Code of the Lifemaker

Stodgily presented but often pleasing sf satire, from a British expatriate with a rather shaky track record. Chilly, smog-shrouded Titan is home to mechanical life-forms - a complete ecology of plant and animal machine-analogues - derived from an alien robot factory that went haywire a million years ago. And the highly evolved, robot Taloids have a medieval, religion-dominated, city-state culture. (In Carthogia, for instance, a renaissance is under way, while nearby Kroaxia suffers a more typical, ossified religious-military dictatorship.) Then, when an expedition from Earth, funded by the General Space Enterprises Corporation, descends on Titan, many Taloids believe the Earthmen to be angels of the Lifemaker. But the machine-creatures rep-, resent a wealth of new products and technology - which the rapacious GSEC (via its figurehead, the hugely popular fake psychic Karl Zambendorf) intends to grab. . . by encouraging a dooming arms race among the Taloid states. However, when Zambendorf contacts the Carthogians, he realizes that they're not only intelligent, but humanlike; so he schemes to thwart GSEC by sparking a religious revolution. Though hampered somewhat by puddingy prose and speechy tendencies: shrewd, well-developed notions in an adroit, often amusing satire. (Kirkus Reviews)