Sandor Robert Tralins (1926-2010) was an immensely prolific American writer of pulp novels, published under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms.
The story takes place on Earth’s colony planet Pulsar 143, in the city of Mnemosyne, several centuries in the future. Mnemosyne was the classical goddess of memory and that’s important.
It begins with an attempted alien invasion. The hero of the successful resistance, Doyle, is given a plum job as commandant of the Orrery. But is this a reward or a punishment? Or a means of controlling him? Mnemosyne is ruled by the Secretariat. It’s a totalitarian regime in which supreme power is vested in a super-computer. An artificial intelligence.
Dissent is brutally suppressed. As Commandant of the Orrery Doyle has his thoughts probed. He must agree to show unswerving unquestioning loyalty to the Secretariat. In reality Doyle abhors the Secretariat and everything it stands for. He has reluctantly accepted this post since it might offer possibilities for undermining the totalitarian regime in Mnemosyne. The post gives him some powers but involves huge risks.
Perhaps there are other rebels. Perhaps there is hope.
Firstly he needs to now if he can trust his girlfriend Petra. She’s been getting very close to Kagan and Kagan is definitely a man not to be trusted.
There is a secret concealed in the Orrery, a secret Doyle needs to discover. Memory is the key. An important part of the training of leaders like Doyle is mnemonics, specifically the mnemonic technique of the memory room in which objects in a room are the mnemonic code keys. Which is cool because this is a very ancient technique not used for centuries but Tralins uses it in a far future high-tech setting. In this story it’s part of the mind code, the mental training given to the elites. It’s one of a number of very cool touches in this novel.
Doyle will need to find a way to destroy, disable or neutralise the central computer but in the meantime he has to stay alive and stay out of trouble. Dissenters in this world face worse fates than prison.
There are several nice little touches. The building housing the master computer is called the Orrery, an orrery being a mechanical model of the solar system.
There are android servants everywhere, known as servomen and servomaids. Only they’re not androids. They’re human beings who have been modified to reduce their intelligence dramatically so they can function as mindless zombie drones. It’s creepy, but then this is a sinister future dystopia.
Having spent much of his career in spaceships on the Frontier, traveling at near light speed, Doyle has aged only seventeen years in the past century. This is significant because it means that Doyle remembers the past, he remembers Earth before the space colonisation began. This is one of the reasons he is determined to oppose the Secretariat. He knows from personal experience that the past was better.
For an obscure book by an obscure author Android Armageddon is a lot more complex and clever and interesting than you might expect. This is not a shoot ’em up space opera. There’s not much action but there’s suspense, lots of paranoia and a well-realised future world. The ending has a few odd touches.
Android Armageddon is above-average pulp science fiction. Highly recommended.
I’ve also reviewed Tralins’ fairly interesting 1966 sci-fi novel The Cosmozoids which deals with aliens and the paranormal and his hugely enjoyable 1966 sexy lady spy romp The Chic Chick Spy.
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