Review: The Last Colony, by John Scalzi

The Last Colony, by John Scalzi, published in 2007 by Tor Books







Summary:

The main character of each of the two previous novels in the "Old Man's War" series are reunited in The Last Colony: John Perry and Jane Sagan. John has retired from the Colonial military and has been given a new civilian body (pretty much like normal humans, as opposed to military bodies, which feature all sorts of upgrades). Jane has retired form the Special Forces (meaning she is a clone grown from a dead volunteer's DNA and has spent her entire 10 years of life as a soldier), and is also given a civilian body. John and Jane have married, and are minor members of the bureaucracy in the local government on a peaceful colony world. Together they are raising an adopted daughter, Zoë.

Towards the beginning of the novel, John and Jane are approached by the Colonial government and asked to serve as the leaders of a brand new colony being planned on a world the Colonials have traded for from another alien species. In this series, interstellar civilizations compete fiercely for inhabitable worlds to colonize, very frequently resulting in all out warfare. To obtain a new world without fighting is almost unheard of, so everyone is eager for the new colony to succeed.

Herein follows minor spoilers:

Immediately upon arrival, things go wrong, beginning with the fact that they arrive at the wrong planet. This is followed by the fact that the Colonial government lied to the new colonists and sent them to the wrong planet on purpose. This is followed by the fact that a brand new interstellar, interspecies government (that humans refused to join) has declared an immediate moratorium on all new colonies and actively hunts new colonies down and destroys them. Which is further followed by the fact that the Colonial government "let slip" the existence of the new colony on purpose to try to undermine the authority of the new interstellar, interspecies government. On top of all this, the planetary survey the humans did prior to colonization was incomplete and hasty and the planet has dangers that the colonists are only just discovering. And John and Jane, as representatives (and dupes) of the Colonial government, are perceived by their fellow colonists as liars and their authority as leaders of the colony is undermined.

My Opinion:

An interesting story, but not as fun as the two previous books. (See my review of Old Man's War.) There is much less emphasis on military action, so fans of military SF might feel shorted here. There is lots of political intrigue, both at the interstellar level and at the level of the new colony itself. This I like. We also get a more nuanced view of the relations between humans (led by the Colonial government) and other alien species. Some species consider humans to be the scum of the galaxy! And they may not be that wrong! There are a few points that didn't quite work for me, including a heavily played up threat to the colonists on their new homeworld which is never quite resolved and then conveniently disappears for the rest of the book when the "A" plot picks up more steam.

The Roundup:

A fun book to read. I am not disappointed to have given the author and his publishers my money, and I hope they view my purchase as incentive to produce further good works. This book was read by me on my Kindle, and I never would have purchased it had tor.com not offered Old Man's War for free a while back. This single free e-book has lead to the purchase of two more Scalzi books, whic I hope is viewed as incentive to offer further free e-books for established authors with popular series in print.

Next up: Black Magic Woman, by Justin Gustainis

Sidereal

What other people have to say about The Last Colony:

John DeNardo at SF Signal

A review by Russ Allbery

Rick Kleffel at The Agony Column book reviews

lorin_arch at arch thinking

gav at NextRead

Review: Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, published in 2008 by Night Shade Books.







Summary:

A pirate themed anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories. Story titles follow, along with my opinion of each one:

1. Boojum, by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette: good
2. Castor on Troubled Waters, by Rhys Hughes: bad
3. I Begyn as I Mean To Go On, by Kage Baker: OK
   
4. Avast, Abaft!, by Howard Waldrop: bad
   
5. Elegy to Gabrielle, Patron Saint of Healers, Whores and Righteous Thieves, by Kelly Barnhill: good, but insufficiently piratical
6. Skillet and Saber, by Justin Howe: OK
   
7. The Nymph's Child, by Carrie Vaughn: OK, but insufficiently piratical
   
8. 68d 07m 15sN, 31d 36m 44sW by Conrad Williams: bad
   
9. Ironface, by Michael Moorcock: bad
   
10. Pirate Solutions, by Katherine Sparrow: bad and insufficiently piratical
    
11. We Sleep on a Thousand Waves Beneath the Stars, by Brendan Connell: OK
    
12. Voyage of the Iguana, by Steve Aylett: bad
    
13. Pirates of the Suara Sea, by David Freer and Eric Flint: good
    
14. A Cold Day in Hell, by Paul Batteiger: excellent
    
15. The Adventures of Captain Black Heart Wentworth, by Rachel Swirsky: bad
    
16. Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake, by Naomi Novik: good
    
17. The Whale Below, by Jayme Lynn Blaschke: excellent
    
18. Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Skarskoe, by Garth Nix: excellent
    

My Opinion:

It's a tough call -- IMHO there are a lot of turkeys herein, stories that just aren't about pirates at all, or are about ex-pirates, or the children of ex-pirates, neither of whom are having piratical adventures. And some stories that are about pirates, but which are just plain bad. On the other hand, some of the stories are very good.

