The Man Who Never Missed [Mass Market Paperback]

This is a great novel for what it is - a mythic tale of a hero, how he was formed, and the beginnings of his battle against an unassailable (and of course evil) foe. If you're looking for characters who are "ordinary mortals" or for some philosophy deeper than "good must triumph over evil", you won't find it here. But the thoroughly enjoyable tale that Perry weaves made me look past these points.

Sure, TMWNM isn't a great piece of literature, but it's a helluva fun story. And in the end, don't you want to be entertained as much as enlightened?

In this novel, Emile Antoon Khadaji is an former Confed veteran with six years combat experience when he finds himself in a bloodbath on Maro, where three-quarters of a million religious fanatic ran, walked and crept into the Confed fire zones and died. This traumatic event breaks his social conditioning and gives him an epiphany about violence. He runs into the oncoming mob, discarding his equipment as he goes, and later finds himself in a nearby town, where he meets Pen (see The 97th Step).

He realizes that the amount of violence used by the Confed is wrong and looks for a way to eliminate the strong-arm tactics. Pen teaches him how to control himself and Juete teaches him to see others as they are. On Bocca, he learns the nature of politics and military force as well as many other subjects. He wallows in learning for a while, but then moves on to gaining money as a power base.

On Greaves, he buys a bar and specializes in providing a good time to the troops. At night and in his spare time, he shoots select troopers with darts carrying Spasm, a convulsant that leaves the victims totally incapable of speech and movement for six months, but leaves the mind clear and undamaged. During these six months, he shoots 2388 of the 10,000 Confed troops, including the commanding officer.

When the Confed finally catches up to him, he is on record as being the one and only member of the Shamba Freedom Forces. This spooks the System Marshall and every single trooper that learns the tale. His fame and example spreads throughout the Confed.

This novel is a SF psyops story, focusing on the use of minimum force to achieve political objectives. Underlying this is a martial arts philosophy which teaches much the same lesson. When a political system degenerates into a self-perpetuating organization that preys on its own citizens, it only takes a small event to crystallize opposition to its existence. Witness the fall of the Soviet Union from the inside.

This story is much like Eric Frank Russell's Wasp, but with a more military approach and a different objective. In Wasp, the goal was to reduce the will to resist of the planetary population, but in this novel, the goal is to increase the will to resist of the planetary populations by breaking the reputation of Confed forces.

Recommended for all Perry fans and anyone who enjoys psyops stories in a SF setting.