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The setup on the colonized planet Geb seemed ideal for humanity. Beside its habitable climate, it also possessed a ready-made slave-labor reserve. There were semi-intelligent natives, humanoid, unaggressive, willing to work. And so the colony thrived....

By the time that the recontact ship, Daedalus arrived with its trained Earth scientists, things had become less simple. The enigma of the native Sets jarred with the types of life evolved on Geb. It had become obvious that the Sets with their slave programming must have originated elsewhere might even be an android creation.

And that left the Daedalus with the greatest and most important problem of their whole cruise. Who were the originators of these Sets? Did Earth have a competitor Out There?

Cover art by HR Van Dongen.

Published in 1979 by DAW.
ISBN:0-87997-493-1

Review by Ian Braidwood

Cast of Characters:
Alexis Alexander, Cpt Peter Rolving, Linda Beck, Karen Karelia, Nathan Parrick, Conrad Silvian, Marial Valory, Helen Levasseur, Johann Gley.

The final Daedalus landing finds Alex & Co on Geb where, in a departure from customary nomenclature, everything is named after ancient Egyptian mythology.

The Sets of the title are Geb's indigenous humanoid aliens, who don't seem to feel that they have to live by the normal rules of natural selection and strive for anything. Indeed, they seem perfectly willing to work for the human colonisers, as long as you don't hurt them, when they just do a disappearing act.

Assuming we're not referring to the mysterious habits of the British publishing industry, The Paradox of the Sets actually isn't that hard to work out, so Brian presents his idea half way through and the rest of the narrative concerns itself with Alex's attempts to prove his hypothesis.

Although I've enjoyed the Daedalus series, they leave me feeling a little sad. I can't help feeling that after The Realms of Tartarus, they represent a capitulation; a return to a formulaic approach to serve the expectations of the publishing industry.