Jack C. Haldeman (1941–2002)

This 1983 pulp fiction paperback combines two novellas published in 1979 in Asimov’s Amazing SF Adventure Magazine. Each novella consists of several brief stories about the misadventures of Carl Bok, a young man from Springworld, a high-gravity world populated with fast, hungry predators that challenge survival. While three meters tall and 360 lbs, Carl’s naivete borders on the stupid.

In the first novella, Starschool , Carl convinces himself he has a debt he must pay, despite arguments to the contrary, and agrees from one dangerous gladiator-style fight to another to earn the necessary funds. Carl sustains life-threatening injuries in each battle, but medical science remedies the damage in a day or two, enabling him to blunder into another encounter.

The second novella, originally titled Starschool on Hell, follows the same pattern. This time the students are enrolled in a boot-camp style school for warriors and placed in one survival situation after another. Then Carl and his companions are sold into slavery and forced to fight in a proxy war between two rival factions from a planet named Spicelle.

Some imagination is apparent in the description of the fight scenes and survival situations, but the basic outline is unimaginatively repetitive. The scenario is described, Carl, and sometimes his friends, fight for survival, Carl is grievously injured but manages to survive, and medical science quickly returns him to full health. Otherwise, nothing happens. There is no significant overarching story to maintain injury, and the book becomes tedious.… (more)