Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 4: September 2013 (23 page)

Outside of the lectures,
Blue Remembered Earth
is a fine adventure, written with skill and keen characterizations of a family fighting for a mysterious inheritance that takes them from the Earth to the Moon and to Mars. Despite my snarks about the human beings and their predilections toward laying waste to everything around them, I do recommend this book.

***

Captive Dreams

by Michael Flynn

Phoenix Pick 2012

Trade Paperback, 266 pages

ISBN: 978-1612420592 (Trade paperback)

Michael Flynn is more famously known for his long, rather densely-written space operas such as
The Wreck of The River of Stars
,
Firestar, Up Jim River, The January Dancer,
and
In the Lion’s Mouth.
When he’s not conjuring up his complex novels of galaxy-spanning conflicts, he occasionally pens equally fascinating novels taking place here on Earth. The best of them are
In the Country of the Blind
and
Eifelheim.

If Flynn has a characteristic flaw (and that’s much too strong of a word here) his novels tend to be longer than they should be. This is due to Flynn’s writing style. He’s what F. Scott Fitzgerald would have called a “putter-inner.” (Fitzgerald has a famous letter exchange with Thomas Wolfe, accusing Wolfe, who wrote incredibly wordy, incredibly long novels, of being a “putter inner.” The point being:
Get to the point and don’t dawdle.
) I’ve finished only three of Flynn’s novels because of this tendency in him.
Tempus fugit
as they say.…

The good news is that Flynn’s short fiction soars, and for all the reasons his longer fiction tends to slog. Flynn’s shorter work is quite efficiently written and speeds right along. A case in point is his collection under review here,
Captive Dreams
, which is a new gathering of five stories and one novella. The novella is “Melodies of the Heart” (a 1994 Hugo nominee in the best novella category).

The stories are:

“Melodies of the Heart” – first appeared in
Analog
1994

“Captive Dreams” – first appeared in
Analog
1992

“Hopeful Monsters” – first publication

“Places Where the Roads Don’t Go” – first publication

“Remembered Kisses” – first appeared in
Analog
1988

“Buried Hopes” – first publication

There isn’t a bad story in this collection and all of them show the clear influence of Nancy Kress. Kress has stated in many places (and in her public appearances) the importance of families in science fiction. Not just Families. We have Heinlein for that. What Kress talks about and Flynn exhibits in these stories are the biological connections members of families have with each other as well as with the rest of humankind. This concept shines in “Melodies of the Heart” wherein a young man encounters an old woman with something like dementia (or not!) who has a habit of humming tunes from a hundred years ago and has recollections that are far older than she could have possibly remembered. Flynn’s skill is such that he can create characters with depth to them that transcends histrionics. We feel for these people as human beings.

This is the other factor worth noting in Flynn’s short stories. (This is a characteristic of Nancy Kress’ writings as well.) There are no “heroes” in Flynn’s short stories. Those he reserves for his space operas. Flynn’s short fiction is about human beings, ordinary people, and in that he stands nearly alone in the field—with the exception of Nancy Kress. When I read their stories, I am reading about
people
. Ordinary people. Mothers with babies. Old folks dying alone. Families under duress. There is no rip-shirted, fist-clenched space commander among them.

Lastly, Flynn provides brief afterwords that are among the most illuminating afterwords I’ve ever read. They show the care that went into the actual writing and are not the usual self-promoting screeds other writers usually provide. This is a blisteringly-good collection of stories that show us a totally different side to the talent—and humanity—of Michael Flynn. Get and enjoy.

***

The Creative Fire

by Brenda Cooper

Pyr 2012

Trade Paperback, 400 pages

ISBN 978-1616146849

Brenda Cooper is the author of several previous novels,
The Silver Ship and the Sea, Reading the Wind,
and
Wings of Creation.
She’s also co-authored a novel with Larry Niven called
Building Harlequin’s Moon
, a novel I rather enjoyed. It was my first introduction to Cooper as a writer because
Building Harlequin’s Moon
was clearly more Cooper than Niven. Still, it worked.