The first one, Boojum, tells the story of a living pirate vessel which sails a future solar system in which Lovecraft's Mi-Go patrol interplanetary space. Elegy.... is a wonderfully written story, but it felt a bit out of place, given my expectations of swashbuckling adventure stories. The Nymph's Child was a bit the same way, but not quite as well done. Pirates of the Suara Sea, and The Whale Below both succeed by merging a more traditional sort of pirate tale with science fictional trappings. A Cold Day in Hell features a naval officer on a hunt for a reknown pirate who terrorizes the American coast during the golden days of piracy -- only in this alternate version of our world, an ice age has begun to settle in on the world, and ships can only sail the seas rigged with skates for racing across the ice. Araminta is a secondary world fantasy wherein the titular heroine uses magic and her superior wits to survive at sea. The star of the anthology has to be the very last tale, Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Skarskoe, which appears to feature characters that the author, Garth Nix, has written about before. Here Sir Hereward and Mr. Fitz masquerade as pirates, join a pirate crew, and manipulate the pirates into assisting them on their quest. I'm definitely interesting in looking up some of Nix's other work now, to see what I've been missing.

The Roundup:

There are enough good stories here for me to recommend looking this book up in the library. I wouldn't buy it, unless you are a pirate fanatic, or just really, really like anthologies.

Sidereal

What other people have to say about Fast Ships. Black Sails:

Richard Larson at Strange Horizons

Brad Moon at Wired

Fabio Fernandes at The Fix

Charles A. Tan at Bibliophile Stalker

Review: Crystal Rain, by Tobias S. Buckell

Crystal Rain, by Tobias S. Buckell, copyright 2006 and published by Tor Books. I read it on my Kindle, from the free version Tor distributed to celebrate the start up of their new tor.com website.









Summary:

The story begins very much in a low tech setting, so much so that it wasn't until about halfway through that I was convinced that Crystal Rain was science fiction, and not fantasy. The setting is a continent with a topical climate that is divided by impassable mountains, called the Wicked High Mountains (which made me think of a Massachusetts dialect!). On one side is a Caribbean derived society, where people live with considerable freedom. The people on this side appear to have only local government, and no national institutions, and their national identity seems to be tied up in NOT being of the culture on the other side of the Wicked Highs. On the other is an Aztec derived culture with highly organized and efficient theocratic governments. This land is called Aztlan by its inhabitants, a fact which made me wonder whether or not the lack of a name for the other side was significant or not. On both sides of the mountains the societies have gods which live among the people and occasionally make appearances, though the Aztec gods are as bloodthirsty as tradition would hold. These two sets of gods are at war with each other, and are using the human population as pawns to carry out the struggle.

In this setting we meet John deBrun, a stranger who literally washed up on shore twenty-some years earlier with no memories of who he was. He's currently living a happy life as a fisherman in a coastal village, with a wife and a young son. He occasionally wonders about his previous life, but doesn't let it stop him from being happy. This happy existence is maintained by a military force known as the mongoose men, who man the barricades at the only usable pass through the Wicked High Mountains, thereby keeping the violent Azteca on their own side of the mountains. At the start of the book, the Azteca have broken through the mountains by means of a tunnel they've been digging for centuries under the instructions of their gods, and begin a full scale invasion of the other side, in search of slaves, sacrificial victims, and prosecuting their gods' wars against the other side. The mongoose men are woefully unprepared for full scale warfare, and so the only hope is for John to recover his memories, which seem to be related to legends of long lost technology which could drive the Azteca back.

Most of the book is the story of John deBrun solving the mystery of himself in order to save his family from the sacrificial daggers of the Azteca, at times both assisted and hindered by another mysterious outsider named Pepper, who literally falls from the sky just prior to the invasion.

