Deep Space by Ian Douglas

Published by Harper Voyager on April 30, 2013

Deep Space, the fourth entry in the Star Carrier series, is a solid example of military science fiction. While characterization is a bit weak, Ian Douglas excels at writing vivid battle scenes. By adding political intrigue and credible aliens to the mix, he's produced a novel of greater interest than the "humans versus space bugs" shootout that too often characterizes military sf.

Some of the Sh'daar client species -- perhaps joined by some hitherto unknown aliens -- are attacking Earth outposts and ships, but nobody knows why. The Sh'daar are alien Luddites, fearful of alien races who might be approaching a technological singularity, but the Earth Confederation has lately been at relative peace with the Sh'daar. For Lt. Donald Gregory, a Marine from Osiris, the fight is personal: he wants to liberate his homeworld. The fight is equally personal for Lt. Megan Connor, but for a different reason: she's been captured. When the Earth Confederation confronts the enemy, it discovers that the aliens are using technology that's more advanced than anything humans have encountered before. To make matters even more vexing, something called the Black Rosette might endanger both the Sh'daar and the Earth.

Deep Space is a high energy novel that builds excitement as battles rage on multiple fronts, but it isn't just an action novel. In a significant section of the story, a deep space battle gives way to diplomacy -- an unusual development in military science fiction, but a welcome relief from predictable scenes of interstellar war. Whether diplomacy is possible with an alien race that humankind doesn't fully understand is the novel's most interesting question.

Deep Space is also notable for its carefully considered political intrigue. Conflicts abound as the Earth Confederation seeks to put North American ships under Confederation command -- an act that doesn't sit well with North American President Koenig or with Captain Sandy Gray, who has no desire to surrender control of the Navy's flagship. At the same time, the Confederation is making a power grab on the moon, a prelude to civil war on Earth. The twin plot threads, in space and on the Earth, assure that the story always proceeds at a lively pace. The most immediate threads are resolved by the novel's end but Deep Space leaves enough collateral threads dangling to provide fertile ground for the series' continuance.

Although always written in the third person, the story frequently shifts its focus from one to another of several characters who are integral to the plot. None of the characters are developed to the same degree as the military technology but this isn't a character-driven novel. Stock characters with unsurprising personalities who behave in expected ways serve the story capably, even if their lack of depth is disappointing.

As you would expect in a series novel, there are some sections of expository writing that revisit events from earlier novels in the series. Although they slow the story for awhile, they are bearable. More disturbing is the expository writing that interrupts action scenes, explaining the physics of the action and the astronautics of spaceflight, discussing the history of the Marine Corps, reviewing the ways in which alien races communicate, and describing the operation of weapons in loving detail. I welcome the injection of credible science into science fiction and I'm always happy to learn new things, but it's possible to impart information without pausing the narrative flow. Douglas needs to learn how to do that. He also has a frustrating tendency toward redundancy. This isn't such a long novel that readers need to be reminded of things we've already learned.

Some aspects of the novel are quite creative, even if they sometimes place a clever spin on familiar ideas: an alien's attempt to make sense of human anatomy; the aliens themselves; the planet-killing technology; the improvised tactics that Gregory and Gray devise to fight the aliens; the different philosophies of war that drive humans and aliens; the prejudices that exclude from military advancement those who cling to widely rejected traditions and beliefs; the possibility that Earth is at war against aliens who shaped (or instigated) human evolution. Other aspects are fairly typical of military science fiction, but this is a particularly well-conceived addition to the genre. In the end, it is the novel's intensity as much as its creativity that captured my imagination.

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R.I.P.: Pacino (1998-2013)

 

                     "I do what I want"

Although Pacino managed to live his entire life without doing an honest day’s work, he distinguished himself as a skilled beggar, an accomplished thief, and a masterful con artist. Never a scholarly dog, and having been expelled from obedience school, Pacino nonetheless displayed uncanny intelligence when circumventing childproof locks and opening cupboard doors to reach food and garbage.

While Pacino enjoyed all holidays, his favorite was Halloween, when he greeted costumed children by burrowing into their bags and helping himself to their treats.  As often as he could, Pacino attended children’s birthday parties, although never with an invitation.  Running at top speed, he snatched hamburgers from the hands of unsuspecting kids, and more than once gave literal truth to the phrase “stealing candy from a baby.”  At adult parties, steaks on the grill were a prime target of thievery, as were buns, bags of chips, boxes of pizza, and any other food items left unattended on a table or counter.  Pacino prided himself on being a well-fed dog, although dog food was his meal of last resort.

