Review: The Legion of Space
The classic space opera
So, there's this amazing adventure story where our young hero, a warrior in training, joins with three older compatriots in helping a princess. One of these three is a wise leader, one is a muscular giant, and the third is a lovable rogue.
"Yeah," you say, "I've read The Three Musketeers and it is indeed awesome."
No, no! Aramis isn't quite a rogue, more of a womanizer, and D'Artagnan actually helps the Queen. I'm talking about the one where the princess is a space princess and there's a weapon that destroys celestial bodies.
"Star Wars: A New Hope? That's a pretty good movie. Leia has fun hair."
No, you dope! We're talking about the beautiful ALADOREE. Granted she has a lot of letters in her name in common with Leia of Alderaan. The book is The Legion of Space, and it came out four decades before Star Wars.
Buyable by itself, in the collection Three From The Legion, and in the Omnibus collection:
The Story
John Star, whose first name is that of a four-letter author of one of the Gospels, and last name is that of an object which "walks" across the "sky", has just graduated at the top of the Legion Academy. Immediately, for reasons that quickly become clear, he is assigned a top secret duty: protecting the young lady who holds the secret of humanity's greatest weapon: AKKA.
Inevitably, the beautiful young lady, Aladoree, is kidnapped shortly after our hero lays his eyes on her and falls in love at first sight. He then joins with our Three Legionnaires: Jay Kalam, Hal Samdu, and Giles Habibula, and embarks on a desperate quest to rescue Aladoree, with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. Interestingly enough, despite the name similarity to Hans Solo, Hal Samdu is the muscular giant of the trio rather than the lovable rogue.
We then go through an incredible amount of straight up adventure against impossible odds in a seminal space opera, including political intrigue, thrilling escape, hand-to-hand combat, blaster combat, spaceship combat, space piracy, planetary adventure, alien combat, and more. Our heroes face impossible odds and challenges, and succeed due to the abilities and sheer determination of our fabulous four.
They really knew how to pack in a ton of adventure into less than 200 pages back in the day.
The Characters
John Star is our fresh-faced young protagonist. He's determined, skilled, but very green. The scene where he first fires a blaster in combat is surprisingly poignant. Fortunately, unlike Luke Skywalker, he doesn't end up being the beautiful maiden's brother.
Jay Kalam is our wise leader. He plans, he holds the team together, and his determination along with John Star's pushes them to succeed against the odds.
Hal Samdu is our strong giant, delivering all the necessary feats of brute force and tallness which inevitably pop up in adventure stories.
Giles Habibula, our lovable rogue, provides personality, comic relief, and a certain dexterity with locking mechanisms. The oldest of our fabulous four, the courage and strength underlying his personality lies at odds with his surface patter. He is a multidimensional character with a fascinating backstory that we only catch glimpses of in this first book of the series.
Aladoree Anthar, hereditary wielder of AKKA, is feminine, but no fainting damsel. She is imperious, stubborn, and possesses deep underlying strength, but she's still just a young girl underneath it all.
The World
The action happens against the backdrop of a colonized, all-human Solar System in the 30th century, with the Legion of Space the glue that holds it all together. The Legion obeys a democratic government, but a young one—imperial rule has been the norm for much of humanity's history, and democracy was only established about 200 years prior to our story start. The internal fault lines of humanity and the fruits of the beginnings of interstellar exploration provide the impetus for the plot. For an action-packed book in the traditional short length of the early 20th century novels, we learn a whole lot about the world—much like The Three Musketeers, our heroes adventure through much of the most politically important parts of it.
Politics
The conflict between democracy and imperial restorationism is an initial plot-driver. Only a few sentences are devoted to exploring the ideology of this, and the imperialists are given a fair shake in defending their point of view. While our heroes are on the pro-democracy side, imperialists should have no more trouble reading this book and cheering for its heroes than democracy-supporters have in reading King Arthur, and monarchists should be as okay with supporting Aladoree's side as they were in siding with Princess Leia over the Emperor.
Who is it for?
Anyone who liked the adventure of The Three Musketeers or the epic action of Star Wars will enjoy this book. Anyone interested in the history of sci-fi in general and space opera specifically will want to read this seminal book, on which much of the later entries on the genre rest. And of course, the young men who dream of adventure, rescuing the girl, and saving the world, are who this book was originally aimed at, and will be well-served by it.
Why buy it?
Fundamentally, The Legion of Space is a classic novel by one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time, and deserves a space on any bookshelf with sci-fi on it. This book can be opened on any page, and one is immediately served up with intense, entertaining action.
Where to get it?
The Legion of Space was first printed in 1934, and has been periodically reprinted since, both by itself, and in collections such as Three From The Legion, collecting two of its sequels. Oddly it's lapsed out of print in the past decade, but can be bought used in a variety of forms, or borrowed from libraries and online. Additionally, for the originalists, every issue of Astounding Science Fiction in which this book was originally serialized can be downloaded starting with Astounding April 1934: https://archive.org/details/pub_astounding-science-fiction?sort=date&and%5B%5D=year%3A%221934%22
That there's no currently buyable new eBook or physical book for this, one of the seminal classics of the space opera genre, is a crying shame. We live in a world where one can quickly OCR an existing scan practically error free, instantly find any mis-scans with a language model and a readthrough, and put the book online with a turnaround of less than a week. Jack Williamson's estate, or whoever holds the rights, if you're out there: I would love to get this book back for purchase new. Just say the word.