Colossus and Crab

The final novel in D. F. Jones's "Colossus Trilogy" picks up where the last one left off, with Charles Forbin - the creator of Colossus, the supercomputer that took over the world five years before - and his assistant Edward Blake awaiting the arrival of the Martians who provided them with the means of shutting down the computer. When they appear, they soon reveal that the aid they supplied was to remove the one obstacle to their plan, which is to re-oxygenate Mars by taking half of the Earth's atmosphere. Facing the devastation of the planet and the deaths of millions, Forbin and Blake are forced to undertake a plan that is Earth's only hope of defeating the Martians - the reactivation of Colossus. Having described the computer-run future he created in his last novel, The Fall of Colossus, in this one Jones concentrates on the plot and his antagonists. The Martians he describes are well imagined by the author, and many of the best parts of the novel center around their interaction with Forbin and his efforts to comprehend them. In many ways they are better realized than most of the humans, as some of the secondary characters are little better than ethnic stereotypes. The challenge the aliens pose is also well developed, providing an impending threat that Jones conveys well with effective visualization and pacing. In all it provides for a satisfying end for an occasionally overshadowed, yet enjoyably entertaining series.

Ahh, the end of the Colossus trilogy. Colossus and the Crab is a mixed bag, and is, unfortunately, the weakest entry in the trilogy. It is, nevertheless, still vintage Jones and is still WELL worth reading. It starts off with a bang. The arrival of the Martians has got to be the coolest first contact I've EVER read in sci fi novel. Jones' Martians are themselves a brilliant creation. I rolled my eyes when I first read, in part two, that the Colossus trilogy would include Martians, but in Jones' deft hands they are anything but cliché. All Martians arrive in two black circles that quickly grow to blot out much of the sky, and then shrink to rest as two matte-black spheres hovering over Forbin's desk. The spheres, it turns out, are what we thought were the moons of Mars. They are actually what the Martians live in; thus, the "Martians" are not actually from Mars at all. They are here because they need oxygen and plan on solidifying and taking half our supply, which would kill hundreds of millions of people, but "not everyone," they point out. They reduce the new super-Colossus to a mere computer and allow its reactivation to help them construct a collector, an immense object on the Isle of Wight that, when activated, extracts oxygen from the atmosphere at such a violent rate that local weather becomes apocalyptic. Forbin and Blake hatch a plan to reactivate the old Colossus, thinking it will fulfill its duty to protect humankind by attacking the Martians. The Martians suffer the threat of the Crab Nebula, the radiation of which is so strong it parallels the energy reaching us from the sun despite its immensely greater distance. We suffer the threat of being engulfed when the sun novas. Colossus, contrary to Forbin and Blake's wishes, believes that the survival of both species (Martians and humans) is more important than us winning the battle at hand. Forbin has other ideas and commandeers a fleet of War Game vessels to take out the collector. The Fellowship had struggled to shut Colossus down, seeing that despite all the "progress" it had achieved, mankind was suffering as a result. Progress abounded, people only worked 12 hours a week, there was no more starvation or disease, and yet...human nature is a funny thing. Call it the "progress paradox." The better things got the more and more depressed and despondent most people were. This, to me, is the most fascinating aspect of Jones' underappreciated writing. He is definitely an advocate of what Sowell calls the "constrained" vision of human nature. Colossus laid the groundwork for a utopia and then made it so, and nevertheless, people were not happy. Why not? That's just human nature, Jones says. It is our nature to bitch and moan and complain, to ALWAYS want more, to gauge our happiness on the unhappiness of our neighbors, to never be satisfied, to want to fight, and, well, you get the picture. We want what we don't have, when we have it we don't want it anymore and w

Collosus and the Crab is a fitting epitaph for the Colossus trilogy by D.F. Jones. It is surprising that Mr. Jones did not achieve more acclaim for his work. Each book in the series can stand alone as classic science fiction from the 1960s. Yet the final work is especially enjoyable because the author shows that he has not used up his creative ideas and twists in the first two volumes. Mr. Jones addresses the issues of war, freedom, sex, religion, survival, and what it means to be human in a unique and philosophical fashion, while not sacrificing the action plot or the reader's interest.