My Opinion:

A good book. I was a little confused towards the beginning with respect to the background, but that's okay. I suspect that figuring out what the heck is going on is one of the draws of reading science fiction and fantasy. Most of the book is from John's POV, which also adds to the confusion, since he is an amnesiac. In this it reminded me a little of Roger Zelazny's first Amber book, which uses the same device. There are a couple of other POVs, including one of an Azteca double agent on a mission from one of the Azteca gods to capture John (no spoiler here, this is made apparent from the first time the character appears). I think this was thrown in partially to show us that the Azteca aren't just cardboard villains, but to my mind it doesn't really succeed at that goal. The Azteca do seem like eeevvviillll cardboard villains, and I think the book would have benefited from a more shades-of-gray approach to them. The Caribbean descended society (how I wish they had a name by which they referred to themselves!!) are clearly supposed to be the good guys, and do have a moral compass closely aligned to that of today's society. Never having been to the Caribbean, I can't say how realistic the culture seems, though aside from the use of an odd dialect and a few specific Caribbean references, I would not have figured out that this wasn't just more Americans in space.

By the end of the book we have figured out the broad outlines of John's origin, and how it relates to the rest of humanity out there among the stars (yes, it really is a science fiction book!). I gather that the other two books set in the same universe don't take place on the same planet, and am looking forward to reading those: Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose.

The Roundup:

Buy the book. It features an interesting background with a good mystery to be resolved, and promises more of the same in the subsequent books.

Sidereal

What other people have to say about Crystal Rain:

Donna Royston at Strange Horizons

John Ottinger III at Grasping for the Wind

Rob H. Bedford at sffworld.com

Steven Klotz at Mentatjack

Thomas M. Wagner at SF Reviews.net

Review: Extraordinary Engines, edited by Nick Gevers

Extraordinary Engines, edited by Nick Gevers, copyright 2008 and published by Solaris Books.









Summary:

An anthology of original steampunk stories. The line-up follows, with my rating for each story:

1. Steampunch, by James Lovegrove : bad
   
2. Static, by Marly Youmans: OK
   
3. Speed, Speed the Cable, by Kage Baker: excellent
   
4. Elementals, by Ian R. MacLeod: good
   
5. Machine Maid, by Margo Lanagan: bad
   
6. Lady Witherspoon's Solution, by James Morrow: bad
   
7. Hannah, by Keith Brooke: OK
   
8. Petropunk, by Adam Roberts: OK
   
9. American Cheetah, by Robert Reed: bad
   
10. Fixing Hanover, by Jeff VanderMeer: bad
    
11. The Lollygang Save the World on Accident, by Jay Lake: good
    
12. The Dream of Reason, by Jeffrey Ford: bad
    

My Opinion:

My advice, don't bother. There are only three stories worth paying for here, the Baker, the MacLeod, and the Lake. The rest really seemed to be worn-out tales that have been told before, but now wrapped up in retro-Victorian dressing, using themes that have been better done elsewhere. For example, Steampunch is about a mechanic who maintains a steam powered mechanical boxer, and is partially about whether or not such devices can become intelligent. Seen that, watched that on Star Trek 20 years ago. The framing story in Steampunch is actually much more interesting than the story we got. A few others stories deal with similar themes, especially American Cheetah. Other stories are completely dull, like Fixing Hanover, which is about a technician who, against his better judgement, repairs a robot that washes up on the shore near a secluded village he's sheltering in. All buildup, with no real payoff.

The Roundup:

This anthology sounds interesting, but really, save your money and go buy The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, or The Difference Engine by Sterling and Gibson. If you check out some of the reviews I link to below, you'll notice I'm more or less alone in my dislike of this book, for what its worth.

Sidereal

What other people have to say about Extraordinary Engines:

Duncan Lawie at Strange Horizons

Eric Brown at The Guardian on-line edition

Charles Tan at Bibliophile Stalker

Dark Wolf, at Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews

Review: Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Old Man's War by John Scalzi, copyright 2005. I read it on my Kindle, using the free e-book version offered at the tor.com website as part of the promotion around the start up of the site.







Synopsis:

In the Earth of the future humanity has begun to colonize the stars. Unfortunately so have many other species of aliens, and nearly without exception they are all hostile. The colonies operate more or less independently of Earth. The colonial administration has a monopoly on all FTL travel by humans and dictates the rules for who is allowed off planet. Leaving Earth is a one-way trip, and most of the colonists who are permitted to emigrate come from devastatingly poor nations. No one on Earth, including the various governments, knows what is happening out in space as the colonials also control all flow of information into and out of Earth. The only way for people outside the target groups to get make it into space is to volunteer for the Colonial Defense Forces. Only senior citizens are allowed to volunteer, on or about their 65th birthdays, and then must finalize the committment upon reaching 75. Why senior citizens? Well, space is dangerous and old people can be lured into service with the promise of brand new, young bodies. Volunteer for the CDF and get a new lease on life, literally!

