Where Humans Kinda Fade Away

Space by Stephen Baxter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this a hard read.

Almost DNF'ed a bunch of times.

I'm glad I finished it--but now I'm done. It wasn't much fun to read and I won't look for others by this author. I will give him credit, though, for very big ideas, for creating something worth thinking about. Is that a fair trade for my time and effort? Some people would probably say yes. I'm not sold.

This story, as entertainment, is disappointing, despite its constant promise to get good and be really cool. I'd say the last 45 pages do that. I liked that part. The first 400+ were frustrating. And here's my main objection: the main characters do almost nothing. There's an alien invasion and nobody mobilizes; nobody plans; nobody fights back. The whole book reads like a dream where you try to run and can't, and though you keep finding yourself in a new setting it's the same problem--you're passing through like a wraith, having no effect on the story. The characters are sleepwalking through Armageddon.

Nemoto does some stuff, and on page 444 she accomplishes something important on the planet Mercury. That's enough of a spoiler, and I won't give more, but that was the first time for me, the reader, that I thought "Yay! They're doing something!" For all of the rest of the book, until the very end, the main characters are just observers, looking at a small part of history, reporting an incomprehensible piece of the galactic tale. The author lays them out for us like sticks on the beach, and for most of the story it doesn't add up to anything. You (I) think that maybe you're getting the big picture, but nope. That's not it. It's not until the last handful of pages that anything is made clear.

(Have you ever heard one of those jokes that is spun out to ten or fifteen minutes before you finally get the punch line, and it's a joke that could have been told in about a minute? That's how the story and its much-delayed ending felt here--there's a little burst of sense after hundreds of frustrating pages of random weirdness. And in those jokes, remember, the punchline isn't the point. The joke is on the listener.)

In my opinion.

Malenfant and Madeline and others travel here and there, hitching a ride with the incommunicative Gaijin robots, surviving improbably long, pushed into the future by thousands of years by their interstellar travel, seeing the dwindling and scattering human race stumbling into oblivion. Why they're dwindling is just hinted at. There is no story about how nations tried to push back against alien invasion. There is no organized effort to survive. Minor actions are taken on earth's moon, on other moons, on Mercury, where humans are trying to hang on, but these are all chaotic fragments of stories that don't add up to anything. And the Gaijin robots won't talk, won't explain anything, won't interact in any way that matters until the very end of the novel.

I found it frustrating and unsatisfying.

Five for big ideas. Two for being a slog to read. Let's call it a 3.

YMMV

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Where Humans Are the New Kids on the Block

Sundiver by David Brin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(This is a reread.)

I like David Brin a lot, and this is the first thing I read by him about 40 years ago. I thought I loved this book a little more on the first read than I probably did. I forgot that it's sluggish at times and has a couple problems, as far as I'm concerned. But it's still fun to read, mostly, and deserves a 4 at least for ideas.

The ideas:

The idea of a ship that can survive the heat and turbulence and gravity of the sun long enough to visit the surface to do science is very cool. The idea of long-lived beings existing on the surface of our sun is also very cool. The idea of a galaxy-spanning library is very cool. And the coolest idea behind the novel, that every sentient race in the universe was uplifted sometime in the past by another race (except maybe humans), is super cool. Younger races are clients of older races, and on earth, chimps and dolphins are being lifted to sentience in a similar way. That uplifting is the basis of the rest of the series, and it's the one that makes this SF setting so exciting. However, it's not the main idea here. The uplift stuff *matters* in this book, but it simmers in the background more than I remembered.

The ending is also a bit off for me. It's okay; I like how the characters come out pretty well. But some of the action amounts to a crime that needs to solved, and the solution doesn't really make sense, and has to be explained to us like Sherlock working through the details for Watson and Scotland Yard. It's clunky, IMO. It's as if he wrote the book, racking his brains till the end for a reason certain characters would do certain inexplicable things...

Anyway, the book is still a good read with interesting ideas. Maybe a 3.5, if you give half-points and don't wanna round up. But it kicks off a series that is better than that, and I'm glad after so long to be getting into it again. I traded all the books in long ago, but that's okay--part of the fun is hunting them all down again.

Recommended for hard science readers. David Brin knows his physics. And he's astute about politics. Worth it just for that.

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Where Scalzi Is Just Laughing At Us, and That's Fine

The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The summary of this book is kinda odd. Earth is in danger of being attacked by a more powerful alien race if they don't locate a special blue sheep, all of which are being wiped out by a conspiracy, and it falls to a single bureaucrat (with the help of a dead friend) to protect the one woman who unwittingly carries the secret of the blue sheep in her DNA.

Oh, and the diplomatic crisis is caused by a human who uses a special device in his butt to deliver devastating insults via the language of scent to his alien counterpart. Ha!

Sometimes, I think Scalzi is just messing with us. It almost feels like he took a bag full of mad-libs (with stuff like "someone gives insults in the language of farts" and "there's sheep DNA in a pet shop owner" and "the hacker is in the computer, and he's dead") and selected a bunch, then had to come up with a way to use all the weird ideas. But, as usual, however unlikely, it works.

The action is continuous, damn near breakneck, and though it's filled with actual life-or-death stakes, the witty banter (actual banter, mind you; not the awkward, wooden snarking that too many authors try to skate on) keeps the action light and hilarious. It gets tied up a tad too quickly, which seems to be the way he likes to finish his books, but it's satisfying and complete.

So it's strange and funny and exciting and thought-provoking and silly. I give a star for each one.

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