Book Review: Up Against It by M. J. Locke

Pros: hard SF, interesting characters, complex interconnected story lines

Cons: characters sometimes solve problems too easily, ending felt too pat

Jane Navio manages resources for 25 Phocaea, an asteroid settlement.  When an accident destroys most of the current shipment of ice that provides water, air and fuel for the colony, she's beset by numerous problems.  A feral sapient is born from the disaster and must be dealt with before it creates havoc and the martian mob appears to be the only ones in possession of enough ice to save them.  But Jane's dealth with the mob before, on her previous home, Vesta.  She barely escaped with her life.  Many others she knew weren't so lucky.

Meanwhile, four young bikers who happened to be at the scene of the accident, keep getting in and out of trouble as they cross paths multiple times with those investigating and those exacerbating the crises.

This is a clever hard SF story with multiple major conflicts and some great protagonists.  Jane is a complex character who's used to dealing with politics even though she's not keen on them.  She's first introduced making a life or death decision reminiscent of Ripley, but while she's got a cold exterior, she's got a sense of morality that won't let her deal with the mob, even when their ice shipment appers to be the colony's only means of survival.

While the book focuses on certain people, it's clear that this is a large colony, with multiple layers of bureaucracy that are mentioned when necessary, but not in enough detail to swamp the book.  I only remember one occasion where a name was mentioned and I couldn't place it because it was a beurocrat only mentioned in passing before.

The larger world is also shown to have complex politics and economics, even if they're only hinted at.  There's the martian mob, the 'Stroders (cameras that record what happens in the colony) sending data to reality TV watchers on Earth, and the Earth politics that made gene splicing illegal and forced the Viridians to emigrate.  Apparently Canada's no longer a nice place to live, as it's referenced as having refuge camps and detainee centres.

I appreciated the mix of races and religions represented, as well as sexualities, from the expectant homosexual couple barely mentioned in a park to the Viridians who prefer non-gendered pronouns that reflect their gene spliced states.

One of my favourite things in the book was Tonal-Z, a music based programming language used to talk to the feral sapient.  The acknowledgements credit a real life interface concept as the genesis for it and I'd have loved to see more of it in action.

The only problems with the book that I found were that the 4 teens kept running into more and more problems in a way that started to feel manufactured even though there were logical reasons why they were in each of the places.  And while I liked the fact that, given the locations, characters realized if they were going to get out of bad situations they needed to save themselves as the chances of someone else learning of their problem and/or arriving in time to help were slim, there were a few times when characters got out of tough spots remarkably easily.  Similarly, given all the problems the protagonists faced, the ending seemed a little too pat.  

If you're looking for space battles, look elsewhere.  There are a few fight scenes (which are all remarkably different), but on the whole this is a cerebral SF novel.

If you like interesting science, cool characters, depictions of what it might be like to live in space and complex world building, then give this book a try.

Book Review: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Pros: clear, concise writing, hard SF, relatable protagonists, interesting worldbuilding, exposition was limited and was worked into the story

Cons: We’ve already passed the book’s future.

Reviewer's Note: This review is of the author's preferred edition of Forever War, published in 1997.

Forever War follows the military career of draftee William Mandella after aliens attack an Earth space ship outside a collapsar jump.  Collapsar's allow long range space travel, and Earth refuses to give up the use of them.  The best minds, both male and female, are drafted to fight this exhorbantly expensive war the rest of Earth must pay for.  But as the years pass on Earth due to special relativity, and only months pass for the soldiers who survive combat, Mandella starts to wonder if he'll recognize home when his tour is over.

Forever War does for Vietnam in science fictional terms what Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich did for the Russian gulag: allow regular people to experience it.  Mandella's career is exceptional, as the author uses him to explore all aspects of the war, from training on earth and Charon, to witnessing combat, returning home and realizing he no longer belongs, reinlisting, getting medical treatment, becoming an officer, and more.  Through his eyes we experience fear, love, PTSD (in minor ways) and more.

The novel packs an emotional punch and covers an amazing amount of information, given it's size.  Haldeman's prose is clear and concise, a pleasure to read.

As the war progresses over the centuries, Haldeman occasionally explains how the Earth has changed to face the circumstances.  The most detailed of these passages comes when Mandella's first tour ends, 2 and 27 years after he enlisted.  Earth is a cross between Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room and the later part of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.  In other words, Earth is overcrowded and violent.  His exploration into sexuality as it pertains to population control is interesting, espcially considering the current controversies over gay marriage.  For a book that's 38 years old, it's surprisingly relevant.

This is a hard SF story, meaning the planetery battles are short while the battles in space are long and drawn out with very little action.  Mandella's a physicist, so most of the info dumps are via conversations he has with others, where he either explains the scientific concept, or has new concepts discovered while he was on a mission explained to him.  Like the rest of the writing, these passages are short, to the point and integrated properly into the story.  This reviewer has limited physics knowledge and had no problem following the novel, even though most of the science went over her head.

The only 'complaint' with the book is that it's dated.  Meaning, the aliens attack in 1996, which obviously didn't happen.  This is very easy to overlook and shouldn't detract from anyone's enjoyment of the book.  There's some talk of hippies, but none of the sexism the word 'dated' tends to imply when it comes to older science fiction stories.  In fact, this is a remarkably feminist work, with women and men treated equally in the army (though more men then women end up in positions of command as far as Mandella's experience is concerned).

If you haven't read this yet, you should.  And if you're hesitant to read hard SF, this is a good introduction to the subgenre.