Space Skimmer

Mass, a Streinveldtian, is looking for one of the fabled starships from a time when civilization was far more connected. He finds it, but to make use of it ends up with a crew he'd just as soon dump, including one person trying to take the ship away from him. Space Skimmer is a very good story--and looking back at it, is a kind of reaction to Star Trek, for which Gerrold wrote the justly famous and hilarious "The Trouble with Tribbles." Space is big enough that there simply can't be a homogeneous civilization like ST's Federation; even with a common human ancestry, different parts will change in strange and different ways. (One has to wonder whether the group-mind Homolkans here gave rise to the Borg.) The trip Mass and the companions he picks up take is fascinating for that reason.

Space Skimmer is a very good, at times thought provoking, piece of science fiction. It starts out as Mass'-- a short, but immensely strong young man from a high gravity world-- search for the Empire. Sometime long before this story begins, the galactic Empire had collapsed almost over night and nobody seemed to know the answer why. But when Mass' quest across the worlds of the fallen Empire leads him to the Space Skimmer, Mass soon learns why the Empire has fallen. I won't be giving anything critical away to say that the Skimmers were an unique type of spaceship designed to revolutionize communications and commerce within the Empire, but things went wrong as Mass discovers. As he travels from world to world, Mass acquires a crew that he really doesn't want and friends that he wants even less. Gerrold tells a really good story here of what happens to Mass, his journeys from one exciting world to another, and of the Space Skimmer itself, another character in itself. This is a fun read for all science fiction fans and shouldn't be missed.