Voyager in Night by CJ Cherryh

This strange book holds its cards too close to its chest for too long, for me at least. When an excession ship (something vastly outside of human tech limits) visits Alliance-Union space it abducts a sublight mining ship with a brother-sister and her husband. The husband and sister die in the aliens’ examination of their physical bodies, through the process of the ship taking a full scan of their persons⁠—memories, postures, preferences, atoms, everything. It converts all three to computer programs who can project their forms throughout the ship, and it causes a conflict long-simmering to come to a head with the passengers and runners of the ship, who are program constructs themselves. It's an abduction that takes place after humanity has already reached the stars.

The supervisor hesitated from one foot to the other, wiped his face. The stationmaster was off-shift, asleep. It was hours into maindark. The supervisor was alterday chief, second highest on the station. The red-alert button was in front of him on the board, unused for all of Endeavor's existence.

The story deals with two themes, eventually, and another throughout the book. The first and most apparent theme shows humans trying to come to grips with the unknown. The three construct abductees face the sublimity of a senseless, manipulated, blacked-out existence; getting reset and coming to terms with death again and again; being experimented upon by the alien software. The live one is faced with the broken pieces of his ship and the nature of having a perfect copy of himself in Rafe Two, a construct that diverges more and more from him as their life experiences change; and with his brother-in-law and sister who are constructs of the computer system, a fact not known but eventually reasoned out by the characters. This theme relies upon the psychology of the humans pushed into this crazy situation, as their emotions yo-yo realistically to extremes. Cherryh does a great job creating three different characters, but having them all react to their shared situation in ways that echo each other, but also distinguish each as separate characters. She even manages to make Rafe and his construct feel distinct! This character creation amazes me. The responsibility obsessed ship captain, Rafe. The brother-in-law Paul, who lives up or down to the people around him. The pissed off Jillian, stubborn and self-reliant. The story offers a believable glimpse of what Cherryh imagines a group abduction would really feel like. As much of their agency is taken from them, this comes off very much like an Asimov story where dialogue reveals the plot, capped with a fight at the end. Yet Cherryh has characters instead of Asimov's typically flat people, which works brilliantly. As strong as this main theme is, it tries to carry three-quarters of the novel, and it lags a little for me. I don’t think enough is being said about humans out of context to really carry this much of the book. If more had been said from the alien point of view, it could’ve given away too much to the reader and stolen the power of the struggle the characters undergo, but as it is I feel overly lost and get bored a little—and I do mean a little. I like this book.

Dead, Paul reminded himself. You're already dead. Quit worrying. Time's short. And he wished that death was all.

Two further themes do not occupy the novel until the end, and these are slightly more interesting. One is the relentless search for knowledge. The ship is some sort of explorer, scientific discoverer, sacrifice set to wander the stars endlessly—something that cannot be expressed in human terms. They will never bring their knowledge back to the society or societies that sent them. Cherryh shows how this search for knowledge stales over time because it is pointless. I think she's trying to say that the search for knowledge can lose its zest, is not enough of a motive to make good people. The political infighting that comes to a head when the humans are picked up portrays an ugly side to the search for knowledge. The alien characters turn against each other when the humans arrive as potential tools in their long rivalries.

"We're its soft-structure. Its enablement. We're alive individually and collectively. We've been running, and growing, for a hundred thousand years. That's shiptime. Much longer-in your referent. That we're partitioned as we are was accident. It's also kept us sane. It provides us motive. In a hundred thousand years, motive's a very important thing."

The other is what life is worth. And this one is quite interesting to me, but it only occupies the last little bit of the novel, as Rafe is faced with a choice to abandon the two people he really cares about, his family turned constructs, for another chance at success in human space, or stay aboard the ship and be converted to a construct to maintain that familial connection. He chooses to stay, meaning there is now Rafe One and Rafe Two permanently on this unnamed ship, but Kepta also sends his physical body back to human space in the epilogue. The question is what is life—are these constructs that are identical to the humans they’re based on? Or are they just programs? In more broad terms, is life being set adrift, alone, in a life-pod, in a new system of humans Rafe doesn't know, but being still in possession of a breathing body? Rafe comes down on the side of construct with family. Cherryh supports this late addition of theme by having the alien AIs finally open up a bit and discuss how purpose is the only thing keeping them going, and it’s not something inherent, but something chosen.

