House of Suns – Alastair Reynolds

Six millions years previously, Abigail Gentian, scion of an influential and rich family, made one thousand clones of herself and infused each one with her personality and memories. Since then “Gentian Line” has travelled the Milky Way at sublight speeds, exploring, experiencing and helping civilisations. Every two hundred thousand years, the “shatterlings” of Gentian Line come together in a grand reunion, to share experiences and memories, and to remember their lost.

Purslane and Campion are two shatterlings who, despite strong taboos against it, have fallen in love and travel together. They are thousands of years late for the coming reunion. Once they arrive, they find that the Line has been attacked for unknown reasons, and decimated.

The premise is interesting, tackling the tricky concept of deep time and societal survival. Is it possible for a planet-bound civilisation, or even an interstellar empire, to sustain its own existence beyond a few tens of thousands of years? And what of consciousness, machine or biological. How can these handle intervals of millions of years, even if many are spent in suspended animation?

Unfortunately, too much of the story depends on reactions to events that happened previously, which are revealed piecemeal in massive and awkward infodumps. The plot will grind to a halt as a character expounds for pages and pages on events of five millions years ago and how they explain the events of last year in perceived time (which perhaps actually happened fifty thousand years ago in actual time). The love story of Purslane and Campion is sweet and tragic and compelling, and that would have made a lovely book. However, the whole edifice is heavily weighed down by having to explain and analyse the effects of deep time and ancient history, making it an ungainly slog only rescued by Mr. Reynolds’s superb prose and flair for illustrating the immense. Ironically, the final chapters are absolutely beautiful and would have been an amazing coda to a less ponderous narrative.

A World out of Time – Larry Niven

This novel is an expansion of the short story Rammer from the collection A Hole in Space. Jaybee Corbell wakes up after having being cryogenically frozen after death  Now he must repay his debt to society (being cured of his cancer and woken up cost a lot of money) by piloting an exploratory ramship to seed planets around the galaxy, a mission that will take centuries. He rebels and takes his ship on a long tour of the galaxy at relativistic speeds, ending up back on earth millions of years later. Reminded me a little of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, except for the lack of a means for return.

While the short story that formed the basis is fantastic, this novel length expansion, while solid, falls a bit short of the mark.

The Legacy Trilogy – Ian Douglas

This is the sequel trilogy to the exciting Heritage Trilogy. Set a hundred years further in the future, the books flesh out the backstory significantly and satisfyingly. The Marine Corps focused action remains, improved if anything. Douglas (a pen name for William H. Keith) writes about battles, troops and equipment with a gritty and realistic tone.

Star Corps

Descendants of the An, prehistoric overlords of Earth, have been discovered on a planet in a nearby star system. Suddenly, the delegation sent there is attacked by these “Ahannu”. The Marines send a relief expedition on a ten year voyage (one way) to regain control. This book introduces the Marines featured in the first two books of the trilogy, in particular John Garroway, descendant of the main characters from the Heritage Trilogy. The Ahannu are just a bit player in galactic terms, though.

Battlespace

After a ten year voyage back to Earth, the Marines are sent out again. Their twenty year absence has led to significant problems interacting with society, somewhat similar to what happens in Haldeman’s “The Forever War“. This time, the mission involves securing an alien stargate in the Sirius system, thought to be used by the “Hunters of the Dawn”, a very advanced race that destroys any life that could threaten it. At the gate, the Marines encounter another race, the Oannans/N’mah, which has been fleeing from and fighting the Hunters of the Dawn for millenia. After initial violence due to misunderstading, an alliance is formed.

Star Marines

The action now jumps forward a century and a half, but the main characters are still Garroways. The Hunters of the Dawn, alerted by the destruction of their ship and gate in “Battlespace”, have decided that humans are a threat. A Hunter ship appears in Sol system and attacks. Earth is devastatated. The Marines launch a Doolittle Raid on the enemy, trying to buy the humans time. By the end of the Legacy Trilogy things are still very much up in the air about the future survival of humanity.

 

While the “Marines rule” theme in these books can sometimes be a bit heavy handed, this is quality military SciFi. The back story, only hinted at in the Heritage Trilogy, is fully fleshed out and well imagined.

Star Dragon – Mike Brotherton

A long distance probe has captured footage of a mysterious moving object in the accretion disc of a collapsed star. It seems to be an energy being. An exploration spaceship travels across the stars to capture this interstellar phenomenon, dubbed a “Star Dragon”. The story played out against the background of the mission is a psychological drama starring the five human and one AI crewmembers of the ship. Adding to the poignancy of their fate is the fact that the ship travels close to the speed of light to SS Cygni, a binary system 245 light years from earth. The trip is only a subjective 2 years for the crew, but when they return five hundred years will have passed on Earth. They have to abandon their entire existence in order to go hunting the mysterious Star Dragon.

This is a very strong story which manages to escape the technobabble trap of many such efforts. The characters are few but strongly threedimensional, each seeking his or her own place in the universe. With technological progress moving fast, they all have to contend with their doubts about what place they will have in the future. Contrasted with medical immortality, this becomes a serious issue. Will the future have a place for the individuality of humanity, or are we doomed to be replaced by AIs that are better than we? And if that happens, will we transcend to a utopian existence free of want? Is that where we want to go? Star Dragon is cautiously optimistic, and yet raises many important questions about our future. It s a vast universe and eternity is a long long time. Who knows what we will find?