Pacino excelled at swimming and frequently outraced other dogs to the balls and toys their owners tossed into the lake, only to abandon them when he spotted another prize sailing through the air.  Despite being chastised for the unrecovered balls and toys that were left floating in the water, Pacino showed little regard for anyone who tried to spoil his fun.  In addition to swimming, Pacino’s hobbies included walking, napping, chasing his kong, chewing rawhide bones, and receiving belly rubs.

The final eighteen months of Pacino’s life were spent on a tropical island, where he quickly attained the status of a rock star.  In a neighborhood dominated by shiatsus and mongrels, Pacino was admired for both his size and his amiable, fun-loving attitude.  Like Norm on Cheers, everybody knew Pacino’s name.  Whether lounging in the sun or seeking affection (and snacks) from neighbors, Pacino always pursued the goal that became his mantra:  maximum fun.

On a personal note, during a time when depression and existential despair were swallowing my life, Pacino’s unwavering love and steadfast devotion kept me grounded.  His good natured goofiness, eternal optimism, and enthusiasm for life taught me more lessons than years of psychotherapy could have accomplished.  I am grateful that he was always there when I needed him.  Pacino more than earned every feast he ever stole.

The Stone Thrower by Adam Marek

First published in Great Britain in 2012; published by ECW Press on April 1, 2013 

The stories in Adam Marek's debut collection, Instruction Manual for Swallowing, were absurdist sketches of life. Many of the stories in The Stone Thrower are, if not conventional, at least more grounded in reality. Some are about boys learning what it is to be a man. A boy learns about death and mercy by helping his father save (and sometimes kill) baby birds. A boy steals a fish in a country where life is cheap. A damaged boy's virtual pet becomes ill and begins infecting other virtual pets.

Most of the stories have a dark side. A father's desperate attempt to deal with his son's allergy to bee stings goes wrong. A boy kills chickens with unerringly thrown stones. In the book's best story, a boy battles sharks as a man seeks revenge.

There's greater variety in these stories than there was in the first collection, in style and content. As was true of Instruction Manual for Swallowing, some of my favorites delve into science fiction. In a future where soldiers are protected by nanosuits and suicide bombers target the most specialized children, a boy and a girl who were once friends become adversaries -- a change of heart that the boy inadvertently caused and that he takes an extraordinary step to rectify. In another story set in the future, a woman who took extraordinary measures to save apes from extinction by cloning them is distressed that they are being used as docile workers, tending a plantation of palm trees. In a story set in an unspecified time and location, a woman strikes a violent blow against repression.

The stories in The Stone Thrower generally aren't as bizarre as those in Instruction Manual for Swallowing, although one about a boy whose seizures cause earthquakes (in the form of a letter seeking funds to research the condition) is an amusing exception. A couple of stories lack development or context, leaving me puzzled as to their meaning. A couple of stories never quite get going, and so fail to deliver the impact that Marek intended. Most of the stories, however, are powerful, and some are gut-wrenching. I continue to be impressed with Marek's imaginative view of the world, and I'm even more impressed with his growth as a writer.

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The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard

First published in Great Britain in 2011; published by Picador on April 23, 2013

The Pink Hotel is narrated by Lily Harris' daughter, whose name is never revealed. Lily's daughter never knew Lily, but she impulsively travels to Venice Beach from London to attend Lily's funeral. She arrives in time for the wake being held at the hotel Lily co-owned. In Lily's room, she watches a fistfight between Richard, Lily's most recent husband, and David, a fashion photographer who knew Lily when she was a model. Using clues she gleans from items she steals from Lily's room, Lily's daughter tracks down people from Lily's past. Although her father told her that Lily was "manipulative and dangerous," Lily's daughter gains different perspectives of her mother as she meets the people who were part of Lily's life.

