Book Review – The Sentinel Stars By Louis Charbonneau

A comparison to Orwell’s “1984” would be hard press not to compare this book to. One could maybe argue this would be a Big Brother 1.0 society before they really “perfected” it. Here, the Big Brother government overlords are “The Organization”. Members of the society are named in license plate format of three letters and three numbers in a similar fashion to Ayn Rand’s “Anthem”. All members have a Tax Debt that they must work off by doing work for some unknown period of time and people are classified by how many long they have work left (so they are clearly subscribers to Modern Monetary Theory). Then you win your Freedom to become Freemen and spend the rest of your days not working in a secluded location away from the working class. Enter our hero who will not be classified by a designation but by his name and he’s decided to take the day off and go after a woman not his assigned person. The Organization can’t have free thinkers like that!

This is a pulp novel from 1963 so it behooves the author to pull the audience in quickly – and I liked this book by page 10. The world is introduced right away as our Winston-type character, Hendley. His rebellion is begun right off the bat and after soon being caught the banter between The Organization and Hendley shows that both are written smartly. It shows that the government doesn’t have complete control over the population but they also aren’t a naive ruling elite.

In The Middle Of It All

The second act is not as strong as the first where the punishment is to try and show Hendley what he’s working for by giving him a day pass to the Freemen society. And here is where the author doesn’t make his point strong enough. His point is that freedom isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be when The Organization is in charge and no work is present. But the hedonism and lack of value placed on life by the Freemen isn’t as forceful as it needed to be. More focus on the lack of value of life could have been more expressed (though it is somewhat). Or the focus on how the value of work done in light of freedom would have been a more excellent point. The ending hints very briefly at that type. There is no Emmanuel Goldstein manual for our hero to learn from. It’s not clear how he has established his moral basis for seeing either the working side of The Organization or the Freemen side of The Organization as being wrong and immoral. There seems to be some discussion about a “before time” but there’s no discussion about religion or life in the world before – except as a contrast when it comes to the working model in the current system. The second and third act slow down a bit and might not be satisfying if you’re looking for a copy plot like Orwell’s.

Dystopia & Taxes

However, this is a well written and entertaining dystopian novel. It keeps you interested and at about 150 pages is pulp at its best. I was really hoping there would be a sequel to read but sadly there was not. Charbonneau writes well and his characters are believable who think and feel and aren’t supermen/women because they are the main characters. If you’re looking for a 1984-like dystopian pulp novel this is a good one.