Norstrilia

** spoiler alert ** I felt like I had stumbled into the middle of something here, and then I read that Nostrilia, Smith;s only novel, is tied into a web of short stories that more fully explains the future world setting. Given that, he does an excellent job of establishing that world with enough information without weighing down the action with ponderous exposition and elaborately developed back stories.

Who wouldn't like a story about a boy who buys the planet Earth? And I love the self-imposed austerity of the Nostrilians, the wealthiest people in the universe thanks to stroon, a drug they derive from gigantic deformed sheep. Stroon allows earthlings to live thousands of years instead of the allotted 400 or so.To limit their wealth and keep to their simple farming ways, Nostrilians impose a 2 mllion per ent tariff on all inboud goods. (I maybe got that figure wrong, it could be two thousand or twenty million.) The hero, Rob McBan, is the innocent country lad who has to make his way through a decadent earth filled with those who want to exploit him, kill him, or who think of him as a kind of messiah.

The story is fun from beginning to end, but Smith does not stint on the dark background of his future world. Earth is maintained by a genetically engineered race of underpeople, human-like creatures derived from animals, Humans themselves, freed from disease and want, are given to boredom, intrigue, and entertainments that allow them to pretend they have actual problems. They are elitist and racist, and only a handful of them sense that the days of their civilization are justifiably numbered.