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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9604858" data-attributes="member: 7044704">Random used book pile of Murray Leinster scifi for the last few days.  Med Ship Man (a re-read) and Pariah Planet (both medical scifi, a subgenre I generally enjoy) were okay, albeit dry and a little slow-paced.  They compare very poorly to White's Sector General in that there are no sentient aliens at all, and the puzzles are much more sociological or criminal than medical in nature.  Also Talents, Inc. which I absolutely hated, largely owing to POV character being one of the most defeatist protags I've ever read.  He wins the Big Space War and gets the girl (and a planetary kingdom) in the end, but has to be dragged to the finish line and doesn't really deserve any of it.  And the worst part is his superiors are even more mopey.  "Oh no, we effortlessly annihilated an enemy fleet that outnumbered us ten to one, now they'll really be mad at us!" is a thing they keep harping on.  Maybe you should try winning some more instead of giving up even harder?  Especially since you'll be handed not one but two insurmountable technological advantages your foes can't even guess exist by midway through the book.Not since the Retief books have I seen so much incompetent leadership in one place, but those were deliberately satirical where Talents plays it straight faced all the way through.It's also remarkable that a book written in 1962 chooses to boldly declare that computers can't possibly plot an intercept vector for missiles that are employing (gasp!) varying acceleration.  Only a unique mathematical "Talent" can possibly do such a thing, and then hand out tables for the gunners to use to accomplish such a feat.  No doubt run off on a mimeograph machine while they were at it.Gah.  Bad taste in my mouth.</blockquote>

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