"Passage of time-negates all motives. Survival is still intact. So is curiosity."

The writing supports the first theme through having symbols instead of names for most of the alien AI characters, though names do occur. These symbols go so far as to replace words like he, she, my, they. Stuff like "< / >y turn to be captain of the ship" is strange to see on the page, and helps alienate the reader like the characters are alienated. Experimental writing done well.

"It was <>y nature then," <> said. "Perhaps O've grown."
"Only older," < / > returned, gaining more of <>'s territory.

Too much of the novel relies on that first theme, where it begins to feel like a short story carried on too long. If this is really about the human psychology, then why did Kepta take so long to offer Rafe the choice? Why did Marandu take so long to discuss purpose? There’s a sense of "what’s going to happen next" because of the delay in reveal, but sometimes it becomes a sense of "what’s happening?" I like mystery in a novel. I like writing that helps the reader empathize with the characters. This takes the mystery a little too far, I’m a little too lost as a reader, like the characters. Maybe it's too effective without enough payoff.

"There's never translation of motives; only of acts."

I liked this book though, but not as much as some of Cherryh’s other works. This isn’t horror, it’s psychological thriller—in the sense that I don’t feel terror reading this, just the frustration and annoyance and specific fears of the characters, and there isn’t much physical action until the end. I think horror relies on more general terrors. The whole thing is sketchy on details and action, and if you need a book where you know what’s happening, don’t read this one. But if, like me, you enjoy searching through a dense forest of emotions to find some loose story and context with which to make up your own mind, this book is quite good. Better than most of Asimov, though doing similar things with the way the story is told. The characters' realization is masterful, and the sense of mystery is thick.

Port Eternity by CJ Cherryh

This horror novel by CJ Cherryh deals with the crew and owner of a spaceship getting drawn into a parallel dimension unexpectedly. There, they face a new reality outside their context, and attempt to come to terms with both it and themselves. But this situation makes extreme this daily need to fit into new situations. Partly inspired by Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, in the Arthurian tradition of English literature, Cherryh shows humans both choosing and being forced to overcome their nature. The setting is a 50-50 blend of science fiction and fantasy, with the ship and its inhabitants forced by the ship-owner’s fancy to rely upon swords and spears for defense, but all while wearing a spacesuit and worrying about their life support.

The thing out there in the dark, the chaos waiting whenever we might grow confused enough to let our senses slip back into the old way of seeing⁠—this living with death so close to us, was that different than our lives ever were? And didn't born-men themselves live that way, when they deliberately took chances?

Cherryh establishes the horror tone through three methods: the context of the environment, the situation the ship finds itself in, and the reactions of the characters. The unfamiliarity of the environment, where time and space is distorted, sets up the mind-states of the characters. Their usual modes of reference and perception do not apply here, and that understandably makes them edgy and unsure and scared. Especially for the Azi characters—all but two on the spaceship. But even the born-men, Dela and Griffin, are unable to integrate these new experiences using past experiences, so they too are off-kilter. Second, as soon as they arrive, their technology doesn’t work, and something starts banging on the walls, trying to get in. What a great horror setup—a small group of people trapped in a spaceship outside of time and place, and something is trying to get in. But the reactions of the characters seals the tone of the story by their fright. They react to every new impetus with surety that all is bad. They gather decorative swords and spears for the coming battle. They plan defensive tactics. And the situation, from their perception, keeps going from bad to worse. Unexpected entrance into an FTL jump state, trapped against a huge object in same space, key technologies not working in same space, knowing they will die once they run out of food or air, something trying to get in, then trying harder to get in. And their personal struggles also go from bad to worse as the Azi tape-training frays and their psych-sets—the blueprints for an Azi’s reactions and priorities—shift out of whack. While the overall plot shows people trapped in the unknown with the unknown trying to break in, the chapter-by-chapter scenes show the characters unravelling through rivalries, thefts, conflicts, and misunderstandings.

If this was death, I kept thinking, remembering my lady's mad hypothesis, if this was death, I could wish we had not tangled some other creature up in our dying dream. But I believed now it was no dream, because I could never have imagined that sound out of my direst nightmares.

