A Heinlein-like adventure for a serious sci-fi fan.
Scalzi (Redshirts, 2012, etc.) offers his fifth in the Old Man’s War series.
The Colonial Union keeps peace among the universe’s humans, albeit one fractured after Earth’s withdrawal. Blame John Perry and Jane Sagan, Roanoke Colony leaders. Earth’s billions had provided Colonial Defense Forces troopers and outpost settlers, which allowed the Colonial Union to cope with the machinations of the Conclave, an alliance of alien (nonhuman) species. Scalzi rockets characters through assorted space adventures, with repeated appearances by Lt. Harry Wilson, CDF technician and Earth native, who finds himself wherever the action is, whether that’s in space disarming a missile trap set for the Utche, an alien species with whom the Colonial Union is negotiating, or caring for an ambassador’s dog whose survival figures into an alien civil war. Other players pop up repeatedly, including two CDF colonels, a hard-line ambassador and a female starship captain. Starships use "skip drive" to outwit Einsteinian physics and "skip drones" to communicate across light years. Human characters communicate in dialogue laced with 21st-century humor and irony, even among the CDF troopers (repurposed 75-year-old earthlings) equipped with "BrainPals," neural-computer implants. The aliens too function with socioethical and political mores replicating Machiavelli, authoritarians or third-rate dictators. Laced with oddball humor, the plot is not so esoteric that a newbie to sci-fi’s outlier world cannot follow, and the science buy in isn’t so great as to cause those who mastered introductory physics to stumble. The story simply launches human quandaries and foibles into the universe—greed, aggression, duplicity, arrogance, chauvinism and other distinctly human negatives—where they are imposed on alien circumstances, creatures and environments. Females share power and failure equally, but sex and romance take a back seat to wildcat settlements, derring-do heroes, missiles fired and messages misunderstood, all of which are offset by stunning technology, imagined landscapes and the covert destruction of Earth Station by spaceships piloted by brains-in-boxes. That makes for a gateway to the next episode.
A Heinlein-like adventure for a serious sci-fi fan.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3351-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.
Over 50 years after an extraterrestrial microbe wiped out a small Arizona town, something very strange has appeared in the Amazon jungle in Wilson’s follow-up to Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.
The microparticle's introduction to Earth in 1967 was the disastrous result of an American weapons research program. Before it could be contained, Andromeda killed all but two people in tiny Piedmont, Arizona; during testing after the disaster, AS-1 evolved and escaped into the atmosphere. Project Eternal Vigilance was quickly set up to scan for any possible new outbreaks of Andromeda. Now, an anomaly with “signature peaks” closely resembling the original Andromeda Strain has been spotted in the heart of the Amazon, and a Wildfire Alert is issued. A diverse team is assembled: Nidhi Vedala, an MIT nanotechnology expert born in a Mumbai slum; Harold Odhiambo, a Kenyan xenogeologist; Peng Wu, a Chinese doctor and taikonaut; Sophie Kline, a paraplegic astronaut and nanorobotics expert based on the International Space Station; and, a last-minute addition, roboticist James Stone, son of Dr. Jeremy Stone from The Andromeda Strain. They must journey into the deepest part of the jungle to study and hopefully contain the dire threat that the anomaly seemingly poses to humanity. But the jungle has its own dangers, and it’s not long before distrust and suspicion grip the team. They’ll need to come together to take on what waits for them inside a mysterious structure that may not be of this world. Setting the story over the course of five days, Wilson (Robopocalypse, 2011, etc.) combines the best elements of hard SF novels and techno-thrillers, using recovered video, audio, and interview transcripts to shape the narrative, with his own robotics expertise adding flavor and heft. Despite a bit of acronym overload, this is an atmospheric and often terrifying roller-coaster ride with (literally) sky-high stakes that pays plenty of homage to The Andromeda Strain while also echoing the spirit and mood of Crichton’s other works, such as Jurassic Park and Congo. Add more than a few twists and exciting set pieces (especially in the finale) to the mix, and you’ve got a winner.
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247327-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.
A rare, rattling space opera—first of a trilogy, or series, from Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck).
Humanity colonized the solar system out as far as Neptune but then exploration stagnated. Straight-arrow Jim Holden is XO of an ice-hauler swinging between the rings of Saturn and the mining stations of the Belt, the scattered ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. His ship's captain, responding to a distress beacon, orders Holden and a shuttle crew to investigate what proves to be a derelict. Holden realizes it's some sort of trap, but an immensely powerful, stealthed warship destroys the ice-hauler, leaving Holden and the shuttle crew the sole survivors. This unthinkable act swiftly brings Earth, with its huge swarms of ships, Mars with its less numerous but modern and powerful navy, and the essentially defenseless Belt to the brink of war. Meanwhile, on the asteroid Ceres, cynical, hard-drinking detective Miller—we don't find out he has other names until the last few pages—receives orders to track down and "rescue"—i.e. kidnap—a girl, Julie Mao, who rebelled against her rich Earth family and built an independent life for herself in the Belt. Julie is nowhere to be found but, as the fighting escalates, Miller discovers that Julie's father knew beforehand that hostilities would occur. Now obsessed, Miller continues to investigate even when he loses his job—and the trail leads towards Holden, the derelict, and what might prove to be a horrifying biological experiment. No great depth of character here, but the adherence to known physical laws—no spaceships zooming around like airplanes—makes the action all the more visceral. And where Corey really excels is in conveying the horror and stupidity of interplanetary war, the sheer vast emptiness of space and the amorality of huge corporations.
A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail.Pub Date: June 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-12908-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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