Double Star

A leading politician has been kidnapped, and his close associates hire an actor to impersonate him until the real man can be rescued. This is the actor's story, of how he copes with the task and thinks himself into the role, and it's handled well enough to be quite interesting. There is a plot of sorts, but it exists only as a framework to hang this character study on.

It's set in a future in which space travel is fairly routine and the political rights of (non-human) Martians are an issue. Essentially the same story could have been set in the present, or the past, but setting it in the future means that readers are unlikely to get worked up about the politics.

This novel was published in 1956, and you have to make allowances for that when reading. The characters are from the 1950s, the technology is from the 1950s with a few updates, and the writing style is characteristic of 1950s sf.

Some reviewers have commented on the line “Stow it, Penny, or I'll spank your round fanny.” It doesn't read well these days, but clearly it was one of those jokey threats uttered with no intention of carrying it out. In 1956, I guess it would probably pass as banter between close colleagues who get along well with each other. To quote another writer, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.”

For me, this is an amiable and mildly interesting story, marginally good enough to reread, but only very occasionally. Remarkably, it won a Hugo award; I think the other candidates weren't very strong that year.