Cherryh doesn’t use traditional horror language though, or does so very sparingly. And that strong technique does two things: it gives those words power when they do come, and it doesn't show the monster, it let’s the readers themselves come to grips with the tone, let’s them create the worst possible situation from the sketchy context that Cherryh’s brilliant, narrow, third person voice achieves. Cherryh only mentions what the characters see, know, and imagine, instead of letting the narrator fill in some blanks. This serves to keep the mystery fresh and intense, and gives the reader plenty of room to imagine for themselves. This doesn’t read like Lovecraft, where I sometimes feel like he’s talking directly to the reader trying to convince them that what he is writing is really horror—Lovecraft seems to tell way more than he shows, and he’s not the greatest at telling. Rather, Cherryh shows the characters’ mind-states and let’s the reader draw their own conclusions.

Terror had acquired a kind of mundanity, had become an atmosphere, a medium in which we just went on functioning, and did what we were supposed to do until somehow our Death would get to us. I reckoned that tired as I was it might not even hurt much.

But two things intrude on this effective horror tone: Cherryh’s other works, and the title. The title implies that there is some port, some space station, known to somebody as Port Eternity. It turns out in the book that this is more Flying Dutchman or Avalon than Port Mahon or Port Angeles. So, the whole time that the characters are struggling to come to grips with their new location snugged up against this giant torus stuck in jump-space, I’m thinking, “This must be Port Eternity.” And it is. So, the tone is subverted somewhat by the title. But also, Cherryh’s other works always contain some optimism. As she says herself about her own writing, “I am an overall optimist. I believe that if there’s something broke, we can fix it, we just have to apply ourselves to that problem. And that is the attitude behind my writing.” So, while the writing seemed to try and convince me that everybody was going to die, I thought that Cherryh wasn’t likely to do that. Rather than waiting to see if some of the characters were going to survive, I was waiting to see how they would. And that’s a big difference.

Old was not a territory I had mapped out for myself.

The Azi: these Cyteen-produced humans are second class slaves in Cherryh’s universe, killed at 40 as their personalities start to fray. And the common conception of their soullessness keeps the novel firmly in the realm of science fiction. Their struggles to adapt are made more poignant by the context of their built-men status, instead of being born. Most of the ship are Azi and are made for one specific purpose—friendly encouragement, sex, accounting, and ship’s crew. When the ship stops working, and the mistress takes a lover, and they’re stuck in a place where accounts no longer matter, these Azi are stripped of their purpose. And the book is from the point of view of one of the Azi, her voice guides the reader throughout. Elaine is the focus. So their struggle lies front and center of the narrative. I’ve wanted an Azi-centric book since reading Cyteen, but by reading the Merchanter books first, I missed out on this one and regret that. This book gives me understanding about them, but transcends fan-service by the deep discussion of the theme of this book—humans overcome and adapt.

When I thought of it, I couldn't answer why we tried. For our born-men, that was very simple, and not so simple, if there was no hope. It was not in our tapes⁠—to fight. But here was even Vivien, clutching a spear across her knees, when I knew her tapes were hardly set that way. They made us out of born-man material, and perhaps, the thought occurred to me, that somewhere at base they and we were not so different⁠—that born-men would do things because it leapt into their minds to do them, like instincts inherent in the flesh. Or the tapes we had stolen had muddled us beyond recall.

The theme here explores whether the Azi are human or not, and it comes down firmly on the side of human. All of the characters, but especially the Azi, are pushed and prodded out of their comfort zones, are forced to change, are forced to grow. Vivien, the one who has the most pride in her work, is the last to grow, but even she does. The Azi and the born-men both overcome their natures. And this is something that is relatable—the Azi were created for specific purposes, yet their new situation subverts some of those purposes. From being drug- and tape-addicted, stable humans, they grow into an independence that the reader watches happen, with all the awkward growing pains of adolescence along the way. Some of these changes they choose—love, fighting, new tasks to complete. And some are forced on them—creativity, tactical thinking, the natures of the people they were named after from Arthurian legend, and desperate struggles for life and death. To some extent, that’s an explanation of life—a series of changes to our psychology, some forced on us and some chosen. In the end, these Azi subvert their tape-training, their psych-sets, and start identifying themselves as human. The born-men also overcome their natures, but due to the focus of both the novel and Cherryh’s voice being on the Azi, the two born-men characters’ changes occur on the outskirts of the story.

She struggled to be more than she was and narrow as she was, it threatened her sanity.

