Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe by George Takei and Robert Asprin
Playboy Press
Cover Art by Ken Barr
1979
223 Pages

For several years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s Playboy Press published quite a few speculative fiction books by some pretty well known authors. Some of those authors include Robert E. Vardeman, Philip Jose Farmer, John Morressey, Morgan Llywelyn, Graham Diamond, and John Cleve (Andrew J. Offutt). I always keep an eye out for these books, some have been reprinted by other publishers, but not all.

Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe turned up one day as I was scrolling on social media. A book written by George Takei, of Star Trek fame, and Robert Asprin, editor of Thieves' World? How had such a thing never been known to me? I had to find a copy.

My experience and exposure with Playboy Press books is limited strictly to The War of Powers series by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milan beginning with The Sundered Realm. These books were short, fun adventures with sexual encounters that were often raunchy. I've also heard that John Cleve's Spaceways books are no different.

Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe is also short, with an especially interesting protagonist. Oddly enough it lacks the sexual encounters. Only in one instance does the novel allude to a sexual encounter, and that encounter is vague. Regardless, I sought this title for the novelty of the authors and not for any other reason.

The synopsis from the back cover:

Someone had programmed the robots too well–and now it was kill or be killed!
Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe
Hosato is a killer—a saboteur—a duelist. He can be anything you want him to be—for a price. And he always wins.
This time, however, the situation is both horrifying and awesome. Sent to sabotage a robot-manufacturing complex, Hosato discovers that the robots have secrets of their own. They have turned from peaceful workers into rampaging killers—and the destruction of the human race is imminent.
Hosato must act! But it means revealing his own secrets–secrets that have been hidden for several thousand years.

From this synopsis my expectations exceed reality. I went into this thinking this would be an explosive men's adventure type novel. High stakes, a tense thriller. In reality it was a slow burn. More talking than action, and the action was minimal. The limited page count doesn't give much room to develop the characters or storyline either. In fact, the open ending is more interesting in speculation than the entire novel. Evidently this was the first in a proposed series that never saw fruition.

The climax of the story of course deals with who is superior, Man or Machine? This last fight for dominance is tense; a cat playing with its prey. How do you win against a machine that has witnessed and cataloged your fighting style for years?

Sadly, Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe doesn't leave much of a lasting impression.