Footfall

Rating:
Summary: I must be one of the only people in the world...
Review: who didn't like this book. "What's wrong with me?", I kept asking myself. This is supposedly one of the classics, if not THE CLASSIC of the genre'. I kept waiting and waiting for the story to pick up steam and take off as promised - but it never materialized for me. This thing just plodded along!! I kept wanting to roll over on my back, put my legs up in the air and surrender to the "snouts". (You'll have to read the book to understand that last sentence.)

Now don't get me wrong, I loved Niven and Pourelle's epic novel, "Lucifer's Hammer". It was a great literary work that had me on the edge of my seat for days. "Footfall", on the other hand, left me wishing that I had spent my time doing something more productive - like starting a different book!

I really tried to get into this book, but the confusing plot, not to mention trying to understand just what in the hell was going on with the aliens half the time, really left me scratching my head. It was hard enough to keep up with the dozens of characters in the book, let alone trying to figure out what the "snouts" were attempting to say. I think I wore out the pages in the front of the book that listed the cast of characters from having to turn back and forth so many times just to keep a handle on "who was who".

Oh, I know that the vast majority of people who have reviewed "Footfall" have raved about it, but for my money, stick to the aforementioned "Lucifer's Hammer", George Stewart's wonderful, "Earth Abides", anything by Michael Reisig ("The New Madrid Run" is outstanding), or Robert McCammon's "Swan Song" if you want a little escapism in your life.

Rating:
Summary: Mindless Entertainment (mindless in a good way)
Review: This book was good- mindless entertainment (I mean this in a good way- the give your mind a break from stress, give it a treat :P)....humorous (having the aliens look like elephants), believable characters, action, fantasy, hidden messages /political statements (again, having the aliens look like elephants....) from the author. Definately worth the money, pick up a copy today and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Extra! Killer Elephants from Outer Space Invade Earth!
Review: "Footfall" harkens back to the Science Fiction of the 1950's, with the President and the U.S. military dealing with godless Communists and equally godless aliens. A moving dot is discovered on astronomical plates and the evidence is clear: it is a spaceship from another galaxy far, far away. Attempts to contact the aliens are unsuccessful but as soon as they arrive at Earth their intentions become clear: they destroy the Soviet space station, the moon base and then every dam and major installation on the planet by raining down asteroids. To add insult to injury, when the aliens begin landing troops in Kansas, they look for all the world like elephants with trunks performing the function of hands. Now it is up to President of the United States David Coffey, Congressman Wesley T. Dawson of California, USAF astronaut Major General Edmund Gillespie and his sister-in-law Jeanette Crichton, the Director fo the Lenin Institute Academician Pavel Aleksandrovich Bondarev, the unemployed minstrel Harry Reddington, the captured alien Harpanet and several dozen other characters to save the Earth from the alien threat.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle have provided a good old-fashioned "pulp" story, where you go along for the ride. My only substantive complaint is that the Snouts, as the aliens are called for obvious reasons, have a convenient Achilles heel (or two) that allows Earth to have a fighting chance against a technologically superior enemy that REALLY controls the high ground. My favorite part is President relying on a group of Science Fiction writers for advice on how to deal with these strange visitors from another planet, which at least avoids the stereotype of the stupid military advisers just wanting to use nukes at the first opportunity. The "science" in "Footfall" is enough to fuel the story without becoming oppressive; the first time I read this novel I remember thinking it was just an excuse to find a story where launching an Orion was a plausible plot device. "Footfall" is not epic science fiction; it is just a fun read that takes us make to those thrilling days of yesteryear when BEM ruled.

Rating:
Summary: Get off the soapbox
Review: This book was a fine airplane read. The story is well constructed, the characters were sympathetic and generably believable.

But certain 80's vintage scifi political statements made me throw the book down in disgust (although I picked it up again quickly!):

1) The Senator Proxmire bashing--oh, please! A complaint that Proximire cut $210,000 from SETI research while millions of are spent on welfare. Niven, you financed your bloody career with a TRUST FUND! If you care so much about SETI, make a contribution.

2) The anti-nuke environmentalist who dramatically renounces his former opinion and wishes instead that he had supported nuclear power and the construction of lasers. Give me a break Niven and Pournelle, a nuclear meltdown is a helluvalot more likely in anyone's lifetime than hostile aliens!

3) The hand-wringing over the Soviets getting way ahead of the Americans in Space! How tragic that the shortsighted Americans did not fund the space program. Given events in the Solviet Union only two to five years after the book was published, that is downright laughable.

I found similar political messages buried in Lucifer's Hammer to be equally annoying.

All that said, Niven remains a favorite, and this book is a good read for a fan.

Rating:
Summary: Fun sci-fi potboiler
Review: "Footfall" is a big old potboiler of a "hard" science fiction novel, in which "hard" science fiction writers are among the heroes when aliens come to invade the earth.

The human characters are thinner than the science; sometimes it seems as if the humans are lifted from a '70s disaster movie to they crisscross each others' paths here to conveniently provide drama and unconvincing sexual tension.

It's the aliens and their culture who are the stars here. Niven and Pournelle create an alien race whose "inexplicable" behavior turns out to be perfectly logical, given how they think. And the humans, in turn, are at least as inexplicable to these elephant-like aliens. It's the difference in culture that creates inevitable war.