One thing she does brilliantly here is bait and double hook. For instance, the crisis of Mordred is baited when all the other Azi react to learning the Arthurian legends they are based off of, but Mordred seems not to. When he sends communications to the outsiders, expressly against orders, like he’s been asking to do for the whole book up to that point, this causes conflict on the ship. So I was baited and hooked. But wait, there’s more, says Cherryh as the crisis of the unknown trying to gain entry comes to a head at the same moment. This rapid shift in focus works better than a cliffhanger when done well, and Cherryh does it well here.

In one part of my mind⁠—I think it was listening to the wrong kind of tapes⁠—I was glad of a chance like that, that we might do some terrible damage to our attackers and maybe put a hole in the side of the wheel that they would remember, all those scaly bodies going hurtling out among our fragments. But in the saner part of my mind I did not want to die. And oh, if they should get their hands on us. Hands. If they had hands at all. If they thought anything close to what we thought. If, if, and if. Bang. Thump.

Cherryh’s effective foreshadowing shows another strength here. Sticking with the same crisis of Mordred, the existence of the tape shows the possibility well before he views it. The changes evident in the other Azi who viewed it show that change in him is likely. Then his insistence on attempting communication throughout shows the possibility of his going off the rails in that way. Foreshadowing allows his actions to be unsurprising—I mean, it’s surprising that he sends the message against orders, but it’s not a surprise from completely outside the realm of possibility. Then, his beliefs about the unknown outsiders are hinted at throughout the novel, so when the outsiders show up and some are not the horrific beasts the characters have been dreading, it doesn’t come off like a deus ex machina, rather it comes off like a misunderstanding. This is brilliantly summed up by Griffin, the warhawk, turning to Mordred, who advocated for communication and diplomacy throughout, and simply stating, “You were right.” That statement, supported by Cherryh showing that the actions of the unknown invaders do not line up with pirates bent on murder, allows the whole switch at the end from horror to happily-ever-after epilogue to be read as well within the realm of possibility. This isn’t deus ex machina, just a long-term misunderstanding on the part of stressed-out characters taken well outside their comfort zones with no means to immediately communicate to the unknown outsiders.

I knew my lady Dela, that she had high purposes, and she meant to be good, but as with her lovers and her hopes, sometimes she and her high purposes had fallings-out.

So is this a great book? Yes and no. It certainly shows Cherryh effectively trying something new in her writing—horror—and has a deep applicable theme that I appreciate immensely. But at the same time, Cherryh’s tendency to have the context affect and be affected by the characters of her story shows up mostly at the end, and the setting of this cut-off society out in an alternate universe seals this whole story up into a sort of not mattering. Maybe it’s that I didn’t care about these characters as much as some others, but I’m left thinking that this was a fun experiment, successful at what it tried to do, but I appreciate Cherryh’s writing more when she’s talking more directly about humans in a large society, not this small society of nine people. Is that me or her? I’m not sure. But I’ll keep reading her works and try to find out.

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

I ended up with the audiobook for this before a roadtrip with my wife, and we loved it. I listened to the opening parts of it, read the rest, and all around enjoyed my time with this book. Gaiman here retells some Norse Myths, claiming that these are stories he means to read to his children before they are advanced enough in reading to get to the Eddas and Sagas. But, unlike retellings that shift the time period, Gaiman keeps everything in the mythical past. Where the BBC ShakespeaRe-Told: The Taming of the Shrew makes the titular character into a British Member of Parliament in contemporary times, Gaiman simply leaves Thor and Loki in the past. I appreciate this decision of his, not because the context of the myths prove overly important to them, but because the objects and natures of the characters are important—Thor’s hammer, Fenrir the wolf, the snake that drips venom onto Loki. Gaiman chooses to leave the stories in their original context to keep these aspects true, and retells the stories so that modern audiences can understand their importance through his explaining their powers and natures.

“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”

Gaiman tells these stories well, with sensibilities helped by his comic book past. He uses episodic presentation to pace his book. Each chapter stands alone as a short story. But by the time the reader reaches the second half, these stories start to meld together into a larger whole—earlier stories start to affect later tales as characters come up again and are still angry over what happened before, political dealings between characters play out, objects of importance arrive and depart in the narrative. This reads like a comic book without the art—and it does so wonderfully. This episodic structure benefits the narrative through strong pacing. Gaiman knows how to write a comic book, and by approaching these myths with similar sensibilities, he tells the story well.

