Worth Reading

• Date: 16.03.2009
• Book: Garbage World
• Author: plappen

Review

Garbage World, Charles Platt, Belmont/Tower Books, 1973


The United Asteroid Belt Pleasure Worlds Federation is a group of prisitne pleasure worlds on asteroids in a certain star system. What do they do with their garbage? Recycle it or burn it? In specially packaged containers, they rocket it to the asteroid Kopra, whose sole function is to act as the Federation's garbage dump.

Kopra brings new meaning to the word "disgusting." The layers of trash are miles thick. The smell is overpowering. It has artificial gravity and an artificial atmosphere, so a few hundred people live on top of the trash. They are just as dirty as their surroundings, but they grew up there, so they like it.

One day, a survey ship from the Federation lands on Kopra. Larkin, and Oliver, his assistant, tell the residents that a temporary evacuation is needed. The gravity generator needs replacing, requiring the drilling of a hole into the center of the asteroid, and installing a new one. If not, some of the trash could fly off of Kopra, and land on the pleasure worlds (heaven forbid). Anyone left on the asteroid could be killed by the new gravity generator, before it stabilizes. That's the official story, but, as Oliver discovers, it's not the real story.

Larkin thinks of the Koprans as little better than animals, for choosing to live like this, but Oliver isn't so sure. He volunteers to take a truck into the wilderness, to collect anyone he can find, to get them off the asteroid. Oliver takes Isaac Gaylord, headman of Kopra's only village, and Juliette, his daughter, along as guides. The truck breaks down miles from the village (sabotage), and after barely escaping from a giant mutated slug living in a mud lake, the three have to walk back to the village. By this time, any inhibitions or phobias that Oliver may have about cleanliness are long since gone; falling in love with Juliette certainly helps. When they get back to the village, Oliver discovers the real reason for getting everyone off Kopra. It involves turning the residents into "good" Federation citizens, with help from some personality surgery.

There are very few novels of any genre that take place in a garbage dump. This belongs in that large gray area of Pretty Good or Worth Reading.