Book Review: 'The Mind Behind the Eye' by Joseph Green
'The Mind Behind the Eye' first saw print in the UK in 1971 as 'Gold the Man.' This paperback edition (190 pp.) was the second DAW Book ever published, in April, 1971, and features cover art by Josh Kirby.
Author Green, born in 1931, has had considerable longevity as a writer, publishing novels and short stories up until 2020.
'Mind' is a strange little book...........
The premise certainly is offbeat: in 1981, Earth comes under attack from a race of aliens known only as the Exterminators. The attack involves dispersal of a biological agent into the atmosphere, and is unsuccessful. Earth wins a minor victory and expels the aliens from their forward landing base on Mars, but over the next 28 years there are successive attacks, each with a new biological agent. It is clear that the Exterminators intend to keep attacking until they find an agent capable of eliminating Homo sapiens from the planet, after which, presumably, they will colonize Earth.
Albert Aaron Golderson, aka 'Gold,' stands 6 feet 7 inches tall, weighs 240 lbs, is twenty-eight, a misanthrope, and one of only two super-geniuses on Earth, each genetically engineered to represent a new type of human being: Homo superior.
Gold's Eastern Bloc counterpart is a man named Petrovna. As 'Mind' opens Gold learns that an Exterminator ship has crash-landed on the moon, and its solitary pilot, who has suffered brain damage, recovered from the craft. This pilot (we later learn his name is Soam-A-Tane) is a humanoid being 300 feet tall - ! The Coordinator of Defense, and Petrovna, have a daring plan that represents Earth's best hope for survival: the damaged half of Soam-A-Tane's brain is to be removed and replaced by a computerized 'command and control center,' nestled in the alien's skull and manned by Gold and a dour Slavic woman named Marina.
In a sort of variation of the kaiju theme in Japanese sci-fi, and the 2013 movie Pacific Rim, Gold and Marina will, from their center behind the right eye of the witless Soam-A-Tane, manipulate the autonomic nervous system of the colossal body.
The giant is returned to his repaired ship and the ship flown to Mars, where it is emplaced in the landing complex abandoned by the Exterminators. A distress signal is triggered and in due course, the Exterminators travel across interstellar space to retrieve their stricken pilot. Once the pilot arrives on the Exterminator home world, the planet Bragair, Gold and Marine are tasked with spying on their adversaries and, if possible, relaying information to Earth that will aid defense forces in countering Exterminator attacks.
I won't disclose any spoilers, save to say that as events unfold Gold will learn why the Exterminators are intent on colonizing Earth. If Gold is to save mankind from extinction, he will have to find a way to exploit this information and end the interspecies conflict.
"Mind' is arguably a sex novel (!) masquerading as science fiction. Author Green regularly intersperses sexual episodes (or, as he disingenuously labels them, "...the great human joy of sharing") indulged in by Gold in times past and present, into the narrative. Some of these sexcapades, such as one involving a black, teenage prostitute, or one involving the rape of a team member, may have been mildly provocative by the standards of fiction of the early 1970s, but modern-day readers likely will find them transgressive and most Un-Woke.
While inserting sex into narratives was deemed a hip and trendy action in the days of the New Wave movement, what Green provides seems excessive, shading as it does into softcore porn. While such content may have been an effort on Green's part to humanize Gold, I suspect that in truth, the author figured some carnality would be irresistable to an audience of frustrated sci-fi nerds and geeks (let's face it, a commercial strategy that worked very, very well for authors like John Norman.......).
In the latter chapters of the novel author Green transitions into hard sci-fi, featuring quasi-pedantic discourses on stellar physics and chemistry.
I finished 'Mind' debating over whether to give it a Three Star or a Four Star Rating, and settled for a Four Star. While the novel can drag at times and the 'erotic' passages came across as more than a little creepy, overall, the book has an imaginative sensibility that leverages the ethos of the New Wave movement, and for this, 'Mind' deserves credit. Readers looking for an eccentric, unconventional science fiction adventure will want to sit down with 'The Mind Behind the Eye.'
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