I borrowed this from the library on a whim, and I'm glad I did. It's the kind of SF I most enjoy, where the story barrels along but allows the reader to ponder the potential allegories. The author probably had a certain set of ideas in mind when he came up with the story, but each reader comes to it with their own experiences.

John (who feels to be a bit of a Marty Stu, but I can't say whether that's because he's remarkably passive through the narrative [which is also explained within the story] or because he really feels like the traditional idea of the average SF fan) is a bondsman to a Gray named Martok, so is tethered to him when Martok comes up with an apparently harebrained scheme to set up something like a b&b in the woods. In a post-apocalyptic Earth at some time in the future, where aliens arrived and have mostly taken over.

Due an unfortunate interaction between John and a couple of would-be thieves at the wrong time, in the wrong place, the local most powerful Gray believes Martok is an enforcer - leading to John, a girl called Six, and some so-called feral humans to administer punishments as correctives, while trying to conceal everything from Martok.

The world building is left vague enough that I can imagine a prequel (or indeed, a sequel) being written; though it works very well as a standalone, and each reader can decide for themselves which of the competing narratives of The Fall is most likely.

I'm pretty sure several names are nods to Star Trek, for what it's worth. It's more The Magnificent Ferengi than Far Beyond The Stars, if that's any help.

Reviewing this about a year after I read it, so the details are hazy.

The idea, on some level, could have been interesting. What would a matriarchal society look like?

Hopefully never this, because it's the worst kind of authoritarian carceral society the author seemed to be able to come up with.

I've earned my right to hate men, as a concept, and this was extremely man-hating imo. Collective punishment is a war crime, btw.

It's funny how a certain kind of self-described feminist - particularly those who don't show understanding of intersectionality - will write novels that turn into uncomfortable glimpses of their revenge fantasies. The ones I have read so far all end up with the apparent heroines turning out to be the real, terrible villains of the piece, even if male characters do bad things in the narrative. This was one of those novels.

I also remember the characters being frustrating.

Someone needs to write a good near-future novel about how a matriarchy would function. It would be nothing like this.

When I borrowed this from the library, I did not anticipate it needing content warnings, but here we are.

CW: discussions of rape fantasies, racism, misogyny. A bit gory in places. This was written in the early 70s and is extremely of its time.

I've never seen Jaws, somehow, so I thought the book would be fun. It's one of the biggest movies of the 70s and defined a genre of thriller/horror, so the book can't be too bad, right?

Well. It starts with a woman skinny-dipping and getting got by the shark, and she's dismissed (at least initially) by all the men with any power over Amity as "a drifter from Idaho" that no-one will miss - even though she was reported missing and that's how the story got started. Her partial remains are found, and the visual condition of the attached breast is a focal point. Here started the author's concern with describing women's breasts.

There are very few female characters though, so this fixation revolves mostly around Ellen, the wife of Amity's chief of police. At two points in the narrative, she strips naked and assesses her nude body in the mirror and her gaze is 100% male. One of these occasions is in A GAS STATION TOILET.

Benchley realised the harm to sharks his work caused, and spent the remainder of his years working on conservation. I wonder if he ever did anything about his misogyny?