He is tolerated by the gods, perhaps because his stratagems and plans save them as often as they get them into trouble. Loki makes the world more interesting but less safe. He is the father of monsters, the author of woes, the sly god.

Where Gaiman chooses to linger with his language helps pace these stories. It effectively billboards important moments and effectively communicates emotions. For instance, when Loki is bound below the snake, the extended focus on that scene helps get across horror, pity, and the importance of that event. The result is brother fighting against brother in the future, and the rational is already apparent to the reader when that scene is reached.

He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.

But also, where Gaiman chooses to use sparse language helps foster a sense of wonder. When describing the mythological places, he often uses a couple of opposed general descriptors, and fewer specific ones, then moves back to the actions and the characters quickly. This not explaining, not exploring the physical scene, helps keep the physical scene mysterious and my mind loves that, adores the unknown. By pairing effective descriptions of characters and motivations with sketchy and paradoxical descriptions of place, Gaiman allows the reader both a solid base to stand on, and enough mystery to engage the mind.

The Norse myths are the myths of a chilly place, with long, long winter nights and endless summer days, myths of a people who did not entirely trust or even like their gods, although they respected and feared them.

Though these stories are intended for a younger audience, I personally find them engaging. Their conclusions about motives and human nature apply to everyday life, and constitute the theme of this book. In the Aesir’s relationships, the ever-present debate between the optimism of future hope and the pessimism of history come to the fore. Loki is a trickster, but by hoping that he has changed, by believing that he will change, the other Aesir fall into their traps. Yet their beliefs that he is a trickster blinds them when he does things for good motives, causes suspicion and resentment where gratefulness should be present. People change, and people do not change. Perception and discernment help determine the right course of action.

That was the thing about Loki. You resented him even when you were at your most grateful, and you were grateful to him even when you hated him the most.

This is one of three Gaiman books that I have read that I enjoy. It makes me interested in rereading the Sagas and Eddas again. This retelling does not supplant them, but through rephrasing, helps explain them. It’s a sibling piece to those original sources, and one that I recommend reading to a wide variety of people. Where I initially thought the title was a bit full of itself, after reading the book I understand why the title is so simple, and agree with titling it this way. I end up hoping to find similarly engaging treatments of other mythological traditions. One last reflection: Loki comes off looking a lot like Lucifer in Paradise Lost—the sympathetic anti-hero.

Alliance Rising by CJ Cherryh

In this 2019 novel, CJ Cherryh achieves much of what I look for in fiction: relatable tension, interesting questions being pondered, human psychology, a wider world being affected by and affecting the characters. And she achieves what keeps me coming back to science fiction: meaningful technology changing the way cultures work on a fundamental level, the necessity of wrapping my head around the different priorities and minds of others, contemplating potential human futures. I read this book in two days. I look forward to reading it again. This novel details the rise of the merchanters’ Alliance, and cliffhangs the breakout of Sol system into the rest of the FTL-enabled galaxy of human settlements. It appears a sequel is coming.

To get them out of the way, two potential problems spring to mind. First, Cherryh has a tendency to intro-info-dump. Here, she certainly does front-load the long first chapter with exposition. But instead of some dry, wikipedia-esque, unrelated information pushed at a reader who hasn’t been given a chance to care yet, this felt more interconnected, more building of tension, more part of the first chapter instead of an intro. Into this springs the surprising and unknown entry of a large ship from FTL, and the immediate fallout of this is fascinating to watch in that first chapter, as we are introduced to two of the main characters. So, not the best opening to a book I’ve read, but a good one that sets the tone for the novel to come, and rises above the usual pitfalls of the intro-info-dump.

Second, does this novel stand on its own? Always a question with works in a series. Should it? Where Regenesis certainly would not stand alone, I feel like this one stands alone better. The characters are largely new, the ships and families may be known, and some of the technology, but the characters, time period, and situations are new. Cherryh’s tightly focused, third person narrative fits well if she is trying to make this novel stand alone: by denying the reader a lot of information that other authors would spend chapters explaining, Cherryh uses her voice to get the action on-page and start building from there. She focuses on what the characters need to know to move along, not on what the reader could know about the universe. Strong.

