Apollo’s Outcasts – Allen Steele

ApolllosOutcastsJamey Barlowe is a teenager with such weak bone structure that he cannot walk unsupported. This is because he was born on the Moon. He is roused from sleep and hurriedly taken to a space launch facility along with his sisters. The Vice President of the United States has come to power due to the mysterious death of the President. As becomes apparent, she is a bit of a nut and, among other things, wants to imprison Jamey’s space scientist father due to his signing a petition regarding the space program. Jamey and one of his sisters are sent to safety on the massive Moon base Apollo, established to mine Helium-3 for power generation. And so begins Jamey’s adventure, with a looming confrontation with the United States on the horizon.

It dawned on me after a few pages that this was Young Adult fiction. After a few more pages I noticed that it was clearly inspired by Heinlein’s “juveniles”. Not a bad place to start.  The story is a not too complex bildungsroman. Jamey meets girl. Jamey’s best friend meets girl. They have to acclimatize to life on the Moon. They have military training on the Moon. The base is attacked.

It is a lightweight read even for a Young Adult novel, and despite the elaborate Moonbase setting some things kept nagging at me. Despite Steele’s effort to introduce at least some modern trappings, it seemed as if these kids were stuck with current technology and the social mores of the 1980s. Given that the novel takes place in 2097, I think it is safe to assume that there would be more advances than a Moonbase and some cell phone technology that could come on the market in 2014. I also wondered why people still listen to the radio in cars (which at least drive themselves) the way they do today, or why they have landlines. Another point was that Steele confused weight and mass in zero gravity. He might just have been trying to simplify but even Young Adult science fiction should get it right.

2½Rosbochs

Bonk – The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

BonkThis non-fiction book describes and explores “sex science” in a way that the layman can understand. Ms. Roach has performed extensive research, traveling around the world and around the US Patent Office website among other places. In a frank but very amusing style peppered with the driest of irony, she goes through everything from sex therapy in antiquity to sex machines for therapy and research, to genital implants.

Despite sometimes cringing at the descriptions of surgeries and other things in intimate regions, I found this a fascinating read. Ms. Roach can probably make any subject fun, and when combined with the somewhat taboo aspect, her writing makes for compelling reading.

If I had one gripe, it was that while all individual chapters were interesting, by about two-thirds of the way through I was losing interest. I guess there’s only so much sex science I can take.

4Rosbochs

The Lords of Harambee – Marc Jacobsen

TheLordsofHarambeeDue to my dubious status as a prolific reviewer on Goodreads and my interest in military science fiction, I received a message out of the blue from one Marc Jacobsen, USAF officer and author of ”The Lords of Harambee”. He asked me to review his book if I was interested. I was both excited and apprehensive. Previous forays into self-published novels have given me the probably unwarranted impression that they are either outstanding or awful. This one did nothing to change my views.

The Lords of Harambee takes place on a human colony world in an indefinite but not too far future. In a cruel irony on its Kenyan name of Harambee, signifying cooperation towards a common goal, the world is a hell-hole with a fortnight-long diurnal cycle, meaning one week of freezing cold night followed by one week of infernally hot day. To make matters worse, the atmosphere is not breathable. Inhabitants must wear breather masks fed by compressors when outside atmosphere controlled buildings. Most of the world is desert with the occasional lava plain.

Initially, Harambee seems almost a stereotypical third world backwater, with an ethnic minority controlling power and money while lording it over a poor but backwards ethnic majority. The alert reader may recognize this situation from the recent history of Iraq. Meanwhile, powerful off-word corporate interests control mining interests. The same alert reader may recognize this situation from, well, any number of places around the world.

The story centers on General Michael Sheridan, head of the peacekeeping mission on Harambee, his estranged daughter Claire, naïve activist (at least initially) and Julian Marshall, special forces operative with doubts.  As things come together for bipartisan talks between the ethnic groups, perhaps even followed by democratic elections, civil war and genocide erupt, in large part due to meddling by foreign governments. In the mayhem that follows, off-word military, political and corporate interests do their best to screw things up while the “lords” of Harambee do their best to kill each other and commit atrocities.

If I had to describe this novel in one word, it would be powerful. It starts almost innocently, with a tired General Sheridan, stuck in a backwater assignment with chronically insufficient resources, starting to see glimmers of hope on the horizon. And then all hell breaks loose, and continues breaking loose. Mr. Jacobsen very skillfully navigates the reader through a rather intricate plot while keeping the human experience at the center. And what an experience it is. The descriptions of brutal killing, rape and suffering are gripping. I kept thinking that things could not get any worse, and then they did. And yet, strong but flawed characters kept fighting in an obvious but heartfelt metaphor for humanity. The desert and desolation of Harambee as illustration of the humanity and its suffering was especially apt. The fact that the action scenes are excellently written, the characters are interesting and the occasional humor is very dry doesn’t hurt.

Even if The Lords of Harambee is science fiction, it should interest anyone who wants to learn about the effects of foreign policy in “third world” countries. It does send a powerful message, mostly about things not being as simple from thousands of miles away as they are to those “on the ground”.

5Rosbochs