THE (ALMOST) UNDELETED

The Saturn Game by Poul Anderson is the story of an eight year journey to explore and colonize the Saturnine system by an immense colony ship that contains just about all that is needed to start a microcosm human society. The ship itself is engineered to become the colony, and the crew is carefully selected to fill all society's needs and includes engineers and scientists and clergy and psychologists. But for some reason, even with all those thousands of people in the ship, it decided that the journey would be so boring that a role playing game for the entire crew would have to be designed, so that the crew could pass its time in peace and quiet. This is the story of such a game gone wrong. Two out of five stars, but only grudgingly because technically the book meets the two-star definition. One star for style.

The gist of the story is easy to tell. The colony ship nears Iapetus and a few shuttles are launched for exploration. Three of the exploration crew are dropped on the moon while the commander waits at a distance with the shuttle. The environment is, of course, more dangerous than the crew expects, an accident occurs and someone.....Pleae click here or on the cover above to be taken to the review