The Ethical Engineer

I was absolutely enthralled with this story up until the very end. At that point, it comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion.

There is some repetitiveness and stupidity along the way, but overall worth the read, I supposed. Just be prepared for the crash at the end.

Apparently The Ethical Engineer was the original serialized title - later published in book form as Deathworld 2.

This book begins shortly after the completion of Deathworld. Jason is captured at gunpoint and arrested for violation of gambling laws by the very annoying, morally righteous space cop Micah Samon. They depart the planet Pyrrus and eventually crash on a planet with a slave based economy and early industrial revolution technology.

This was a very disappointing follow-up to the first Deathworld. The entire plot seems to revolve around an ongoing argument about moral absolutism vs. moral relativism between Micha and Jason. As good as the original Deathworld was - this one was surprisingly bad. I would not recommend wasting any time on it.

This story presents an idea that is fundamental to the way this society works but hardly anyone comes out and says it.

Information Hiding

It is now 43 years after the Moon landing. How are we supposed to believe economists don\'t know about \"planned obsolescence\" in cars? When have you heard economists discuss it? There are hundreds of millions of more computers today than there were in the 1980s. They are all von Neumann machines. When do you ever hear that.

The way different organizations hide information in this story is a microcosm of the REAL WORLD. Good SCIENCE Fiction is More Than Literature.

This is a sequel to "Deathworld" and was published as "Deathworld 2" at some point; not sure if it was slightly expanded or not in that incarnation.

I read the original Deathworld trilogy a number of years back and had a good, strong impression from the first novel; the reviews here of it I think are fair. This one was entirely forgettable (and I had in fact forgotten it), however. The unique world-building, character tension and relatively sophisticated look at psychological dynamics featured in the first are all missing here. Instead, we get a retread of the engineer-among-primitives story with farcical interactions between the main characters. The characters also seem to be mostly acting in accordance with sending a hamfisted message about moral relativism and religion, to the point of spouting extended monologues on the topics. Regardless of where you fall out on the philosophical debate, it makes for a disappointing read.

My recommendation would be to stop reading with the original Deathworld - the ending there was satisfying enough - and skip this, which features some of the original characters acting like cardboard cutouts or complete idiots. About the fourth time Jason dinAlt saves his captor/tormentor for no particular reason other than to have a convenient foil, it gets old.

I don't rate it a complete loss because the author knows how to tell a good adventure story, but the interesting parts are still not worth the investment in time.