John Perry has lost his wife, and is not close to family or friends, so he decided to complete his enlistment. He and many other 75 year olds are quickly whisked off planet by the superior technology of the colonies. Each of the recruits is transplated into new, youthful bodies cloned from their own DNA, with modifications made to turn them into super soldiers. At this point the book goes into detail about the modifications and we readers get to see the recruits go through boot camp. While I was reading this, it all reminded me of the first part from the movie "The Dirty Dozen", where all the "volunteers" are quickly trained as commandos. In a good way.

After training, John and his circle of friends from boot camp receive their assignments and are shipped out to various units and are thrust into combat. It seems the primary method of interaction with alien species is combat, in competition for habitable colony worlds and vital resources. The average lifespan of a new recruit is only a few years, and soon enough John experiences losses. We see everything through John's eyes, and as he doesn't learn much about what's going on, neither do we, until close to the end of the book. As the book progresses John begins to work his way up in rank, from grunt to officer material, and he eventually plays a pivotal role in negociations with an uber-powerful alien species and manages to gain a little respect from them.

My Opinion:

I liked Old Man's War. It's got interesting characters, doing interesting things. Unfortunately they're mostly things I've seen or read before. A lot of the plot feels like scenes or set pieces that are commonly used in military SF or adventure fiction -- the boot camp episode I mentioned above is a major example of this. It's all stitched together well, however.

The bigger problem I had with the book is the setting. And this is a pretty big problem. Much of the draw of science fiction and fantasy is the world building, and it seems to be weak in Old Man's War. I found it hard to buy the idea of the colonies being so technologically superior to the homeworld, and only using Earth as a source for indentured soldiers and easy to control settler populations. I guess I would have been happier had the logistics been hinted at more. If the colonies are constantly at war with more or less every other alien species they encounter, how do they have the space to develop resources they can tap for their war machine? How do they stay competitive in the technological arms race, without a peaceful homeworld population which can support scientific research? Stealing alien tech would only go so far. And the whole idea of warfare being a more profitable means of acquiring planets and resources than cooperation is also hard to buy, especially given how very destructive the warfare depicted in Old Man's War is.

The Roundup:

Okay, so I have some quibbles with the book. I'm glad I read it. I'm glad it was free. I'm intrigued enough with the setting to see if Scalzi has addressed any of my issues in some of the later books. And I'll happily pay for those. I just hope they're available for the Kindle.

Next up: Extraordinary Engines: the Definitive Steampunk Anthology, edited by Nick Gevers.

Sidereal

What other people have to say about Old Man's War:

Stuart Carter at SF Site

Adrienne Martini at Bookslut

John at Grasping for the Wind

Tim Gebhart at Blogcritics

John DeNardo at SF Signal

A review by Russ Allbery

Review: In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S.M. Stirling

Today's review: In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S.M. Stirling, copyright 2008, published by Tor Books.

Synopsis:

In an alternate version of the Solar System, Venus and Mars are not the lifeless planets we know today. Instead they are very much as science fiction writers (and some scientists) in the early days of the twentieth century pictured them -- inhabitable and chock full of life forms, both native and transplanted from Earth.
The situation on Venus is dealt with in The Sky People, in which an intrepid American explores the wild, rugged Venusian jungles, meets the natives and falls in love with the girl of his dreams.

Things are a little different in the Mars of In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. Instead of being a lush, almost primeval jungle full of dinosaurs, Mars is a dry desert planet, slowly dying from the loss of a limited supply of water. A civilization exists, founded by humanoids brought to Mars from Earth long before homo sapiens sapiens developed. These evolutionary cousins of ours have a civilzation that is many millenia older than ours, with language, culture, and technology simliar to and yet different from that on Earth.

Jeremy Wainman is an American sent to Mars by the U.S. government, in the context of the Terrestrial East/West Cold War (which is still ongoing in the year of the nove, 2000). He's an anthropologist/archeologist specializing in Mars and he's waited all his life for the chance to go there. Because space flight is so expensive, his is a one-way ticket, but he doesn't mind. His main goal is to find the long lost city of Rema-Dza, a kind of Martian version of Atlantis and El Dorado combined. For reasons he doesn't understand, his quest has been approved by the Cold Warriors of Earth, but he's willing to work with them to get what he wants. An expedition is outfitted with a Martian landship crewed by natives and rigged with sails to cross the vast deserts on Mars. With a native guide/bodyguard and a minder sent by U.S. military intelligence, Wainman sets out on his search. Complications arise when he inadvertently runs afoul of Martian political intrigue and things climax when he ends up involved in the Imperial succession of the rump city-state that remains from the once mighty, planet wide empire of the Crimson Dynasty.

