- Title:
- Metal Boxes
- By:
- Alan Black
- Pages:
- 362
- Rating:
- 3
Coming of age can be hard for anyone. But for Blackmon Perry Stone it is life threatening. At 15, he barely manages to graduate from the empire’s cadet training by a talent for unusual problem solving. He has trouble settling into navy life, but life becomes harder when he uncovers a ring of thieves aboard the huge ship. Life becomes difficult when they killed him. Stone is ejected into hyperspace in an escape pod without hyperspace engines. Fully expecting to die, he reconfigures the sub-light engine to escape the inescapable. To his surprise it works, but only well enough to do little more than crash on an uncharted planet. It will surprise him if he can make the engine work again, but not as much as it will surprise everyone else if he can come back from the dead.
“A chorus of amens rang in the room. Jay and Peebee awoke and wonked back. Soon the bridge was shouting amen and wonking with equal abandon.”
I didn’t quite know if this was supposed to be funny, a military pastiche, or read with utter seriousness. It amused me in places and I grokk the nods to Heinlein, but I felt the fun either wasn’t pushed far enough or the seriousness lacked gravitas. I can’t quite tell which.