Review: Good story, troubling ethics
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 27, 2013
So strongly influenced by Heinlein that it sometimes seems almost copied, especially in the stilted and artificial way that the men and women speak and interact with each other.Mr Chandler writes damn good stories, and this is one, but it really troubles me that his protagonists have a very selective moral compass - they are Right and everyone else is Wrong, and they are totally "justified" to terminate any opposition with extreme prejudice to individuals and entire nations.In this story, just three people see an opportunity for personal enrichment and kill everyone in their way, both from Earth and from an Alien Nation. And when they arrive on a pristine under-populated world, they immediately start to "develop" it for personal enrichment. And introduce that awful colonial (now so American) paternalistic habit of tipping! (That's civilisation?) The three are financing their venture with platinum and diamonds, which are both common on other planets - so when their venture succeeds they will ruin the traders who are supporting them when the markets inevitably get flooded.