review of
Edmund Cooper's The Slaves of Heaven
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 21, 2019

The back cover synopsizes the outline of the plot of this for the reader:

"They were the Night Comers... No one could say if they were ghosts or gods or devils. They only knew they came from the sky, silver clad, ominous, with a Medusa glance that could freeze a man in his tracks. They stole women and carried them off to heaven, decimating the Earth's population and threatening the survivial of the human species.

"Berry, chief of the Londos clan, frustrated by the uselessness of his tribes' primitive weapons, ventures into the inner circle of the Night Comers and is spirtied away in their ship to their home in the stars. There, Berry's fight for survival holds the key to the existence of his own world and that of the Night Comers as well."

I enjoyed this. I was a tad reminded of Mack Reynolds's Space Barbarians (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2462644753 ) because it's about superior vitality & integrity winning out over superior force & dirty tricks. As my Reynolds review concludes:

"As I've come to expect from Reynolds, anything he writes questions status quo assumptions — in this case: who're the barbarians & who're the civilized? & what makes one preferable to the other? While many SF writers seem to have military experience that informs their stories, Reynolds seems to have a deep knowledge of history that's closest in spirit to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States while clearly predating it."

Cooper's bk is from 1974. By then, describing sex, especially the sex of barbarians, was 'ok':

"He glanced at Vron's face. Her eyes were closed: her lips were open. She seemed happy. He slipped his hand between her legs & began to fondle her. She gave a low groan of pleasure, but did not move." - p 1

I hope everything came out alright. Sometimes those manual enemas are tricky. Imagine that paragraph w/ this simple change of names.

'He glanced at Sally's face. Her eyes were closed: her lips were open. She seemed happy. He slipped his hand between her legs & began to fondle her. She gave a low groan of pleasure, but did not move.'

Of-course,-these-Earthlings-are-post-nuclear-war-descendents.

"The Londos people were nomadic. They had been nomadic for generations, though their wanderings were restricted mainly to the south country. Like every other tribe or clan, they knew the hot spots and avoided them sedulously. Men who sought refuge in the hot spots—clan outcasts, criminals, those whose minds were unclear—did not usually live long. Or, if they did, strange things happened to them. They developed horn or bone where there should only be flesh. They grew limbs where there should be no limbs. They went blind or began to see what others could not see." - p 6

Our man Berry has managed to get taken on a Night Comer spaceship in an attempt to thwart their spacenapping of the Earth females. He arrives at their satellite home.

""Welcome to Heaven," he said. "The acquisition program is enturely for females, but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us."" - p 41

He discovers that the Earth women are being used a breeders.

"Berry scratched his head. "If no man has lain with you, how could you bring forth babies?"

""The Lords of Heaven had them put in my belly while I slept. That is the truth. They do not lie with dirt women, or only rarely. They have strange instruments, and much magic, whereby they can plant the seed of a child in the womb of a woman without her knowing. So it was with me. I have given them three sons. When a woman has given birth three times, the Lords of Heaven consider her to be spent. She is taken from the seminary and is not seen again. Some say that such women are returned dirtside, but others say they are killed, that the Lords of Heaven make use of their bodies to grow flowers. That is why I am afraid."" - p 46

""And did she please you? Did you rut happily?"

"Still Berry was not to be drawn. "She is much of a woman. I am content."

"The Controller laughed. "It seems she has also taught you to be cautious, savage. Thus, having fulfilled her task, she may now be put down."

"Berry looked at Tala. Her face became white, and she trembled. He turned to the Controller. "Chief, what do you mean by these words 'put down'?"" - p 59

Remember the days when MEN WERE MEN & women were turned into manure as soon as the MEN tired of rutting them? Well, actually, those days have never existed — but that's what we have FICTION for.

"At the evening meal he confused Tala greatly when he tried to explain the significance of Operator J—the square root of minus one." - p 79

You mean she hasn't been composted yet? It's obvious that Tala doesn't have the GREAT ORACLE or she wd've immeditaely gotten this:

"The j operator is “a mathematical symbol that is used to represent the complex numbers”. For example, the j operator is used in the form of x jy. Where x is a real number, and y is a complex number.

"The j operator plays a vital role in the analysis and calculations of three phase unbalanced loads, symmetrical faults, ac circuits, and phasor diagrams in electrical engineering." - https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/definitions/the-j-operator-4

That wd've straightened her right out. Last but not least, let's get down to culture. Berry's going to be nothing but a Dingle if he doesn't get up to speed.

""Have you seen a Shakespearean play? Do you understand the philosophy of Existentialism? Have you read Tolstoi, seen a Leonardo painting, watched Fonteyn dance in 'Swan Lake'? What do you know of giants, such as Sartre, Ibsen, Moliere, Cervantes, Eliot, Goethe? Intellectually, savage, you and your kind are in the Stone Age. You are the trash that is left after the destruction of a civilization."

""These giants, they are very big people?" inquired Berry.

"Regis LeGwyn laughed. "Giants of the spirit, stupid one. Men whose thoughts made them immortal."" - p 128

It looks like Berry's the one who ended up getting put down. That's not fair. Throwing in Existentialism is also not fair given that the most famous Existentialists aren't Existentialists & that nobody seems to know what it means anyway.

Well, there you have it: a review mostly w/o spoilers of a bk that I've told you almost nothing about. Trust me, I enjoyed it but it's not high on my list of recommendations. ( )

Mildly entertaining, but terribly dated at this point. ( )