Author:	Jack Williamson
Copyright:	1982
Date Reviewed:	4/8/01
Rating:	6.0

Synopsis: Like Spider Robinson's "Mindkiller", two parallel stories are being told in this novel. However here they occur a million years apart. As the story open, a robot wakens from disturbing dreams to be born. He finds himself on a tiny spaceship, just a little larger than himself, and realizes that his dreams are imperfect memories implanted from his creators. While he should be a servant of the mission, the memories are causing him to experience more human emotions than originally intended.

The other story takes place on Earth. Dr. Megan Drake is a beautiful, charming woman who runs the Raven Foundation. The foundation is chartered to realize her late brother's dream of spreading the human seed throughout the galaxy. A thousand tiny ships, carrying human genetic code in their memory banks, will be sent to stars with planets. Upon landing, the central computer will create humans to populate the world. Most of the ships will be lost but if just a few arrive in tact, humanity may live on. She hires the brightest men in their field to work on aspects of the project and to provide their brain patterns to the humans who will be born (created) later. Megan is so perfect, all of the men fall in love with her.

Back in space, Defender, as the ship's main computer calls him, finds out that the tiny ship was damaged in flight by a meteorite and is off course. He effects repairs just enough to land the ship. After returning from a mission to find the robot inhabitants of the planet, he is disappointed to learn that two more perfect Defender's were created and he is no longer needed. Unlike the newer Defenders, he is sexless and wingless. However, the two new creations soon fly off to be together and are not seen again.

The ship then continues its mission to create 20 couples to populate the planet. However, the first two are defective. The man kills the women, who wrongly falls in love with Defender One, and runs away to find the robot's headquarters. Defender One follows him and witnesses his death. On an expedition with two humans, Defender One finds that this planet was once inhabited by humans that appear to have been slaughtered from space.

Three years later, seeing landing craft fall from the sky, he goes back to the robot's headquarters to find that Defenders Two and Three set a trap for the new invaders and all but one are killed. That one captured a human from base camp who now explains that the invader's race was also created from the Raven project. They prospered for thousands of years before a race of robots with biological brains destroyed their planet. The invaders were looking to relocate to a safe world.

Review: "Manseed" began with a large premise, spreading humanity throughout the galaxy, but wasted it on a small story. It might have told about the conquests of a thousand ships. Instead most of the novel is about one lonely defender and his depression over the loss of human sexuality. The part of the story told on Earth was interesting but would have been better if more attention were devoted to the work and less to the infatuations of the five men. We are never told why Megan was so perfect and it's hard to believe she really was. We also never find out why it was so important for the newer defenders to be sexually active. That would seem to limit their purpose and I fear was only included to provide stimulation. Most of the novel seemed to revolve around lust.

In the last three pages, we learn of a grander story about the people from another ship that made it safely to a planet, prospered for a while, and were finally destroyed. Of course three pages do not make a novel. It is also hinted that they were responsible for the previous destruction of this planet but we never learn why. Perhaps there was a predecessor novel I was supposed to read. None was mentioned and this novel does not really stand on its own.