The book is sprinkled with pro-space program messages and maybe some conservative political messages, too, as well as cult hero-status for "hard" science fiction writers.

Its handling of human affairs, though, is weak. Many hundreds of millions of men, women and children die at the hands of these aliens, and we see little of the chaos, bloodshed, violence, suffering and pain that must result. Likewise, we see little of the reaction we'd expect (PANIC! FEAR!) among the survivors as they await an unknown fate and lose contact with relatives and friends in other places. People just calmly cope. (Could the same book have been written AFTER the L.A. riots, for example?)

The ending is neatly done: there's enough complexity and ambiguity in the final events that it's hard to say exactly which of the characters were "right" and which were "wrong." A denoument is entirely lacking, though. What happens next, and what challenges are faced after the war -- these things deserve at least a hint.

In sum, there are plenty of shortcomings in this ambitious novel. The people here don't ring entirely true, the science seems unrealistic(that's a helluva space ship construction program!), and the plot is peppered with too many coincidences. And some of the science is unavoidably dated, considering the book was written in the 1980s and set in the more recent past -- there never was a moon base built, for example, and the space shuttle Challenger (which flies again in "Footfall") regrettably didn't make it to the 1990s.

But "Footfall" is still a fun and exciting read.

Rating:
Summary: Death By Novel
Review: The only thing good I can say about this novel is that I'm done reading it. Agonizingly slow with a thin to non-existent plot, it spins the yarn of aliens arriving to conquer Earth by hurling asteroids by the hundreds at vital installations. The aliens are the interstellar version of elephants and all they want humankind to do is lie on out backs and capitulate. This is observed by allowing one of these galactic pachyderms to gently step on one's chest.

Naturally the earthlings will have none of this and the battle is joined. Through page after page shallow, vapid characters wage war with their antagonist from the stars as every useless detail is ground into the ground while needed background is left to the imagination.

The right-wing, paramilitary twist is not as bothersome to me as the weak plot, lack of originality and total lack of merit offered in this book. I have to agree with another reviewer who said there should be a zero star rating for such tragedies in print.

From the number of good reviews this work got, there are quite a few people out there who like the idea of talking elephants from outer space trying to make pacifists out of mankind. That is not a very original storyline, except for the elephant part, and this book fails time and time again to deliver any power, emotion or entertainment value.

This book was a weak plot built into a long, tedious, ponderous novel with little forethought and a lot of hyperbole. Unless you are bored beyond belief or want to be, steer clear of this one.

Rating:
Summary: Footfall steps in the right places
Review: For some reason, I keep expecting Larry Niven to produce another 'Ringworld' or it's equivelent, and that is when I realize how unrealistic that loft is to reach. What I do find remarkable about Niven, (and Pournelle), is how often they actually get close.'Footfall' is such an example. Whereas, the rightfully acknowleged classic is one of those rare stories where EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING comes together- the writing,story,characters and plot one seamless, fascinating trek across an exciting and magical landscape-as is 'Ringworld',- to the merly good or very good as is 'Footfall'. 'Footfall' is amongst the best of what you will see on this second tier- a realistic, thought provoking adventure story with so many nifty twists and arcs laced through it's completly logical, and at best, believeable plotline that you can almost imagine that it actually happened. This, of course, is Larry Niven's forte. It is why he is amongst the elite. And, when plugged into Jerry Pournelle, they produce in spades. The only occassional weakness is draggy exposition and too many characters, some of which are so dull, you wish Marcia Brady would stroll in and get nailed in the face by a football,just to liven up some of the mundane conversations. Other than that, 'Footfall' is a 4 out of 5.

Rating:
Summary: A decent adventure story ...
Review: ... but I liked the Legacy of Herot better. This is a good, solid adventure story but it doesn't get going until almost halfway through the (very long) book. The first half introduces a *lot* of characters and most of them don't get fleshed out very well and don't seem to serve much purpose other than filling space. As usual, the detail that they put into providing a choherent background for how and why the aliens act as they do is fasinating. This has always been the strong point for this writing team. All in all it is a fairly good read but not something that I will ever pick up again.

Rating:
Summary: A good book,.. not a great one.
Review: I just finished reading this book, it was my second Niven novel to read so far. After skimming through the reviews of the book, especally the negitive ones I felt like writing my own review. First off, yes, the book does have it's quirks for a Sci-Fi novel - Such as the Scifi writers working as presidential advisors who spent most of book admiring the effectivness of the alien invasion and also having the earth invaded by "commie elephants" (snicker..). However, the book was still a excellent read and I felt the ending was more than worth waiting for. Without giving away anything, I felt it showed that tide of a battle can turn in any given moment and you can end up with a slightly unpexected result.

Rating:
Summary: What Independence Day should have been
Review: This is a great book for any science fiction fan. The use of alien vocabulary was different, but i found it easy to understand. Also, with the many characters in the book, it was good to have a reference guide at the beginning so we could keep track of all the characters. The authors do a remarkable job of developing the characters throughout the book, which allows the story to develop smoothly. I did feel that the ending was a little rushed. Other than that, you probably will enjoy the book even more after you read it the second time.