Engines of Light Trilogy- Ken Macleod

This last week held a few free days and nights so I tasked myself with tackling the Engines of Light Trilogy by Ken Macleod.  The series is comprised of, in order, Cosmonaut Keep, Dark Light, and Engine City.  These were the first works I've read by Macleod, and I was reasonably impressed.  At some points the complexities of the plot were hard to follow, but ultimately pulled together in a satisfying and interesting manner.

At least in my reading experience, the novels do one of the better jobs of creating planets that resemble earth, but are just different enough to cause pause, for example, rather than having birds flying around, dinosaurs or bats are the dominant flying fauna.  Within the first book, Cosmonaut's Keep, the reader is presented with two very different stories.

The first is that of Gregor Cairns, a young marine biologist on the earth-like planet Mingulay.  On Mingulay, the tech level is that of around the early 20th century give or take. Mingulain society comprises the "Adamic" races of the giantlike Gigants, the elfish pithkies, humans, the mysterious and advanced alien Saurs, and my favorite, space faring giant squids called Kraken.  In the universe of Mingulay, the Kraken and Saurs have a monopoly on space travel, carefully choosing which technology to share with the humans.  Human traders with illustrious Italian names accompany huge Kraken navigated and Saur operated star ships between the planets.  Needless to say, humans are seemingly at the bottom of the tech tree in this part of the galaxy, with no space faring capability whatsoever. While provoking some questions to how they arrived on this planet in the first place, the revelation that the most recent human immigrants were cosmonauts from earth easily grasped my attention quite firmly.  Gregor is descended from one of the original cosmonauts, and is about to discover the grand plan of his family for the reentry of humanity into the space faring game.

The second story takes place in a near future semi-dystopian Britain which has become part of the larger soviet driven socialist collective of countries. Matt Cairns is a tech programmer with shady connections throughout the industry, and finds himself caught up in the events surrounding first contact with intelligent life, drifting through the solar system in the form of a comet.  Eventual sent up to join the research team located on the comet, Matt and the scientists discover that interstellar travel is easier than could have been thought. The convergence of the two stories was one of my favorite parts of the trilogy. The first half of the book had me thinking of what they could possibly have in common, and then bam, the convergence happened and I was impressed.

Macleod utilizes a fair amount of political dialogue between characters and provoked some thoughts on the role and nature of government.  I can't do the full discussion justice on this blog, but I'll say that importing soviet style political dialogue and anarchist jargon onto a alien world is quite interesting.  I couldn't quite get as engaged with the characters as I would have liked, but ultimately that did not detract from the entertainment value. As I stated earlier, the creation of a distant almost-earthlike society was one of my favorite aspects of the book.  There are plenty of Easter eggs throughout for any history junkies. In conclusion, while not the best SciFi I've read, it was definitely entertaining and the setting awesome enough to recommend.

The Forever War - Joe Haldeman

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is quite possibly the best SciFi novel out there, ever.  I'm even going to go as far as suggesting that my previous statement is redundant in making that claim.  This novel changed the way I look at SciFi, so that automatically makes it even that much more amazing.  Even with a minor in English, I had never been so emotionally impacted by a book, maybe I'm a bit weird, but I venture to say that I'm not alone in that statement.  Haunting, magnificent, tender, and enraging are all words that describe the complexity of the feelings that this novel induces.  The book starts in the 20th century and ends in the 31st.  The pages in between the different era's in Major Mandella's are blank, save for the rank and dates of the era enclosed.  It's fairly well known that Haldeman's experiences in the Vietnam war are significant influences on the book, and when looking at the novel from that angle, it makes sense.

Haldeman's use of the time distortion from interstellar travel forms a key part of the book. Its haunting to see the different chapters taking place hundreds of years apart, even more so to think that a soldier could get caught up in a thousand year war without aging ten years.  The resignation of Mandella to his fate is paralled with his passive defiance to the madness around him. Throughout it all, Mandella retains his humanity with his combination of sarcasm, indifference, and love for his girl. Even with humanity evolving around him.  being one of a handful to actually survive the whole war makes it that much more significant.  There's nothing like a tour of duty survival rate of less than one percent to force a deep internal analysis of identity.   In conclusion,  The Forever War is one of the defining works of SciFi as well as American literature.

The Last Colony

The Last Colony by John Scalzi is the third book by Scalzi that I've had the pleasure to read, and I do mean that with all sincerity. Scalzi has blasted himself to the top of the SciFi genre with Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, and Colony is a worth third installment.  This novel throws the reader into a hostile galaxy, with humans pitted against a seemingly endless variety mostly hostile aliens.  However, the human Colonial Union is seemingly just as hostile, albeit shown through manipulation of all human controls and information for its political and expansionist goals. Enjoying a virtual monopoly on human space travel and communications, the CU is very, very selective in which information is dispersed throughout the colonies. The existence of an Alien collaboration of races, the Conclave, is among the various pieces with held from the human citizens of the CU.  However, the Conclave might be just the one thing to hold the various sentient species back from killing each other off, and perhaps the key to their advancement in a united galaxy.

After reading the previous two Scalzi novels, Colony is perhaps my favorite, although its predecessors are equally amazing.  Within the universe of the Old Man's War novels, I was drawn into the ever changing state of intergalactic politics and warfare.  Imagine The Forever War in an expanded and shortened time span.   It is worth arguing that one of the primary focuses within this novel was the tension between the CU and the Conclave, which ultimately boiled down to humanity, or at least the CU"s, reluctance to "share," for lack of better words.  I couldn't help but become agitated at their complete lack of interest in possibly joining the Conclave.  The CU's desire to be at the top of totem pole of galactic politics is suicidally apparent throughout the novel.  Perhaps the author is drawing on the recurring theme of block headed politicians locked into their own ideologies, regardless of the consequences.  On the other hand, the "human" side of the CU is shown as well.  While the CU as a political entity is maddeningly idiotic and unfeeling in its practices, those within the CU are as human as any other.  Colony allows the humanity within the inhuman political juggernaut to be show, notably General Szilard and to a lesser extent General Rybicki.  The reinforcing of the
"human-ness" of the special forces was an emotional addition that greatly added to the recurring theme of the status of the special forces within humanity as a whole. And finally, the interactions with General Gau of the Conclave introduced another emotional aspect to the novel.   While an alien, General Gau displays values and morality that is equal, if not superior, to his CU counterparts.  His presence within the novel introduce significant questions on both the perception of aliens as well as what, if any, emotions are unique to humans.  In conclusion, if you have not read this book, read the two prequels before reading this gem.  Your in for a treat, this is SciFi at its best.