(It gets a bit tiresome that Williamson refers to each character by his full name every single time they're mentioned, too.) The only difference between the three of them is that Hal Samdu is a big bruiser and Jay Kalam doesn't get excited easily.

The newcomer John Star (real name Ulnar) is a standard Boy Scout hero, as are his new teammates Hal Samdu and Jay Kalam. He has a youngster join three veterans in the Legion Patrol, but one difference right from the start is that Dumas' Athos, Porthos and Aramis had distinct personalities and you could often identify who said what just by their viewpoints.

This book kept pushing me back up off the page, as if it didn't want to be read for some reason.Įssentially, Williamson has heisted THE THREE MUSKETEERS ahead to the 30th Century. Williamson's style seems clumsy and awkward, his descriptions of different planetscapes and aliens produce no vivid images in the imagination, and his dialogue is only fair at best. As much as I wanted to enjoy a book I had always seen on so much lists of essential space opera, this was dreary. It's more with disappointment than anything else that I have to report I have THE LEGION OF SPACE a tiresome chore to read, and difficult to finish once started. So I'm not a snob who looks down on either pulp or old school sci-fi. (Kind of the opposite of much mainstream literature where absolutely nothing happens so we can get to know the character`s inner lives both types of stories are valid in different ways). And I have no problem with the convention that characterization in these stories is kept simple to concentrate more on the new ideas, the settings and the gadgets.

From Captain Future to Asimov's robots to Northwest Smith, it usually provides an adrenalin jolt of distilled imagination. Now I have always loved the wild, anything-goes pulp science-fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. I found it to be none of that, unfortunately. 'Doc' Smith, and it's usually described as fast-paced, exciting, thrilling, etc. It's usually listed as a classic early example of space opera, right up there with the epics of E.E. Jack Williamson's THE LEGION OF SPACE ran as a six part serial in ASTOUNDING, beginning in April 1934. John Star, Hal Samdu, Jay Kalam and Giles Habibula that's who we`re talking about here. Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad. Come with us to the thrilling days of the 30th Century when a handful of heroic young folk protect the citizens of the Solar System from dire menaces.

The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson