I grabbed a copy of The Eighty Minute Hour: A Space Opera from the basement of Capitol Hill Books a few weeks ago for only $3. The author, Brian Aldiss, had been recommended to me as one of the more high-minded purveyors of pulp. Even better – he was British and I confess to being a dedicated Europhile (even if the British have mixed feelings towards their own European-ness).

After considerable effort – and no little motion sickness resulting from mostly reading it on the subway – I finished The Eighty Minute Hour. But I have a confession to make. I have almost no idea what he is writing about.

Though apparently a standalone book, it reads like the third book in a tetralogy. But in such a case, one could at least expect a reasonable amount of exposition. Maybe a little prelude to catch us up. But not here.

Characters were picked up and their names thrown about but never fleshed out. Situations were tossed out there, willy nilly. And the whole thing seemed to come down to a series of deus ex machinas designed to summarily dismiss every challenge that showed up in the plot. To make matters worse – the final deus ex machina, taking place at the very end, wrapped up a plot point that didn’t even exist until 20 pages or so from the end. In other words – it solved the problem of a plot point that never existed for 90% of the book. I’d try to explain the plot, but I can’t. Suffice to say, time distortions caused by a war that is never described and which took place before the book even starts and a computer than magically disappears into the past play major parts. But I’m still not sure how. Oh – and I almost forgot: characters also randomly speak in song (hence, A Space Opera).

Say what you want about a straightforward writer like Dickson (and you can say a lot – he’s hackneyed, that he lacks any sense of pacing or characterization, etc), but I’ll take None But Man over The Eighty Minute Hour.