My Opinion:

Excellent read. One of those books you don't really want to put down until you're finished, even though you really ought to, because you have to go do stuff, like sleep and things..... The setting invokes a sense of nostalgia for the science fiction / planetary romance of 60, 70 or 80 years ago, but does it without seeming dated. The idea of setting it as an alternate history is good, and this definitely plays to some of Stirlings strengths as a writer. I've greatly enjoyed some of his other alternate history books, including the Island in the Sea of Time series, and most especially, The Peshwar Lancers. If you liked those books, and you don't absolutely hate Burroughs, then you'll probably like In the Courts of the Crimson Kings too.

The book is full of adventure, action (not always the same thing....), political intrigue, and good world building, all things that are high on my list of what makes an enjoyable good. The characters can seem a little bland at times, but the characterization is not outright bad, so it wasn't a turn off for me. The book is full of references there for devoted SF fans, including the name of the main character, Wainman, a play on Carter, from Burroughs' Mars books; the presence of a real Martian Princess along the way; and a ship named the Brackett, among others.

The Round-up

Buy it, read it, and maybe he'll write some more! There's certainly room for more books in this universe, and mysteries that were raised in both this book and The Sky People that remain unresolved.

Sidereal

What other people have to say about In The Courts of the Crimsion Kings:

Paul Di Filippo at (the sadly departed) Sci Fi Weekly.

Carlos Aranaga at SciFi Dimensions.

Jerry Wright at Bewildering Stories.

Brian Brown at The Dragon Page.

Review: Deepsix by Jack McDevitt

Okay, as promised, here's my first review, of the book Deepsix by Jack McDevitt, copy 2001, published by Eos Books.



Synopsis:

A starship full of scientists arrives on location in a star system which is about to undergo a very rare event, a collision between an interloping gas giant planet and a home grown terrestrial planet. They arrive a few weeks ahead of time in order set up equipment to monitor the impending destruction of the terrestrial planet. While in the process of surveying the planet from space, they discover evidence intelligent life.

In McDevitt's future, life is fairly common among the stars, but intelligent life seems to be rare -- humans have visited dozens of worlds and only found one other civilization, one which is centuries behind humanity in technological advancement. A handful of ruins have been found on other planets, so the discovery of even primitive structures is extremely exciting. One problem. The science mission wasn't intending to land on the doomed planet and so did not bring a lander.

A routine shuttle mission is diverted from ferrying passengers between star systems, and an impromptu archeological expedition is put together, lead by the shuttle's pilot (and main character of the series) Priscilla Hutchins (aka Hutch). It's not giving away anything to say that nothing goes as planned, and in short order the planetary explorers lose their ride and need rescuing. But there are still no landing craft close enough to reach the planet before it collides with the gas giant and is destroyed. The scientists who came just to observe the destruction of the planet must now cobble together a rescue plan or observe Hutch and her fellow ersatz archeologists die in the planetary collision.

My opinion:

Great book! It channels very strongly a disaster movie in a sf setting. As a non archeologist, I always find McDevitt's archeological details fascinating. As an astrophysicist I'm a little less impressed with his physics. He does at least give the appearance of plausibility in the details of the plan to rescue the crew stranded on the doomed planet, though it does rely on alien materials that are implausibly strong and light. But I'm not a fanatic about all science in sf being realistic speculations based on current science, so I'm happy to let that slide. I did find the likelihood of a gas giant being ejected from its own star system and encountering another star system to be so remote as to be impossible for all practical purposes, but again, to overanalyze something is to suck all the joy out of it. If it did happen, I suspect it would be much as McDevitt describes it.

I really like McDevitt's characters. Hutch appears in all the books in the "Academy" series and is a great character, as are most of the second tier characters. A few of the "spear carrier" types are one dimensional (above even what you'd expect for someone who only appears on two or three pages. Ian Helm, I'm looking at you!), but they are on stage so briefly that it barely matters.

The round-up:

Great disaster movie action, really good characters, decent science.

I'd read it again, and I probably will some day.

Sidereal


What did other people have to say about Deepsix:

SF Reviews

Hank Luttrell at SF Site

Mark L. Olson at NESFA

John Markley at bookspotcentral.com

D. Douglas Fratz at Science Fiction Weekly