The Blue Barbarians

CLEVER satire always makes excellent reading. Mr. Coblentz’s stories, in addition to being clever satirical studies, always gave us, at least, the feeling that somehow he was having a lot of fun at our expense. True, he writes about the world—in fact, he takes us to another planet—in the year 800,000. But so many times we get an uncannily distinct feeling of strange familiarity—yet everything in the novel is vastly different from anything we know about today. And the story our author tells us is not about us human beings. “The Blue Barbarians” (and that is exactly what they are), although written distinctively in the Coblentz manner, has a touch of Dean Swift. This is undoubtedly the best story we have published by this well-known author. It is thought-provoking, contains a lot of science, and is easily worth two readings. In short, it is a good example of typical classic scientific fiction and we recommend it to you.