Over the past few months, I've been on a science fiction reading kick. Here's most of what I read, leaving out only a few classic short stories from pulp magazines:
The Demon Princes. I listened to the first 2 of Vance's Demon Princes series as audiobooks: The Star King and The Killing Machine. They concern Kirth Gersen and his efforts to bring justice one by one, to the cadre of infamous criminals (The Demon Princes) that massacred his people. These are probably not Vance's best, but middling Vance is still very good. They would have made a very good late 60s-70s sci-fi TV series, I think.
The Sun Eater. This is a multivolume space opera by Christopher Ruocchio. The conceit of the series is a fallen hero, who caused the deaths of billions in destroying a sun to genocide an implacable alien species is relating his life story and how he came to the decision he made. The setting is Dune-esque for the most part but updated to include some more modern post-cyberpunk and transhuman elements. The first novel, Empire of Silence, details Hadrian Marlowe's escape from the future his father has planned and his various travails until he winds up being sent on a mission to find the homeworld of the Cielcin species in hopes of ending their war with humankind.
Howling Dark, the second book in the series, takes Marlowe and his companions out of the worlds of the Empire and into the posthuman societies of the Extrasolarians beyond on a searched for the fabled world of Vorgossos. There they encounter an undying, posthuman king, a character out of their legends, and even greater mysteries.
After that, I checked out some of the short stories he's written in the same setting in the collection Tales of the Sun Eater, Vol. 1, and the novella Queen Amid Ashes from the Sword & Planet. More on that one below.
Sword & Planet. A collection edited by Ruocchio. I haven't read all of it, but most of the stories I have read don't particularly strike me as Sword & Planet--either they are Space Opera and/or Science Fantasy, but I guess they do have swords and planets. Anyway, there is a prequel to Simon Green's Deathstalker series that reminded me of the sometimes goofy but breakneck paced thrills of those books, but DJ Butler's "Power and Prestige" is my favorite. It's a humorous, sort of Vancian Dying Earthish, short dungeoncrawl starring mercenaries Indrajit and Fix.
The Pride of Chanur. I read at least part of this as a kid, but I don't recall if I completed it. In any case, I'm glad I checked it out again. This is the first of group of related novels by Cherryh set in a multi-species Compact and is reportedly part of her large Alliance-Union universe. It concerns the disruption to the political balance of the Compact and to the planetary society of leonine hani after a hani captain, Pyanfar Chanur rescues a member of an unknown species: a human. Cherryh's xenospecies may veer a bit to the anthropomorphic and perhaps monocultural, but their psychologies and cultures are well thought out and interesting and their precarious, barter-based Compact feels much more realistic than any number of feudal kingdoms in space or single galactic governments.
"This is the first of group of related novels by Cherryh set in a multi-species Compact and is reportedly part of her large Alliance-Union universe."
ReplyDeleteIt is. Tully is a crewman off a Union explorer, and Compact Space is on the far side of Earth from the Alliance-Union space, effectively choking off expansion in that direction because no one in their right mind wants to risk a war with the Compact methane-breathers and their impossible technological edge.
The Compact Space novels are probably my favorite out of her whole mega-setting, although there are some individual novels that rival them. The oxygen-breather species are a bit too humanoid for comfort, but their psychologies are convincingly non-human and at least some of them aren't all that monocultural. There are huge divides between spacer and homeworld hani, and further divides between the more advanced/wealthy homeworld clans and the ones with backwater holdings. The mahen and kif are massively factionalized (even if those factions are all ultimately after power) and remind me a lot of Traveller vargr, and the stsho with their subtly vicious passive-aggressive politics and literally fragile personalities are about as alien as a humanoid can be. The methane breathers are even better, pushing the boundaries of the interspecies communications and comprehensible motivations.
"It's short by modern standards, ending pretty much might where a modern novel would be getting started, but there is a sort of naive charm to Foster's world and characters I found appealing."
To me it's just the right length for a novel, telling a complete, concise story while leaving plenty of room top expand on the characters and setting in future books. Today's books are far too prone to padding that a competent editor would have removed, while having no more actual story than a ~200 page novel from sixty years ago.
But yes, "naive charm" is a good term for many of the Humanx Commonwealth books, and (chronologically) early Flinx is a prime example. Some of his books get much darker with varying results, but Kraing remains a favorite from my childhood along with the (at the time) better known Icerigger and its sequels. Foster may be regarded as a bit of a hack writer by some, and I'll admit he's nowhere near as elegant as (say) Vance, but he's a reliable hack writer who delivers a good read without overstaying his welcome. His large body of work means there's plenty more to come when you want it, too.
If you've still got the itch, I'd recommend finding a copy of Braking Day by Adama Oyebanji. First (and to date only) scifi novel by him, and the debut I've seen in years. Don't be put off by the relative youth of the protags, this is an adult novel not some YA thing, and has a pretty deep and twisty plot. The author's good at drip-feeding the unique setting so you never get big blocks of exposition and working out what the norms of this unusual culture are from context clues is part of the fun.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll add it to the list.
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