And those are the only two nit-pickings I can find in what has fast become one of my favorite Cherryh novels⁠—and that’s saying something because she has written some great novels. This book isn’t for somebody who isn’t heavily interested in intricate, psychological, political drama. Indicative of a lot of Cherryh’s work, this relies on bedroom and boardroom diplomacy and less on adventure tale. To me, that tendency is a positive. I’ve read a ton of space-chases, and this rigid focus on what’s happening and known in and directly around Alpha station allows Cherryh to extrapolate the context of the drama to a rarely seen depth.

And that’s the key to this novel’s success: I feel the thick tension. She spends a couple of hundred pages building up the threat of the blue-coated ECE, then ignores them for forty pages. Talk about building the tension! The family hosts a meeting and decides to risk their lives. They check out of their hotel, they walk to the mast their spaceship is docked on, they check the coordinates in a private office at the bottom⁠—Captain, and all three Nav seats getting a peek. They agree to the job. They crack some nervous jokes. They shake hands with the station chief they leave behind. They say goodbyes. They ride the lift. They enter the airlock. They enter their ship’s airlock. They enter their ship. They sit down and start the undock. BAM! The guns come out. How much more could you build the tension? She takes the present, onscreen threateners and then puts them off-screen for forty pages. I was sweating and dreading every page turn. And the payoff does. CJ Cherryh knows how to structure a story. She doesn’t pull the antagonists back off the page right off the bat, or halfway through; but by three-quarters of the way through the novel, I understand they’re the baddies and their sudden lack of presence communicated, “they’re up to something”. Masterful. The tension throughout this novel, from the first page⁠—"Three hours and counting, and still no update"⁠—entrances. Instead of always telling readers, “tension here”, or pulling a gun out on every page to try and ramp up the tension, the tension dawns on the reader as situations and characters develop, until the ending is just a breathless rush of crazy action and politicking.

“We’re all fools, men and women. Or capable of being. You don’t get more callous with the years and the ports: the anger and angst go, but the feelings come on, with all the experiences heaped high. Good thing for us all that wisdom generally comes with them, and you can lead our Fallan just so far, but he’s the prankster and hard to catch."

Of course, CJ Cherryh writes wonderfully as well. She uses sparse language throughout, clipping sentences and words to help give the mood and tone of the place. But her mix of narration and dialogue tend to benefit her books⁠—when the dialogue starts you know you’re in for something you thought you knew changing, speeding up. It’s quite unlike Asimov’s tendency to ask his readers to sit back and relax and watch the expository dialogue pass. This is better writing, in every way. If you appreciate good writing in speculative fiction, read CJ Cherryh. It’s that simple. She’s one of the best writers of speculative fiction alive, consistently. Her tight, third person, internal narrative is brilliant and fresh and exciting.

The themes here are based on the premise that outsiders giving orders from afar⁠—in both distance and time⁠—simply doesn’t work: America during the war of independence, other colonies of European powers, and even Spokane/Eastern Washington, where the author lives, and Seattle/Western Washington, where the government resides. The resentment and good faith applied to the outsiders’ orders show the character of the people in the novel, but fundamentally the situation will not change without Sol giving up their overbearing nature, without Sol understanding what the stars are like. In other words, Washington Drysiders helped Washington Wetsiders pay for Seattle’s monorail in the 60’s, but they’re still salty about it⁠—they helped, and that shouldn’t be overlooked, but they also understand that it was a burden on them with little hope of direct benefit. The way characters respond to outsiders giving useless and damaging orders from afar helps define them as people. All-in? Lackey. All-out? Romantic. This premise of outsiders giving orders from afar underlies the three themes.

First, the on-page, obvious theme of sovereignty. The book is an extended battle, political and physical, for control of Alpha Strip, the docking area and spacer-serving bars and restaurants on Alpha Station. Alpha station’s civil authorities had control of it and want it back, the Earth Company Enforcers take control of it, and the Spacers/Merchanters are their own side in the fight: all want different things from the Strip, and they all take steps to ensure that the Strip includes their priorities. This plays out in bloody fistfights, tense standoffs, trickery, and backroom dealing. When dealing with space travel, sovereignty doesn’t tend to apply as easily as it has to a land-based border. And the merchant ships themselves, which operate autonomously between the stars, their attempt to gain their sovereignty gives the novel its name. It’s, in a way, a partial decolonization narrative.

