Fred's Book Club: Never Stop Improving.

It's Hump Day, which means another thrilling edition of the Humpback Writers, who don't have humped backs but do write, and maybe even on Wednesdays. Anyway, we do this on Wednesdays and that's just how conditions are. 

Today we have a science fiction novel from 1984 called The Practice Effect. It's sci-fi that fits the classic title of "speculative fiction"--it asks one unusual question, and the plot hangs on answering it. Other examples might include: What if humans built a galactic empire and it began to fall apart like empires past? (Asimov's Foundation books.) What if Earth is a Fallen planet but sentient creatures on other planets did not fall from God's grace? (Lewis's Space trilogy.) What if everyone was resurrected after death in an Edenic world, all at once? (Farmer's Riverworld books.) What if aliens are even stranger than we have ever imagined? (Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey.") 

In this case it's a simple scientific question: What if a backward version of Newton's laws made things stronger instead of worn out as they were used?

Author David Brin was a rising star in the 1980s, having success with novels Sundiver and Startide Rising. This was his third book, and rather different from the first two, which are space-oriented. In The Practice Effect, our protagonist, Dennis Nuel, is a physicist looking into alternate universes. He does not expect, however, to have to survive in one. He goes on a two-hour mission through a portal called the zievatron to the other side, to a place referred to as Fix's world after the nickname for an animal that came from it. Dennis has to bring Fix back and do a quick recon. But his colleague and rival Brady has other thoughts.

Brady smiled, speaking softly so only Dennis could hear him. "I never mentioned it to the others, since it seemed so absurd. But it's only fair to tell you."
    "Tell me about what?"
    "Oh, it could be nothing at all, Nuel. Or maybe something pretty unusual... like the possibility that this anomaly world has a different set of physical laws than hold sway on Earth!"
    By now the hatch had half closed. The timer was running.
    This was ridiculous. Dennis wasn't going to let Brady get to him. "Stuff it, Bernie," he said with a laugh. "I don't believe a word of your baloney."
    "Oh? Remember those purple mists you found last year where gravity repelled?"
    "Those were different entirely. No major difference in physical law could endanger me on Fix's world--not when the biology is so compatible. 
    "But if there's something minor you haven't told me about," Dennis continued, stepping forward, "you'd better spill it now or I swear I'll..."
    Strangely, Brady's antagonism seemed to fall away, replaced by genuine puzzlement.
    "I don't know what it is, Nuel. It had to do with the instruments we sent through. Their efficiencies seemed to change the longer they were there! It was almost as if one of the thermodynamic laws was subtly different."
    Too late, Dennis realized that Brady wasn't just egging him. He really had discovered something that honestly perplexed him. But by now the hatch was almost closed all the way.
    "Which law, Brady? Dammit, stop this process until you tell me! What law?"
    Through the crack that remained, Brady whispered, "Guess."
    With a sigh the seals fell into place and the hatch became vacuum tight.

Once on the other side, Dennis discovers that the return device has been raided, meaning he is stuck on this strange world. His only hope is to find the stolen materials before the lab back on Earth decides he is not returning and turns away from Fix's world, which would leave him stranded forever.  

Things get stranger when he is set on by the humanesque natives:

Dennis watched the survivors stumble away, howling in pain, their fellows bloody and still behind them. He looked down at the small weapon in his hand.
    Powered by stored sunlight, the needler could peel tiny slivers off of any odd-shaped lump of metal he shoved into its ammo chamber, and fire them at high velocity. Dennis had thought it little better than a toy when he started out from the zievatron but he had begun to gain confidence in it with all the practice on the trail. 
    Now he stared at it in amazement.
    What a killer, he thought.

Indeed, on this world things get better with use. The mystery is deepened by the fact that this only seems to happen to inanimate objects; living creatures don't physically improve as they age here. Why should this be?

Dennis will have to find some answers -- if he can stay alive long enough. The natives are not all friendly, and he's going to have his hands full with them (and with a gorgeous woman named Linnora). 

I liked this book a lot when I first read it. Some years later I read it again and was less impressed. But the well may have been poisoned for me by then. I had a girlfriend who despised science fiction, and I lent her the book as an example of the genre as an entertaining way of exploring speculative ideas. She despised it. Then she despised me and de-Fredded herself. I didn't blame Brin for tarnishing my star, but I cursed everything about the relationship. 

David Brin's own star was diminished for a while, also through no fault of his own. I remember reading stories he had published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, stories that became the post-apocalyptic book The Postman. I normally am unkeen on that kind of SF, but I did like his stories. They were human-sized; love for humanity is not normally seen in that subgenre. Then Kevin Costner made a terrible movie version of the book in 1997, which was a huge flopperoo. The only reason you don't hear more about it now is that Costner had had a bigger post-apocalyptic bomb two years earlier with Waterworld. 

Despite it all I do recommend The Practice Effect. In its way it is a classic, rollicking science fiction adventure of the kind you don't see much anymore. Some of Brin's other fiction is more philosophical, but The Practice Effect is a thinking man's adventure, and fun for all that.