Frank Herbert: The Exploits of Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary

Frank Herbert
Whipping Star  a novel


Once, long centuries past, con-sentients with a psychological compulsion to "do good" had captured the government.  Unaware of the the writhing complexities, the mingled guilts end self-punishments, beneath their compulsion, they had eliminated virtually all delays and red tape from government.  The great machine with its blundering power over sentient life had slipped into high gear, had moved faster and faster.  laws had been conceived and passed in the same hour. Appropriations had flashed into being and were spent in a fortnight.  New bureaus for the mos improbable purposes had leaped int existence and proliferated like some insane fungus.

Government had become a great destructive  wheel without a governor, whirling with such frantic speed that it spread chaos wherever it touched.

In desperation, a handful of sentients had conceived the Sabotage Corps to slow that wheel.  There had been bloodshed and other degrees of violence, but the wheel had been slowed.  In time, the Corps had become a Bureau, and the Bureau was whatever it was today--a organization headed into its own corridors of entropy, a group of sentients who preferred subtle diversion to violence. . . but were prepared for violence when the need arose.  

This, of course, goes against conventional wisdom which insists that slow, inefficient governments, those that are bound up with red tape, are bad governments.  It even suggests that slow and inefficient governments provide more freedom for its citizens than do fast and efficient governments.  It's an interesting question to meditate on. 

So what keeps the BuSab from turning into a juggernaut? Their promotion policy. The way you get promoted is to sabotage your boss.  The Bureau of Sabotage therefore slows itself down and makes itself more inefficient by regularly replacing its management. 

The Whipping Star is one of two novels that feature the exploits of Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary.  The other novel is The Dosadi Experiment,  one of my favorite novels by Frank Herbert, second only to Dune.  In addition, there are two short stories:  "A Matter of Traces" and "The Tactful Saboteur."   While none of the stories are sequels, they are all set in Herbert's ConSentiency Universe, which include a galactic government in which humans and aliens are equal, something a bit unusual for a story first published in the late 50s and early 60s.

Jorj X. McKie is the protagonist in all four stories, and he clearly is not the typical handsome heroic Anglo-Saxon hero found in most SF at that time.He is described as a "squat little man, angry red hair, face like a disgruntled frog."   If a film were to be made of one of these stories, I wonder who would play McKie.

The sentient races of the ConSentiency Universe  have been blessed by the appearance of the Calebans, an alien race that apparently looks like or possibly inhabits something like a beach ball.  Yet, this race provides the sentient races with a means of travel, the jump doors, that ignores the limitations posed by the speed of light.  What is most surprising is that, as best as anyone can figure, there are only 83 of them.  Well, there were 83 when they were first encountered, but they have disappeared lately so that now only one remains.  McKie's assignment is to track down the last one and find out why the others have disappeared.

This sounds simple except for several minor details.  The last Caleban has signed a contract with Mliss Abnethe,  a woman who has an obsession with whipping things.   Since she is one of the richest people in the galaxy, she was able to escape imprisonment for capturing and whipping other humans, but she had to agree to sin no more.   She took that to mean that she couldn't go around whipping humans, but there was no mention of aliens.  So, she decided to practice her obsession on a Caleban.

The other minor detail is that Calebans can't communicate too well with other sentients.  In fact, nobody is certain that there's any communication at all.  The parts I enjoyed most in the novel occurs when McKie meets up with the remaining Caleban and attempts to question him? her? it? about the fate of the other 82 Calebans.  When the Caleban speaks, I can't help but wonder if those really are coherent rational statements or words that were just randomly assembled.

When McKie finally locates the last Caleban,  he learns that the situation is much worse than he thought.  The whipping in some way reduces the Caleban's life force.  In fact, another five to ten whippings will destroy it, the last Caleban.  When that happens every being who has ever used the Caleban's jump doors will die.  Since everybody uses the jump doors regularly, including McKie, this means the end of sentient life in the Galaxy, or perhaps the Universe. 

What I enjoyed also was something that didn't appear.  Herbert didn't spend several chapters going into Mliss Abnethe's obsession, in other words a long-winded treatise how this obsession related to certain traumatic events in her childhood, something many contemporary writers find it necessary in order to expand the length of the story.  Nor did he provide us with pages of excruciating detail on why McKie had racked up over 50 divorces so far.  These were givens.   This is an SF novel and not a psychoanalytical case study.

I think you might enjoy the story as long as you don't spend too much time trying to understand the pseudoscience.