The Moon Children.

Rating:
Summary: The Moon Children
Review: A bit of an odd entry by Williamson--that ranges far and wide to combine various SF elements--lingering in the mind, but not totally successful. Williamson applies his humourless, no-nonsense style to a convoluted alien-contact story that reads, at times, like a Philip K. Dick plot. Something about three astronauts who return to Earth, each with wildly different versions of what happened on the Moon, each marrying and producing offspring that are not totally terrestrial, but may provide humankind with assistance towards a grand cosmic ascendancy.

In come the bizarre trappings: space grit with a purpose; a tetrahedron for contacting a confederacy of alien races who will come and judge Earth, if we build the proper space-platform; an insular, human society of perfect harmony, created by Guy, the strangest, most hideous of the astronauts' offspring; a giant metallic sphere, created by the psionic power of Guy, which can break into a swarm of frighening silver flying ants; slime-bedewed fog and transparent snakes simultaneously invading from neighbouring planets as, apparently, Earth's meddling has infected their "biocosms".

The big story is about whether humankind is ready and willing to seek help from aliens in learning galactic lessons that will help save us from our own fallacies. The small story is about Nick, Kyrie, and of course persecuted, bloated Guy--the three strange children of astronauts who were altered on the Moon. Unfortunately, the story, when you peel away the special effects, gets revealed as rather too convoluted, and perhaps too silly, for its own good. That's a shame, because Williamson's prose style--though humourless--avoids some of his usual flatness, keeps the pace healthy, and contains vivid descriptions of some really imaginative creatures, devices, and settings. More memorable than its status suggests, but it doesn't reach the heights to which it aspires, due to a somewhat familiar, if crazily shaken up, plot about humanity trying to prove it is ready for cosmic mentors.