The Rape of the Sun is a DAW Books paperback original sci-fi novel published in 1982 that reads like it was written at least twenty years previously. Set in the mid-1990s on an Earth with much more advanced aerospace and energy technology (but still mired in the depths of the last phase of the Cold War with all of its concomitant tensions and dangers of a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.), the premise involves a humanoid manta/dragon-like race named Dhorners, from the planet Dhorn -- the males sport impala-style horns, while the females have hair (the cover painting, by David Mattingly, doesn't really do justice to the descriptions of the Dhorners' bat-like snouts and flipper-like feet) -- for a handful of religious, duplicitous, and frivolous reasons, deciding to hijack our entire solar system to serve as the crowning exhibit in their religious (Dhorn has but one religion) museum-cum-temple. Four Earth scientists and one high-level psychic named Wilkie Collins (no, really) learn of this nefarious plot and try to stop it.

There's enough honest-to-Gernsback scientific extrapolation (mixed with some not too objectionable authorial chicanery) to please those who prefer their science fiction to have at least some real science; there are also a few mind-snapping concepts tossed around -- time travel that works only in moving from the present to the past and back to the present again, although perhaps not quite in the manner that one might first think (the term "time chord" is a clue); a tweaking of a concept of Richard Matheson's -- freely blended with some cutesy/cheesy/questionable elements (a character proves to be the reincarnation of William Shakespeare; a smart, tough, strong female protagonist who, being unable to decide between her husband and her former "fearsomely arousing lover," races into the latter's bed with her husband's blessing; gratuitous line-readings from Henry VI, Part III; irritating neologisms, abrupt switches in diction for no convincing reason, and gaffes such as referring to uranium as a fossil fuel [p. 18]). As rendered here, Ian Wallace's style -- and his idea of a smart, tough, strong woman referring to her inamorata as her "god," in the manner of a character from a Victorian novel (p. 255) -- may remind one more than a little of Robert A. Heinlein. This is not an unalloyed good thing.

Still and all, The Rape of the Sun is a decent time-killer for those whose ambivalence about Heinlein's work leans a bit more strongly towards the "like" side of the dial than to the "dislike," particularly if you've already read most of Heinlein and don't care to re-read any of his books at the moment. This is also apparently one of the few -- if not the only -- non-series books that Wallace published, so The Rape of the Sun is perhaps the only opportunity that a reader has to decide if he wants to read more of Wallace without feeling obligated to go on a used bookstore crawl or work the bejeezus out of his local library's inter-library lending system. ( )