The Practice Effect: A Novel

I found this novel to be a joy to read. Not an intense story, but one that brought back memories of Jandar of Callisto or John Carter. The story is somewhat stereotypical; there is the evil bad guy and the ruffian friends, and the princess to fall in love with. Of course, the hero uses his "advanced knowledge" and becomes known as a wizard. No hugo winner here, but just the same it was fun to read, and a good page turner. If you are looking for something easy to read or just something pleasant, I would highly recommend The Practice Effect.

Drama critics have long known that comedy is harder to direct and to perform than tragedy. The same goes for literature: being even slightly off the mark is all that it takes to ruin the endeavor. In science fiction and fantasy it's even tougher to write good humor because the reader first has to understand the "rules" of the culture or technology in which the story is set--and there's nothing worse than a joke that has to be explained. Connie Willis can pull it off, Robert Sheckley can pull it off...and so can David Brin.This book is a treasure because it takes on that hardest of all SF writing tasks and hits a good solid home run. Read slowly to savor it...or better yet, do as I did and read it aloud to a family member who also appreciates good comic timing.

Gee, not every SF book has to be a deep exploration of the limits of the genre. Sometimes you just like to kick back and enjoy yourself. This is exactly what this book is, and it's a great read, fast and fun at the same time, while still throwing up some interesting concepts. David Brin normally is an acquired taste, his Uplift books are some of the best SF books around but then they to be heavy on the plot, stories seem to drag on for years (I think only recently he got around to resolving some stuff from the first trilogy) and he can be a bit wordy. Not here though. Granted the ideas aren't as mindblowing as elsewhere but you know what, who cares? The basis here is that an Earth scientist is sent to another world and trapped there for a bit. The world seems backwards and forwards at the same time, there is caveman technology sitting alongside highly advanced stuff, among other mysteries. The scientist (Dennis) has to try and figure out what the heck is going on before he gets killed, especially since a Baron is trying to take over everything. Sounds like fun, right? Dennis' solutions to get out of problems, especially once he figures out how everything works, are great, and Brin seems to delight in this world, putting a decent amount of detail into it. He uses a SF explantion at the end that makes a tiny bit of sense but by then it really won't matter. There's all sorts of good stuff here, from ingenuity to danger to suspense to action to a bit of romance as well. Even if this isn't the most innovative stuff it's well written and brisk and . . . fun. That's all I can say. It's a fun little book that is more memorable than some of Brin's other work simply because of that. And you can't go wrong like that.

Once every so often, SF authors escape their genre and write something on a lark that turns out to be really special. That's the case with The Practice Effect. While I've generally found Brin a bit tedious (overlong, overplotted, overwordy), I loved The Practice Effect the first time I read it and enjoyed it at least as much when rereading it years later. It reads like Harry Harrison's best, or (most aptly) like The Flying Sorcerors. The hero is a technologically adept person, thrown into a less technological environment, who learns to combine his modern-day savvy with the peculiarities of his new environs to his considerable advantage. And, of course, to the delight of his readers.The gimmick in "The Practice Effect" is too entertaining to give up in a review, but you'll enjoy every minute of seeing it exploited. It's a short book (I wouldn't mind more of these, actually) but one you'll want to read and re-read every word of.

For me, this book is the best kind of science fiction -- the kind where the author has taken a physical law and changed it, asking himself "What if. . . .". In this case, the physical law he changes is my least favorite, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which in our universe basically means that adding energy to a system causes it to lose order. That's why knives get dull when you chop too much, and your car breaks down when you drive too much. Of course, you can't go around changing basic laws like that without explanation. In this case, it's the old experiment-which-punches-through-to-another-universe. But in this new universe, the Second Law is reversed in some cases -- imagine if your knives got sharper the more you used them, or if your car gradually morphed into a Lamborghini on that cross-country trip. . . . But the author has done more than simply imagine the physical consequences -- he's moved into the social realm as well. If driving made your car into a Lamborghini, wouldn't you hire someone to drive it all the time if you could? But at the same time, would you pay for research and engineering to make a better car if all you had to do was drive yours to improve it? And that's the sticking point; human society in this new universe is technically backward, feudal, and slave-based. Our hero has to do something about that. . . .