We often learn about characters in surprising ways -- as, for instance, when Lily's daughter and David compare their scars or discuss their fantasies. Lily's daughter is endowed with quirky personality traits (including a desire for physical pain) that make her a convincing character. She's coming of age, sorting through her confusion, making or avoiding decisions about the person she wants to become. David is older than Lily's daughter but he's also (perhaps belatedly) trying to find an identity he can live with. I'm just as impressed with the thought given to the novel's minor characters -- the gossipy residents of "Little Armenia" (David's neighborhood) who give Lily's daughter their unsolicited advice, the bartender who goes into the back room every hour to feed her addiction.

Part of the charm of The Pink Hotel is that I never had a clue what would happen next. After the first chapter, there is little direct interaction between Lily's daughter and Richard, but a sense of foreboding pervades the novel. Richard is in no condition to stop Lily's daughter when she steals Lily's things, but he makes it clear that he wants the property returned. Yet this isn't a thriller. The Pink Hotel has a plot of sorts, one that holds a surprising turn of events as the story nears its conclusion -- a turn of events that, unlike the rest of the story, is too contrived -- but this is fundamentally a character-driven novel. The plot is a vehicle for Lily's daughter to investigate a series of complex relationships, an investigation that shapes, and helps her to understand, her own identity.

Anna Stothard's prose is evocative and graceful. She sets scenes in photographic detail and plays with some wonderful images of maps transformed into objects of art. The story moves quickly but it's never hurried. Lily's daughter loves words (quiddity is a favorite) and it's clear that Stothard shares her joyful approach to language. "A good word captures the quiddity of its meaning, the drippiness of dripping and phosphorescence of phosphorescent light." The Pink Hotel is full of well-chosen words.

Not everything is resolved by the novel's end, but Lily's daughter is still young, and that's life. Although I was disappointed with some aspects of the novel's concluding chapters, that reaction did not overcome my enjoyment of the story that preceded it. In fact, there are other aspects of the novel's conclusion (those that don't involve the "shocking" revelation) that have the appealing flavor of truth. In the end, the novel's one flaw is not fatal.

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The Killing Hour by Paul Cleave

Published by Atria Books on April 23, 2013 

The Killing Hour takes place in Christchurch, New Zealand. An author's note tells us that the novel was originally written as a horror story. It didn't sell and, to make it marketable, Paul Cleave rewrote it as a crime novel. The Killing Hour retains the creepy feel of a horror story, which is good and bad. Good because creepy is fun, bad because the creepy events that transpire in horror stories tend to be predictable.

Charlie Feldman's story -- the confusing story he tells Jo, the wife who separated from him six months earlier when he beat up a man in a bar -- is that he met a blood-covered woman on the road who told him her friend was being held by a lunatic. He went into the forest at night and found a woman tied to a tree being threatened with a metal stake by a guy named Cyris. He thought he killed Cyris but now Cyris is after him. The rest of Charlie's improbable story is unveiled, bit-by-bit, as the novel progresses. Having watched the news, both Charlie and Jo know that two women were recently found dead. Charlie, with good reason, worries that he'll be the prime suspect in their murders. Jo becomes embroiled in his ordeal as she -- like the reader -- wonders whether Charlie is a delusional murderer or an improbable victim.

The case is assigned to Detective Inspector Bill Landry who, with six months to live, has no incentive to follow the rules of criminal investigation. He's becoming a guy who is willing to do bad things for good reasons, a trait he despises in others. Mistaking vigilantism for justice, Landry makes it his mission to rid the world of Charlie. As a Dirty Harry wannabe, Landry is a stereotype, but he's more interesting than most stereotypical vigilante cops.

The first half of The Killing Hour, with all its unanswered questions, engages the reader's mind. The second half requires little thought, including a final chapter in which Charlie struggles (but not for long) with a moral decision. The plot isn't particularly believable, given its dependence on an evil character who has an almost superhuman ability to endure pain and survive injuries that would kill most people, but that's become standard thriller fare. The vestiges of the horror novel this once was, including a couple of ghosts, could have been eliminated entirely without doing harm to the story.

The Killing Hour is predictable and formulaic, but it's also fast moving and enjoyable (at least for fans of mayhem). The action scenes in The Killing Hour are vivid, particularly the gruesome ones. The excitement factor is high even if the story holds no surprises. Predictable endings can still be satisfying, and that holds true as The Killing Hour's relentless violence finally reaches a climax. Had The Killing Hour maintained the suspense it generates in the first half, it would have been a better novel, but as it stands, it isn't bad.

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