Second, a discussion of doughnut and edge cities as applied to space colonization. In urban planning, a doughnut city is the state of a downtown core growing too expensive, forcing residents to the suburbs, amenities follow, then jobs, then a belt road, and pretty soon the downtown core is depleted of economic vitality, as all the action is happening around it, not in it. Edge cities follow a similar pattern⁠—see Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, and the other Eastside towns in Western Washington around Seattle. She applies this to early space colonization in our future. Namely, as people move farther and farther away from Earth due to having more opportunities farther out, and an easier time finding jobs, the same thing will happen with Earth⁠—it will become a forgotten, powerless aspect of the human experience in space. The new settlements will develop technologies that further outpace Earth and contribute to the alienation of the “downtown core” of Earth in this system of human settlements. This critique strikes a chord with me.

Third, the death of small towns. As mechanization takes hold of more jobs, the stations that were established first are superseded by later stations with more advantages, farther away from Earth. These first stations then undergo a shrinking, some getting mothballed, while farther out Pell and Cyteen expand rapidly. In some ways, this reads like the novel version of BH Fairchild’s poems. It’s a present worry in America, and it’s portrayed here brilliantly.

In terms of an applicable, human theme, Cherryh explores the idea that humans don’t really change. Despite their priorities changing⁠—between Sol, Alpha, Pell, Cyteen, the EC, the forming Alliance⁠—the ways that people pursue those priorities are human ways. EC priority is control, so Hewitt and Cruz attempt to control as much as they can immediately. They do this through strongarm tactics, hiring station residents’ unemployed teenagers and giving them purpose, dismissing considerations outside of their short-term goal of getting Rights flying as soon as possible. These are human techniques, some good, some bad. Alpha’s priority is survival, so Abrezio spends time planning current actions in light of future potentials. He even lies to Hewitt to ensure the safety of the strip, the merchants that keep his station supplied, and the residents that he is executive over. Abrezio too, both moral and immoral actions. JR might be the most morally consistent character, but by stepping into a situation on Alpha that he doesn’t know, he smashes toes and scares people to action in ways he doesn’t anticipate. The Alliance’s priority is sovereignty, so JR does every little thing he can to further that goal immediately, without betraying his morals⁠—which would damage his goal in the long-term. But even though accidental, he ends up screwing up a few times. Abrezio, Ross, and JR, the three main characters, tend to come off as both good and bad, depending on their understanding of the situation. And this is a strong writing tactic⁠—characters with wrinkles who are not perfect specimens of competent men. But her overall point is that humans don’t fundamentally change. Context shifts their priorities, so their actions to specific inputs do change⁠—things that would have merited an over-reaction before no longer matter much, so little response is needed. However, their tactics will remain the same, even when their priorities shift where those tactics will play out.

In short, this is one of my favorite Cherryh works, and it helps further solidify her as one of my favorite authors. It’s a spectacular novel. It touches on so many aspects of humanity, culture, and potential futures that I found it fascinating. But despite being filled with interesting ideas, it is a well written, well constructed, good story, and what more could you ask for in a book?

Variable Star by Spider Robinson

This novel was partially plotted by Robert Heinlein, who died before writing it. Spider Robinson was selected to tell the story Heinlein left behind. Initially, I think this was intended to be in the Heinlein juvenile novel series.

First and foremost, this novel kept me up at night reading. I enjoy reading most of this novel, and have picked up other Spider Robinson books as a result of this novel. It is very good. Though my notes below will raise some questions, I hope my liking of this book moderates any criticisms. This was given to me by a friend. It really feels like a funny Edgar Rice Burroughs.

A brief synopsis of the plot will serve to illuminate a few points I want to make about this story. The opening chapters detail the mental anguish of an 18 year old who finds that his betrothed is the heiress to the wealthiest corporation in the galaxy⁠—though she lied to him about it throughout their dating life. Being 18 and heartbroken, he runs away, all the way away to an expedition to found a new colony lightyears away from Earth. Onboard the colony ship he starts to integrate into this new society, gain fame and renown for his musical abilities, and help in his small way to save the ship as each new crisis comes. Ultimately, he tries to save humanity from extinction, and it’s implied, does a pretty good job.

