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Kim Stanley Robinson, Fifty Degrees Below: In this second book in what appears to be a trilogy, Washington, DC is recovering from the global-warming-induced floods that ended Forty Signs of Rain. The weather continues to get heavier while the politics continue pretty much as usual – so Robinson didn’t need Katrina to make accurate predictions about how America would respond to the destruction of a mostly-black city. Of course, Robinson’s characters are largely policy wonks from out of town, though one of them – as part of his transformation into a modern wilderness man living off the land – does come into contact with several African-American Washingtonians. I think Robinson understates the social and cultural differences between the NSF’s Frank Vanderwal and the down-and-out types he meets, but it’s also possible to read their interactions as just humoring Frank. I wasn’t thrilled with the focus on Frank, who is obsessed with his own midlife crisis – along with switching to outdoor living, he starts an affair with a woman who turns out to be tangled up in Washington’s spy apparatus – but maybe the next book will have more action.
Kage Baker, The Children of the Company: Baker’s Company novels are quite readable, telling the story of a time-travelling conspiracy that strips each age of its treasures, both artistic and natural, for the aggrandizement of the Company, using immortal operatives as tools. This book is a series of separate stories connected by a frame: a vicious and disillusioned operative reviews the history of various schemes he’s been involved in to establish his power and threaten his masters. Because it’s not really a novel, it doesn’t have the full fascination of Baker’s longer excursions into this world, but looking at the dilemmas of immortal servitude from a new perspective – rather than that of the angst-filled biologist Mendoza – is useful, and I have hopes that Baker will tie things up in a few more books as promised.
Elizabeth Moon, Winning Colors: The cover of this shows a woman on horseback, in jodhpurs and riding hat, looking up at a spaceship and some big moons. So that’s what you get: horses (too many, in my opinion; I never could stand horses) and space adventure, as disgraced captain Heris Serrano makes her way in the private sector, running a rich woman’s ship – now Serrano’s own ship, due to various machinations – and going after interstellar conspiracies that threaten the ruling quasi-meritocracy. There is also horse racing. It’s engaging space opera, though for some reason I find myself a little queasy over the social structure, in which apparently useless aristos turn out to be properly suited to rule after all, aside from a few bad apples. I think Moon recognizes that this is sketchy, but she’s not writing about social change, only about self-correction of corruption.
John Birmingham, Designated Targets: I loved the first book in this series, which posits a naval battle group from a few years from now plunked down into the US forces steaming towards the WWII battle of Midway. Needless to say, Midway doesn’t proceed as it would have; the future folk, wounded and confused, nonetheless inflict devastating punishment on the contemporary US forces before they start to figure out what happened. Birmingham makes a brave choice in the second book, jumping forward several months, so that many important changes in the course of the war have taken place in between books. The Axis has a few future ships of its own, caught up in the same temporal event that moved the main fleet. The Allies are trying to integrate the future ships and technology into the war effort, but it’s hard going to skip seven decades of development at once. Harder still is the social distance, which is what really drives the conflict in this book (though there are some bloody, nail-biting battles as well). It was neat that Birmingham considered the effects of intellectual property on economic and social interests – the future folk got the entertainment industries on their side by turning over rights to their future output. But that’s a side note; the point is that Birmingham has put a lot of thought into the past/future shock, and he’s created an exciting alternate history. I look forward to the next book.
Kage Baker, The Children of the Company: Baker’s Company novels are quite readable, telling the story of a time-travelling conspiracy that strips each age of its treasures, both artistic and natural, for the aggrandizement of the Company, using immortal operatives as tools. This book is a series of separate stories connected by a frame: a vicious and disillusioned operative reviews the history of various schemes he’s been involved in to establish his power and threaten his masters. Because it’s not really a novel, it doesn’t have the full fascination of Baker’s longer excursions into this world, but looking at the dilemmas of immortal servitude from a new perspective – rather than that of the angst-filled biologist Mendoza – is useful, and I have hopes that Baker will tie things up in a few more books as promised.
Elizabeth Moon, Winning Colors: The cover of this shows a woman on horseback, in jodhpurs and riding hat, looking up at a spaceship and some big moons. So that’s what you get: horses (too many, in my opinion; I never could stand horses) and space adventure, as disgraced captain Heris Serrano makes her way in the private sector, running a rich woman’s ship – now Serrano’s own ship, due to various machinations – and going after interstellar conspiracies that threaten the ruling quasi-meritocracy. There is also horse racing. It’s engaging space opera, though for some reason I find myself a little queasy over the social structure, in which apparently useless aristos turn out to be properly suited to rule after all, aside from a few bad apples. I think Moon recognizes that this is sketchy, but she’s not writing about social change, only about self-correction of corruption.
John Birmingham, Designated Targets: I loved the first book in this series, which posits a naval battle group from a few years from now plunked down into the US forces steaming towards the WWII battle of Midway. Needless to say, Midway doesn’t proceed as it would have; the future folk, wounded and confused, nonetheless inflict devastating punishment on the contemporary US forces before they start to figure out what happened. Birmingham makes a brave choice in the second book, jumping forward several months, so that many important changes in the course of the war have taken place in between books. The Axis has a few future ships of its own, caught up in the same temporal event that moved the main fleet. The Allies are trying to integrate the future ships and technology into the war effort, but it’s hard going to skip seven decades of development at once. Harder still is the social distance, which is what really drives the conflict in this book (though there are some bloody, nail-biting battles as well). It was neat that Birmingham considered the effects of intellectual property on economic and social interests – the future folk got the entertainment industries on their side by turning over rights to their future output. But that’s a side note; the point is that Birmingham has put a lot of thought into the past/future shock, and he’s created an exciting alternate history. I look forward to the next book.
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