Oltion, Jerry. The Getaway Special. 2001. Tor, 2003.
My, my, my. I did not expect The Getaway Special to be as much fun as it turned out to be. The premise sounds silly. A self-acknowledged “mad scientist” invents a small, cheap hyperdrive and causes an international incident when he tests it on the Space Shuttle Discovery. He causes even more trouble when he releases the designs for it on the public Internet and decides to build his own starship out of a thankfully new and unused septic tank. Oltion, who has designed a popular “trackball telescope” that he put in public domain, is interested the effects of freely distributed inventions. Here, he pushes the idea to a galactic scale. This is the kind of story that any of the Golden Age science fiction writers would have been proud to have their names on. ( )

The Getaway Special never quite seems to settle on what it's going to be. A wacky interstellar comedy, Ron Goulart-style? An edge-of-the-seat novel of nuclear brinkmanship, a la Failsafe in a science fiction setting? A nuts-n-bolts quasi-realistic "here's how we built the spaceship" story, perhaps reminiscent of some of Heinlein's work?

It's neither fish nor fowl. That said, it's edible - I mean, readable.

It's the story of a self-proclaimed "mad scientist" (a cutesy designation which threatens to become actively annoying) and a space shuttle pilot as the venture across the galaxy. At first, there's an interesting semi-realistic tone; it's neat to imagine what would happen if FTL travel suddenly became cheap and easy. Of course, [b:The Great Explosion|1875974|The Great Explosion|Eric Frank Russell|/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|1876940] already covered that ground (though how I wish there were sequels!).

Then the book takes a darker, more paranoiac turn, rather like [b:Capricorn One|161226|From Your Capricorn Friend Henry Miller and the Stroker, 1978-1980|Henry Miller|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1211658567s/161226.jpg|155602] (which is NOT what I meant by a wacky Goulart comedy, by the way). But it isn't long before it turns into what promises to be an interesting description of how to make a spaceship at home. Alas, this too gets a relatively sketchy treatment (although not before reminding me of [b:Gilpin's Space|5957565|Gilpins Space|Reginald Bretnor|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nbpHDjdUL._SL75_.jpg|6130273] by R. Bretnor).

Next, the story turns towards interstellar exploration. Once more, though, there's a relative lack of detail and focus.

Other threads follow. Strange aliens, world-saving...to be honest, it wasn't until I got to the roughly the middle of the aliens segment that I found myself no longer taking the book seriously. When aliens start making jokes and display virtually unbelievable abilities, the willing suspension of disbelief breaks - and mine did.

It wasn't an awful book. It was readable, and passed the time. But it wasn't particularly good, either. I'm not likely to make a particular effort to seek out future works by Mr. Oltion, although I'm not going to actively avoid him, either.

In a fractional system, I'd give this book a 2.6. And the .1 that takes it from "okay" to "liked it" is really because I came to the book with low expectations.

(Another book that I was reminded of while reading this one: [b:The Venus Belt|1785640|The Venus Belt|L. Neil Smith|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1188323453s/1785640.jpg|1784520] and [b:Tom Paine Maru|1565860|TOM PAINE MARU (Del Rey Books (Paperback))|L. Neil Smith|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Ywev+d9ZL._SL75_.jpg|1558443] by L. Neil Smith. They, and all the other books I've mentioned above, are (I'm sorry to say) more interesting than The Getaway Special.) ( )