Review: Crash Landing on Iduna, by Arthur Tofte

Review: Crash Landing on Iduna, by Arthur Tofte

by Rich Horton

I have been asked before, when reviewing a fairly minor work, if it was worth the effort. If the reading might not have been a waste of time. If we really need to know about an obscure 1975 novel by an almost completely forgotten author that turns out to have been pretty awful.

And, you know what? In some ways the answer is that it was kind of a waste of time to read a particular book, and that no one really needs to know anything about the book or author. But ... merit aside, the story of SF publication (or any field's publication) is interesting,and it can't be told without discussing failures. And sometimes minor and justly forgotten writers have interesting stories. And ... I don't mind reading the occasional bad book, at least when it's short!

So -- Crash Landing on Iduna. It is a terrible book. But there are some interesting things to say about, I think. The author, Arthur Tofte (1902-1980) was born in Chicago, but attended the University of Wisconsin and settled in Milwaukee. He worked in advertising, including miniature golf, and eventually ended up at the major Wisconsin industrial equipment company Allis-Chalmers, working there until his retirement in 1969. He was also friends with Stanley G. Weinbaum (also born in 1902), another Milwaukee resident, and was a member of the Milwaukee Fictioneers along with Weinbaum and other SF luminaries such as Ray Palmer and Ralph Milne Farley. He sold five stories between 1938 and 1940, mostly to Palmer's Amazing. After that, he seems to have done no writing until after his retirement.

Then, between 1972 and 1980, he published 13 short stories, mostly to anthologies edited by Roger Elwood. He also published two of the first five Laser Books. Laser was another Roger Elwood project. These were short novels (typically 50,000 to 60,000 words) published in uniform looking paperback editions, 190 pages, with covers by Kelly Freas. The publisher was Harlequin, and the format and formula echoed Harlequin romances. 58 total Laser books were published until the series was cancelled. It would be fair to say that the books were not well received by SF fandom, and many of them were pretty poor. That said, they did publish interesting work by the likes of Tim Powers, R. Faraday Nelson, K. W. Jeter, and Jerry Pournelle. 

Tofte published a few more novels, mostly YA, including a YA version of The Day the Earth Stood Still; a contemporary novel called Thursday's Child; an occult novel, The Ghost Hunters; and Survival Planet, a novel clearly related to Crash Landing on Iduna, though I'm not sure if it's a sequel or a more YA-oriented rewrite.

Anyway -- all that is interesting to me: a writer with a curiously bifurcated career. The connection to the important early SF writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. His two main editors being two of the more controversial editors in SF history, Ray Palmer and Roger Elwood. But -- what about this novel? 

I'll begin be noting that it is rather shorter than the norm for a Laser book, at no more than 45,000 words. I've already said that Crash Landing on Iduna is pretty terrible. What's it about? The novel opens as Lars and Iduna Evenson approach a promising planet, named after Iduna. They have four children: Peter and Inga are nearly adults, but Bretta and Sven are 5 and 4 years old. Their spaceship crashes. The children are safe, but Iduna is dead, and Lars severely injured. Peder narrates the story.

They begin by trying to save their father, and to establish a beachhead on the planet, and find food. They have a brief supply of the standard food people on Earth eat. We learn that Lars had wanted to raise his children away from the regimented and oppressive society of Earth, which is overpopulated, and on which there is not much natural life surviving. There are soon encounters with dangerous life, but Peder learns to fish, and their father slowly recovers his health. 

They realize they need to find a better place to live than their crashed spaceship, and when their father is able to travel, they journey over the nearby mountains. They find a fairly safe cave, but also encounter some mysteries -- especially the dolphinlike Thrull, an intelligent species that lives both on land and in the water. The Thrull seem benevolent but shy, until Bretta is kidnapped by some other Thrull -- and rescued by the nice Thrull. Peder and Inga and the children get involved in a potential war between the peaceful Thrull and their insane rivals ... All leading to a somewhat blunted resolution, followed by a shocking revelation some years later, as Bretta and Sven have grown to adulthood and as an Earth ship appears.

I don't want to go into too much of the silliness of all this. The portrayal of overpopulated Earth is clichéd and tendentious. The biology on the whole is absurd. The moralizing, mostly delivered by Lars, is anodyne if not offensive. The writing is competent but flat. The plotting is unconvincing. The final revelation is sort of cute but also silly. I'll say too that from the beginning there is an implication that the plot must involve incest -- but of course neither Roger Elwood nor Harlequin would have tolerated that. In the end, the arrival of an Earth ship does perhaps make that speculation moot -- still!

I didn't like this novel at all. But it does reflect an important bit of mid-70s SF publication history. And it was short enough to not really waste much of my time!