Men, Martians and Machines (edition 1985)

The very bad and cheesy misadventures of a mixed planet crew on various planets.

Men Martians and Machines : Jay Score - Eric Frank Russell
Men Martians and Machines : Mechanistria - Eric Frank Russell
Men Martians and Machines : Symbiotica - Eric Frank Russell
Men Martians and Machines : Mesmerica - Eric Frank Russell

Hot trip.

2 out of 5

"They've got rocketships, they decapitate lobsters, and in all probability they're instinctively hostile towards strangers. I can see them offering us a big tentacle, yes, right in the masticatory orifice!"

3 out of 5

No feeding the trees.

2.5 out of 5

"Space-conquerors, bah! Nutty, all of them, just like you and me!"

2 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2008/07/men-martians-and-machines-eric-frank.html ( )

This is a collection of four linked sf stories from the 1940s and 1950s (the first three premiered in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction, and the last first appeared in this collection).

The first story, 'Jay Score', is the best, perhaps because it is as much a story of character revelation as of standard sf spaceship-in-peril narrative. The eccentric title character is a crew member on an interplanetary ship crewed by humans and other intelligent life forms, and in the remaining three stories the crew is re-assigned to the first interstellar starship. Their explorations of Earth-like planets propel them into proto-Star-Trek adventures that seem rather hackneyed now, but only because the basic situations have been reused again and again in novels, movies and TV. These must have been among the first stories to explore some of these alien ways of life. ( )

Men, Martians and Machines is a collection of four inter-connected stories of the adventures of the crew of the Marathon, a new-fangled super-spaceship that thanks to some hastily explained science is able to explore further out than ever before. Our unnamed narrator is the Sergeant at Arms for the ship, and the crew is made up of a fun mix of Earthlings and a handful of Martians (very large octopus-like beings who are obsessed with space chess, like low gravity, and need very little air -- making them perfect for external ship repairs. They also love making jokes about how bad humans smell.)

Our narrator guides us through the ship's near collision with the sun, a trip to a planet of killer machines (well they mostly just want to dissect you to figure out what makes your individualistic mind run, but that tends to involve killing), a world filled with surprisingly defensive plants, and a planet of hypnotic beings that can make you see whatever they want, but when threatened actually look like a bundle of writhing snakes.

These stories are light on science and heavy on adventure, with a playful almost pulpy-detective-story edge to the narrator's voice.

There are some fun anachronisms (like a set of on-going gags between our narrator and the ship photographer who is constantly worried about his boxes of heavy and fragile photographic plates breaking). And some unsurprising but cringe-worthy anachronisms like the fact that the alien life forms are almost always compared to Asians (it seriously seems like half of all old sci-fi books do this), a lot of talk about how black the black doctor is, and no women are mentioned at all.

Still, anachronisms aside, this really is a fun book. The aliens are interesting and surprising and and the other planets are creative and nicely described. Add to that some very good action sequences and the occasional bit of snappy dialogue and you have a nice little read on your hands.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2008/06/men-martians-and-machines-1955.html ] ( )