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INFERNO by Mike Resnick

INFERNO

A Chronicle of a Distant World

by Mike Resnick

Pub Date: Dec. 1st, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-85437-4
Publisher: Tor

Third of Resnick's science-fictionalized African commentaries, following Paradise (about Zimbabwe) and Purgatory (Kenya). This time he examines the agonies of Uganda under the unspeakable Idi Amin and subsequent dictators. Planet Faligor has a splendid climate, rich soil, and an abundance of minerals; its inhabitants are nicknamed ``jasons'' for their golden fleeces by the first humans to arrive on the planet. Faligor is ripe for rapid development, and so—at the insistence of the planet's leading citizen, Disanko of the Enkoti tribe— development proceeds apace. Elections must be held, though the electorate is uneducated and unsophisticated, and Disank's son Bobby carelessly loses to a dangerously totalitarian rival—who in turn is quickly deposed by a brutal soldier, Gama Labu; the latter institutes a reign of terror against aliens and a program of genocide against tribal-rival jasons. The Republic, an association of worlds in space, can't intervene, since Faligor isn't a member. Meanwhile, the horrors continue, under one dictator after another; finally, an honest schoolteacher—backed by an army of children, and advised by longtime human resident Arthur Cartright—prevails and reconstruction can begin. Potentially the most terrible and fascinating of all Resnick's African tales, but the upshot is too much omniscient commentary, too little character development and involvement. A pity.