THE NEW PLANET

In Forbes’ long short story, a scientist and pilot work to settle an Earthlike planet.

In the year 3002, humanity has attained a level of spiritual enlightenment that would have seemed impossible a thousand years earlier. Dr. Alana Hargate lives and works at the Intergalactic Research Society. She’s a member of the Planet Project, a centuries-long effort by humanity’s greatest minds to plant the seeds of a new civilization on a distant planet. To ferry the enlightened masters to their new home, however, the Planet Project must rely on crack pilot Col. Marc Samson, who does not share their mystical principles. “I must confess, I think the committee might have sent you the wrong man,” Marc tells Alana, who has been tasked with training him for the mission. “I am not a very spiritual person. I am just an ordinary guy who likes to fly the universes.” Though Alana is initially put off by Marc’s arrogance, a romance soon kindles between the two as they strive to lay the foundations of a new utopia. Forbes’ premise is a fertile one, but the writing is often confused and clunky, as though the author wrote the story without rereading it for inconsistencies. Marc is said to be both in his late 30s and 30; he already knows another character’s name in one scene but hasn’t yet learned it in the next. The protagonists read more like archetypes than specific personalities, which makes it hard to care much about their romance or brushes with death. “What if he did not comeback,” Alana frets shallowly. “Oh no! She was in love with him. How could her heart betray her like that? If it had just been her naughty body that needed him. It was her heart, damn it.” There are many fun ideas here, and one wishes Forbes had fleshed them out in a full novel rather than speed through them in only 60 pages.

A rushed SF story about starting anew far away.