The book under consideration here is Cooper’s latest from Pyr called
The Creative Fire
(Book One of
Ruby’s Song
). In a brief introduction the author tells us that the story of Ruby Martin, a repairer of robots and other intelligent machines on a generation ship, is based on the story of Evita Perón. This might put some readers off, given that the cover to this book shows us an attractive but defiant (somewhat cocky) young woman in worker’s overalls shouldering a mean-looking machine gun. At least I think it’s a machine gun. While this is a book about a young woman’s immersion into the politics of a generation ship, it’s most definitely not the musical
Evita.
In fact, I think Robert A. Heinlein could have written this fine character study of a woman whose life is changed by her understanding of how some humans can exploit others. It’s not so much about the rise of the workers against a heartless bureaucracy as it is about a young woman coming into her own as she finds her truer calling.

This is what made me think of Heinlein. Heinlein was the writer, early on, who brought to science fiction an understanding of how politics operates among humans. Reread “The Roads Must Roll” or any one of his “Future History” stories or novels or a novel such as
Beyond this Horizon
or
Double Star.
Heinlein understood that humans come with political structures. This is to say that we are political animals whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
The Creative Fire
is about a young woman who is pulled into the intrigues and violence that comes with trying to effect political change where change is so desperately needed.

The other Heinlein-esque element here is the generation ship. Like Heinlein, Cooper understands how interstellar travel is dangerous and the interior culture of such ships must be rigid and its rules enforced. (Reread Tom Godwin’s
“
The Cold Equations” to remind yourself of how brutal the mathematics of space travel can be.) What makes
The Creative Fire
fascinating is how she also shows the ways in which the power-elite can become both degenerate and cruelly indifferent to the grays below. (The reds rule and very little is changed by the blue enforcement class who seem more interested in keeping things comfortable for the elites. Remind you of any society today, all you lefties out there?)

I liked how much Cooper brought to this novel from her understanding of science fiction’s deep history of political analysis and how writers such as Robert A. Heinlein understood how societies functioned on both the micro level as well as the macro. This is not a stand-alone book; it’s part of a series. But Cooper’s style has matured considerably and her prose is brisk and engaging. And, boy, do I love Pyr books. No faint praise for them either!

***

Guardian of Night

by Tony Daniel

Baen 2012

Trade Paperback, 352 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1451638028

Guardian of Night
by Tony Daniel is an unparalleled success and could easily become a classic in military science fiction. The book under review here is the trade paperback, but it’s out now in a mass market edition and I highly recommend it for you, even if you’re not a real fan of military science fiction.

I would put myself in that category only because military science fiction tends only toward the pornography of violence, based largely on the average military sf reader’s habituation of video games. The best military sf, however, is more about character and military (and governmental) politics. Let me qualify my use of the word “pornography” with regard to the mere violence of some of these novels. The best example is
Red Star Rising
by Tom Clancy. That novel, exciting to read as it is, is only about the military aspects of a war in Europe with (it turns out) renegade elements of a decrepit Soviet government. The novel is mostly about the generals and the skirmishes—the submarine explosions, invisible aircraft, and whole armies destroyed—all without the use of nuclear weapons. At one point, a Soviet sub sinks a troop carrier with 2400 Marines and they all die. It’s graphic…and quite pornographic. It’s the thrill for itself. And, oddly, Tom Clancy does not show us the reaction back home when 2400 families lose their sons (no women are in the services in this mid-1980s publication). There are no scenes of people in Congress raising a hue-and-cry over this massive loss, given that the war is largely undeclared. The sacrifice of these 2400 is for the thrill the reader gets in thinking that this is what happens in war. Wars are, in reality, about people, from the people who start them, to the diplomats who try to negotiate in the middle, and the people at the bottom who have to fight them.

Guardian of Night
is actually the name of an alien vessel and the novel itself is about its alien captain, Arid Ricimer, who is planning to defect to the side of the Earth, taking his ship and crew with him. He also has with him a weapon of unimaginable power that his homeworld is also after. The book may remind you of the central conceit of
The Hunt for Red October
, but that novel was nowhere in my mind as I was reading this thrilling book. Daniel is far too cagey a writer to let himself lean on anyone such as Tom Clancy. Daniel creates, instead, believable aliens as well as humans who are all striving for the same goal: capture the
Guardian of Night.