccoughed (hiccuped,) Nexus’ (Nexus’s – every name ending in “–s” is treated with –s’ instead of –s’s to denote a possessive,) “she lifted a hand to wave him to her” (to wave to him.) “None of its citizens are free.” (None … is free.) Sherrix’ (Sherrix’s,) we are twice told that in a bar the first drink is free, (that only needs one mention,) there’s supposed to be a curfew on slaves but in a bar on a mission for his owner Ikoro “could see the lights of Abanat” hence it must be nighttime, but could wait “three hours more,” torques (torcs,) staunch (stanch,) “beneath his uxorious facade she sensed intelligence, caution, and malice” (uxorious means “excessively or submissively fond of a wife” which doesn’t make sense here, and there was no wife mentioned,) “there are facts that neither you nor any other Chabadese resident knows” (know,) “‘The dorazine formula is a carefully guarded secret’” (this is supposed to be the future. Are chemical analysis labs defunct, then? The formula for a drug is relatively easy to decipher, and was so even in 1982,) Enchantanter (Enchanter,) “‘labs have been unable to analyze [sic] the drug or discover how it is made’” (see comment above,) “it acquired gravity” (??? The mind boggles.) None of them were especially heavy” (None … was … heavy,) “in the way Ramas-I-Occad has been reticent” (had been,) distrubance (disturbance,) a missing end quotation mark after a piece of dialogue.

Hamlyn, 1983, 173 p

Lynn is one of those 70s-80s writers who published more fantasy than SF and as a consequence kind of passed me by. A Different Light is certainly SF rather than Fantasy, though.
Its main viewpoint character, Jimson Anneca, is an artist with incurable cancer, controllable unless he goes off-world. He is frustrated by this restriction. Given the chance to travel to the off-chart world of Demea to retrieve some Masks for a client, he accepts. Once there he and his companions finds this supposedly uninhabited planet has occupants who object to removal of their culturally significant Masks which turn out to be some sort of mind amplifier. Thereafter the story morphs into a tale about telepathy. A Different Light is pretty run of the mill fare even for its time and shows its age when talking about tapes for recording and playback of brain states.

Pedant’s corner:- “Now, does he know what he’s talking about? wondered Jimson” (has a question mark in the middle of a sentence; not only is it in the middle of a sentence it is arguably unnecessary,) “a gravity of two gees” (a gravity of two g,) “the rainbow changing of the ship before it jumped was like watching a real rainbow” (eh?) Nexus’ (Nexus’s, x2.) “‘The dust is debris that once were stars,’” (debris that once was stars.) “Her skill insured that” (ensured; is ‘insured’ used in this context USian?)