This was August's book group selection. About half the group thought it was a fun little space opera and the other half of thought, well, it had issues. I've read the Coyote series by Steele that was published in Azimov's and didn't care for it, and this just supported my opinions on the author's writing style.
Premise of the story is: a response is received back from a suddenly discovered "large object in space" by the SETI team and a mission is hastily put together and sent out to investigate the source. They find a large floating asteroid next to an alien stargate. A small exploratory team (the dissidents from the mission) are sent down to investigate the asteroid while the ship examines the stargate. The story from here follows the group on the asteroid as the captain of the ship succeeds in blowing the ship up. The small survey team is now stranded.
My issues with this story were many; the main characters, Ted and Emily were supposed be having a "quiet ship affair" but everyone knew about it. Can't be quiet if everyone knows people! Romance does not belong in SF. Jared was a convicted criminal who helped an alien race annihilate 1/3 of the earths population, but only served 10 years of a life sentence because they yanked him out of prison to go on this mission. The protagonists of the book find a “hidden” nuclear warhead on the ship and freak out. Where did it come from? Why is the captian keeping it quiet? HELLO! If I’m going to meet a potentially hostile (or peaceful, you don’t konw but want to be prepared) race I sure as heck want to have some firepower on hand. But the whole premise of keeping it secret was ludicrous and then hiding it in front of the shuttle docking area was absurd. And the "first contact" had me rolling my eyes in disbelief. So overall the plot had issues and was pretty standard - too standard for me.
I think this would be better as young adult fiction.
1 comment:
Romance does not belong in SF?
Look, I'm right there with you on criticizing romance novels with a few, unnecessary SF/Fantasy trappings, but SF can't have romantic subplots? I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one.
One of the criticisms that has been leveled at SF, especially Golden-Age SF, is that it a) either doesn't have likeable, believable characters; or b) it's aimed at young males, and doesn't appeal to females. Which can be the same thing, sometimes--for instance Asimov's characters, who tended to be talking heads arguing about who is being the most logical. Not likeable, not believable, not real humans.
But real people do get romantically entangled, so it should appear sometimes in SF novels. Not all the time, but sometimes. And sometimes the couple are really annoying, especially if they are your coworkers--so it is okay for them to annoy the reader, too.
I don't like pointless romance subplots that seem unbelievable and tacked on just so the characters can get some tail. But it would be really weird and unbelievable if no one in an SF story ever got into a relationship. People do, and the dynamic between them can sometimes even make the story more interesting. Really.
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