We've now reached the halfway point of The Invaders Plan, page 307 of 615. This is usually the part of a traditional story arc where the plot's steadily building towards a climax; in an action story the hero is probably preparing to strike against the villain's lair, while in a detective story the hero has gotten most of the puzzle pieces together and is on their way to figuring things out for the finale.
And here we are, watching a starving man hallucinate.
The plot has wandered away from us - we know the cast is supposed to get to Earth, but we've seen nothing but delay after delay to keep that from happening. Tug One is grounded for refurbishing, and Gris has basically given up on his attempts to get the show on the road. I'm not sure if we're supposed to share Gris' sense of urgency about moving Mission Earth forward or be pleased that the heroic and dashingly handsome Jettero Heller is thwarting the disgusting little Apparatus agent. I'm not sure who the villain is, since we have a hero antagonist and villain protagonist, so are we supposed to be rooting for the guy keeping anything from happening?
It's a mess; confusing, tedious, not to mention dull as all hell. We've had an attempted shooting and a few fistfights but nothing's really happened for pages and pages. Heller gets captured, that's a plot point. Mission Earth is born, that's a plot point. Heller meets Krak, I guess that's a plot point. And Heller finds his spaceship, that's another plot point. And it's taken Hubbard over three hundred pages to accomplish this little.
Anyway, the chapter. It's short. Gris is awakened by a Manco Devil entering his office. The "Manco" part is important because this isn't one of those "ordinary woods Devils so common to other planets," but a traditional horned and red-skinned and spike-tailed Devil straight out of Western mythology. Because aliens from Manco settled on Earth eons ago and saved us stupid, pathetic humans the trouble of coming up with our own culture or technology or anything and I hate it when sci-fi does this.
Manco Devil asks about a specific form to see if Gris knows something, but Gris confesses he doesn't have it or know what it means. Then the crew of Heller's patrol ship shows up and joins the chorus taunting Gris over not knowing something. And then Manco Devil shapeshifts into Lombar Hisst and Doctor Crobe and Tug One flies in and explodes, before the conversation turns to the matter of payment. Gris explains that he's broke so Manco Devil stabs him with a torch, not a pitchfork. In the end Gris shrieks that he'll pay Manco Devil's bill, but when he starts throwing wads of counterfeit cash at Manco Devil he finds his office empty. Then he goes to sleep.
I will say that it isn't a bad hallucination sequence. It's not one that makes you feel like you're hallucinating along with the character and gives you another person's headache, but a humorous hallucination, in which all the peculiarities and logic-breaking events of the waking dream are stated matter-of-factly and accepted by the narrator. When the Fleet crew piles into the office from the adjoining bathroom, for example, Gris surmises that they came in through the secret door to the basement that he'll have to get installed the next day.
On the other hand, this chapter - heck, most of Part Six really - just serves to jog Gris' memory so he'll do something later. It's a hallucination that serves a narrative purpose that could have been fulfilled faster and more elegantly. But I guess Hubbard was banking on us enjoying Gris slowly starving to death.
I do not wonder how L. Ron "I'm drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys" Hubbard was able to come up with a decent fever dream.
Back to Chapter Four
No comments:
Post a Comment