Cover of the Ace paperback edition I own

(17) BOB SHAW –

WHO GOES HERE? (1977)

Irish SF writer, notably of witty humorous or satirical SF in a similar vein to Douglas Adams or Robert Sheckley – as I noted for Sheckley, one of science fiction’s most unsung qualities is the extent to which it can be a profoundly comic or satirical medium.

And that is so for his 1977 novel which won this special mention, Who Goes Here?

Obviously a play on “who goes there?”, the traditional military sentry challenge (and title for the novella that became The Thing) – the title reflects the memory wipe mechanism to eliminate guilty or traumatic memories which is the prime inducement for enlistees signing up for thirty years in Earth’s Space Legion. As the tagline said, they join the Legion to forget…who goes here.

However, whereas most enlistees only forget particular memories, protagonist Warren Peace has no memory of his former life whatsoever – prompting the admiration and possible fear of his fellow recruits as to how monstrous he must have been.

Worse, the Space Legion itself is nothing but cannon fodder for Earth’s colonialist space wars, usually to force its colonies to keep buying Earth goods. Since each unit is sponsored by a corporation – and Peace’s particular unit is sponsored by a corporation in financial trouble looking to skimp on uniforms, Peace finds himself going into combat in a jockstrap.

Their training was also minimal – literally just firing a laser at a wall until they hit a spot. When queried as to any physical fitness component, their training officer retorts that the recruits just have to shoot their enemy, not wrestle them.

However, their lasers prove less than effective in actual combat, being negated by smoke. When one of the space legionaries asks to the effect that aren’t most battlefields covered in smoke, the reply is only when the enemy uses primitive weapons unlike their own.

Prompted by thoughts that his former life can’t possibly be worse than life in the Legion, Peace embarks on a strange quest to recover his former memories – relentlessly pursued by two of the mysterious golden humanoids known as Oscars, a joking reference to the Academy Award statuette they resemble…

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)