EFR had two main themes: pompous authority figures being outwitted by
clever subordinates, and entire alien races being no match for a single
canny human. Put the two themes together, and you get the classic Wasp.
Humanity is at war with the evil Sirian Empire: we have the better tech,
but they have superior numbers. So, to win, we need to do something
cleverer than fight them head on. James Mowry, who can pass as a Sirian,
is recruited as a "wasp" -- an agent provocateur dropped behind
enemy lines with instructions to cause as much mischief as possible. As
the leader and total membership of the otherwise fictitious Sirian Freedom
Party, Dirac Angestun Gesept, he causes plenty of havoc.
EFR's writing has aged better than many other 1950s authors, possibly
because the fight against self-important bureaucrats is ever more
relevant, but his style and the humour is a little old-fashioned. Indeed,
although EFR is careful to paint this as the Good Guys desperately
fighting lots of Very Bad Guys by any means possible, this is rather
harder to read as a comedy today than when it was written. Today we are
more used to being the victims of psychopathic terrorists than the
supporters of heroic resistance fighters; one's first natural impulse is
to identify with the Sirians. However, here (most of) the victims are
either nasty criminal thugs, or very nasty secret police (basically just a
purple-skinned Gestapo -- indeed, compare the names of the Sirian Secret
Police, the Kaitempi, and the Japanense Imperial Army's military
police, the kempeitai), so the impulse does not last long. In
fact, everyone is a bit of a cipher -- even Mowry careers from one
incident or crisis to the next.
Yet, as a dig at totalitarianism, and as a resistance fighter's pocket
instruction manual, Wasp still makes good reading.