As the synopsis shows, there are three parts to the story: Terra, Colony Ship, and Post-Colony Ship. However, the ratios are a bit strange, in the reading. At the end of Terra, like Joel, the reader has little to stand on, as suddenly all of the characters vanish, and the novel starts again on the Colony Ship, with only Joel keeping on. The rest are new characters being introduced and explored. This feels like two-thirds of the book. And again, after they leave the Colony Ship, it’s a new start to another novel, though this one only plays for a few pages acting as a sort of epilogue. These massive shifts in narrative direction may annoy some readers, as the effort the reader puts into the first part is fulfilled only by, “and then he runs away” instead of those stories resolving. Then when those stories from the first part do finally resolve it is an epilogue at the end of the novel. Two things would’ve taken this plotting from good to great: first and foremost, more foreshadowing. The Colony Ship comes up once or twice during the first part, but not enough for me. I want more discussion about it before Joel signs up for it. Though the lack of discussion about it does help build Joel’s character, other tactics could’ve built his character and not left the reader feeling rudderless at the change. Second, this would’ve been helped by a “Part 1: Terra” style billboarding of the narrative shifts. At the end, I can see the whole structure, but even a single sentence saying, “I thought that was the last time I would ever see Jinny and Evelyn and Conrad of Conrad,” would’ve been a blinking light telling the reader that their roles in the novel would continue eventually, after the crises of the Colony Ship. To be clear, this was a good novel, but this minor annoyance could’ve been avoided and helped this book attain greatness.

Another tactic I would like to question is the referential nature: Ricky and Julian from Trailer Park Boys, Smithers from The Simpsons, George RR Martin, artist Alex Grey⁠—there are probably a dozen name-drops in this book to friends of Spider Robinson and famous people. These also include in-canon references to Heinlein novels. This tactic seems weird. I don’t read science fiction to hear somebody else’s interpretation of Smithers’ sexuality, but this book gives that to me. If I don’t know Ricky and Julian from the TV show, do I understand their characters in the novel? Archetypes become shorthand⁠—Herculean, Promethius, Einstein⁠—but when basing them on pop-culture, their effectiveness diminishes because their universality lacks. I didn’t mind these as much as this paragraph makes it sound, but it’s certainly not a tactic I use or appreciate in writing.

Another problem is the humor being too present. This is a funny book and I love literature that makes me tear up from laughter, which I did here. But the humor is taken too far as tragic moments are not free of punny witicisms⁠—even the extinction of 43 billion humans and the entire solar system elicits a couple of humorous one-liners. That seems more tone-deaf than anything. By that point in the story I already understand the main character to be a jokester, and don’t need it reinforced. I think it would’ve been more consistent with his change to maturity to leave some of those jokes behind. But, again, only about two percent of the jokes are misplayed. In the main course, I love the inclusion of so much humor here.

As a writer, Robinson can really construct some sentences well. There are a couple of awkward moments and weird changes of person that should’ve probably been rewritten. But I can only think of three or four parts where this applies. In all, the book is well written by an author that clips words from the English language to reflect how people speak more than how people write, without losing legibility for the most part.

The theme of the novel seems to orient around mental health and dealing with the hope and despair of life. Meditation and exercise and psychology help Joel go from punk kid to functioning adult. And Robinson does a good job of splitting the telling and showing of this change⁠—enough of a good job that the jokes around the extermination of the solar system fall flat. Yet interesting ideas like Religion and Group Marriage are mentioned but not explored at all.

There is another inherent theme: humanity needs to escape the solar system to survive. And this is an interesting discussion, even drawing in Fermi’s Paradox to the narrative.

But the story still struggles to find a footing. Robinson is a big Heinlein fan and was a friend to the man. This leads me to question what happened here in regards to Heinlein’s rules for writing. He states that there are five types of stories, and this novel seems to try all five at once: it starts out boy-meets-girl, then goes all the boy who learned better, then it’s the little tailor, then a human interest story, and the gadgets underlie the whole thing, driving the plot every time a Relativist breaks down. I don’t necessarily take Heinlein’s divising of five story types to be prescriptive, but I wonder what he intended with this story.

Regardless, Spider Robinson turned in a novel I really like here. And I intend to read more of his work in the future. This story straddles the line between Heinlein’s adult fiction, with their deep dives into themes and ideas, and his juvenile adventure novels. I like pulp fiction, and this is good pulp fiction that kept me up at night reading from sheer joy.