Jerry Pournelle
King David's Spaceship (1980)
Reviewed: 1999-09-05

No, not that King David. Although the story deals with a space-faring civilization visiting a primitive world, the setup is not very von Dänikenesque. Expanded from Pournelle's first SF novel A Spaceship for the King (1973), this book is set around 3000 C.E., roughly contemporary to The Mote in God's Eye, which it references.

It is the far future of the author's CoDominium universe, nearly a millennium after Falkenberg's Legion. After centuries of warfare that put a stop to mankind's expansion into the galaxy and cast most colony worlds back to pre-industrial levels, the Second Empire of Man is rising again from the ashes. Recently Prince Samual's World has been rediscovered by the Imperial Navy. Their meddling with the natives' affairs was brief, and now they are working to admit the planet into the Empire.

King David II and his advisors are suspicious of the Navy's secrecy, though. Some haphazardly obtained intelligence suggests that Prince Samual's World would enter the Empire as a colony, with Imperial administrators replacing the local ruling class and an influx of off-world colonists. Of course, the King would like to preserve the independency of his people, but for that they would need to present themselves as equals, capable of space flight. How can a civilization that has just reinvented the steam engine build a spaceship?

By a stroke of luck, the King's secret police learns about an ignored library on a neighboring planet, holding the secrets of the First Empire. The Imperial Traders Association is only too happy to transport an expedition from Samual's World to the even more primitive planet of Makassar. Led by Colonel Nathan MacKinnie the Samualites shrewdly play the Imperial Navy, Traders, and Church against each other, all the while trying to wrest the secret treasure from a hostile world.

King David's Spaceship is very much a typical Pournelle novel. Half of the book covers MacKinnie's expedition to Makassar, which again turns into one of the lessons on military history Pournelle seems so fond of. The Colonel himself could just as well have been called Falkenberg. There is also the reliable sergeant, and the independently minded woman as love interest. The economic and social world-building appears solid and is probably well grounded in history, but the novel lacks in originality. The book has little to commend it save the idea of the Samualites' bold plan.

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