I thoroughly enjoyed All the Colors of Darkness. It was published in 1963 and is the second in Biggle’s series of books featuring a detective named Jan Darzek. Biggle was probably more famous for writing detective fiction than he was SF, so this novel is a good blend of Science Fiction themes with detective fiction characters. The emphasis is on characterizations and Biggle even does a good job creating believable alien characters with alien personalities.

The science fiction is limited to one SF element. The story starts out with the creation of a Teleportation Portal. This is stock SF and many stories have used it. It is the primary SF element in the book. The aliens, it turns out, are trying to prevent us from developing the portal. The rest of the world is just early 1960s America with women in cocktail dresses and men in ties all smoking cigarettes.

This limited SF-ness makes the story very enjoyable because the book concentrates on character and plot much more than in the average SF novel of the time. Because of the nerdy engineering tech slant to all the golden age stories, there was never much emphasis on character. Most stories spent all their time on describing technology. Being able to introduce SF elements without being bogged down in long explanations is called Heinleining, because Heinlein was so good at it. The prime example being Heinlein’s phrase: “The door dilated.” This expresses the science fictional element, a very high tech door, without wasting time describing the technology.

Because Biggle wastes no time describing the science behind his portals, his character can use them as a Hitchcockian McGuffin to create exciting and interesting plot points.

The writing is crisp and concise, without a wasted word and pulls you along through the plot to the point where I felt compelled to read it last night while Erica watched TV – something I hardly ever do.

I am going to keep my eye out for more Biggle books. (Notice that I am on the top shelves of my new collection. I will be reading A’s, B’s and C’s. There are a dozen Asimov’s, but I have read them all – so off to eBay with Isaac.)

This novel comes from a time when books were about 60,000 words long. Longer books were edited down and shorter books were padded up or had font adjustment so that they were 160 to 200 pages. I much prefer this short format. It is a good quick read. I am selecting the books that I read by number of pages. I have decided not to read books longer than 200 pages.

Yesterday I created 3 more auctions for books on eBay. I am selling off the High Fantasy, which I don’t have much taste for anymore, and I am selling off the fat books. All the Niven & Pournelle books are going into the sell pile. All the David Gerrold books are going on eBay. Stephen Donaldson books are on their way out. I like these authors, but I have read enough of their works that I don’t want to read more. For each one of their books that I sell, I get to keep two or three thin books, which I like much better.