"If he did the smart thing, we wouldn't have a story!"
That's the vibe right out of the gate. We start with Calhoun, an Interstellar Medical Serviceman, staring down a quarantine zone—basically a planetary firewall—and deciding, "You know what? I'm gonna breach that." As someone who spent last week arguing with a security compliance officer about opening a port for a hotfix, I felt this on a spiritual level.
I picked this up because I needed a palate cleanser. I just finished a 40-hour epic fantasy that required a spreadsheet to track the characters, and frankly, my brain was fried. (That epic was Towers of Midnight, and yes, I literally made a spreadsheet.) I needed something I could finish in two days of commuting. Enter Murray Leinster. Four hours. One problem. One solution. Done.
Debugging a Planetary System
Here's the thing about Calhoun: he's basically a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), but for biology. He shows up, diagnoses the root cause (usually a plague or a sociological glitch), patches it, and leaves before the ticket can get reopened.
In This World Is Taboo, the problem is a quarantined planet called Dara. The "Taboo" status is essentially a permanent 403 Forbidden error. Calhoun breaks in anyway because his heuristics suggest the data is wrong.
I listen at 1.5x speed usually, but this is old-school sci-fi—plot-driven, snappy, zero fluff—so I bumped it to 1.75x. It moves. There's no three-chapter arc about the emotional trauma of his childhood pet. Just pure problem-solving. It feels like the kind of sci-fi my dad used to read, where the competence of the protagonist is the main superpower. (Kevin would probably complain about the lack of "character arcs," but sometimes you just want to see a competent person do their job, you know?)
The "Mark F. Smith" Factor
If you've ever dabbled in LibriVox (free public domain audiobooks), you know Mark F. Smith. The guy is a legend. He's the same narrator who made Adventures of Sherlock Holmes feel like a BBC radio drama.
Usually, volunteer audiobooks are a gamble. You might get a pro, or you might get someone recording in a bathroom with a fan on. Mark is the former. His voice has this classic, radio-drama quality that fits 1960s sci-fi perfectly. He's clear, consistent, and doesn't do any weird, distracting accents.
He sounds like the guy who should be reading the mission logs. It made the morning train ride from Millbrae to Mountain View fly by. I didn't even notice the guy next to me eating a tuna sandwich at 7 AM. (Okay, I noticed, but I didn't care as much.)
Legacy Code Issues (The Dated Stuff)
Look, we have to talk about the "legacy code" here. The book was published in the early 60s (based on magazine serials from the 50s, I think), and yikes—the gender politics are deprecated.
There are moments involving female characters that made me physically cringe. It's that specific brand of mid-century sci-fi sexism where women are treated like fragile hardware that might overheat if they think too hard. It's not aggressive, just... patronizing.
If you can compartmentalize that as "historical artifacts"—like seeing a floppy disk drive in a movie—you'll be fine. But fair warning: it definitely dates the story more than the tech does.
Who's This For?
Queue it up if: You want a quick, competence-driven sci-fi fix between major series, you appreciate classic pulp storytelling, or you need something that won't demand a spreadsheet to follow.
Skip it if: You need deep character development, or dated gender dynamics are a dealbreaker even with historical context.
Ticket Closed, Moving On
Is this groundbreaking? No. It's a solid, functional piece of code. It executes its function (entertaining you with space medicine and diplomacy) and terminates successfully.
It's perfect for when you're between major series and don't want to commit to a 10-book saga. A quick ticket resolution. Sometimes, that's exactly what you need.
