by on

I remember I enjoyed this book, but I can’t remember why. 🙂

Okay, no, I’m kidding. That’s actually an in-joke for people who have already read the book. It happens, you know, that sometimes someone will read a book and then look up the reviews afterward. I do this myself pretty routinely.

If you think about it, it’s odd. Why should I read a review of a book I already read? Well, sometimes I’ve forgotten some detail and it’s faster to remind myself by reading a review than by looking it up. Or sometimes I just want to know what other people think.

Which again, is odd. Why does it matter what other people think? Surely all that matters is what I think–at least, that’s all that matters to me, right?

Well, that would be true, if you consider ideas as merely static, unchanging things. But what if we consider ideas as dynamic entities, separate from the minds that create them? Ideas are after all transmissible from person to person. Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme“, analogous to the gene in the realm of biology, to describe these replicating units of information, and with it, invented the science of memetics.

Okay, so then what is antimemetics?

Trick question; there is no such thing. Hence the title and the nonexistence of an antimemetics division.

Actually, no. That’s not true. But it is very hard to describe something that is about the negation of ideas; the erasure of knowledge because it is too dangerous to know about. The first rule of the anitmemetics club is that you literally can’t talk about the antimemetics club, because to talk about it is to cause it to exist. You have to instead find a way to talk around the problem without actually stating it.

Which, as you may have noticed, is exactly what I am doing in this review by not mentioning any specifics about the book for as long as possible. Forgive me; I couldn’t help paying tribute to the book’s central theme this way. But now, since you probably are expecting a review to provide information and not antiformation, I’ll give some specifics.

This is a psychological horror book that messes with the reader’s head. Every chapter is a little vignette depicting the members of the Antimemetics Division trying to piece together a mystery—a mystery which they usually begin to forget exists the longer they study it. It’s implied there have been many iterations of the Antimemetics Division, with the history of each being periodically forgotten.

I’ve often said that what I really like in a book is a story that messes with your head so much you start questioning your whole understanding of reality. That’s basically the whole point of this book, so naturally I enjoyed it. It’s weird, unsettling, mind-bending—and also, in a few places, surprisingly funny and even at times a little romantic. You’ll see what I mean.

The only part I didn’t really like was the ending, which was so abstract and confusing it was hard to even relate to what was happening. But maybe that was inevitable given the nature of the story.

I still recommend the book to fans of weird fiction. The ending is so disconnected from the rest that it couldn’t even ruin it. If you like having your mind bent in all sorts of crazy directions, you’re bound to enjoy this strange and unsettling voyage into a world of unthinkable, unnameable things.

by on

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Adam Bertocci is the millennial Oscar Wilde. He captures what it is to be a Gen Y-er, just as Wilde captured what it was to be a member of Victorian high society.

So it’s fitting that in Bertocci’s latest short story Translating the Wildest, one of Wilde’s most famous works, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is prominently featured.

But I have a confession to make: despite my literary pretensions, I had never actually read Wilde’s famous novel of philosophical horror. So, how could I be prepared to adequately review Translating the Wildest without first familiarizing myself with the source material?

You probably know the setup already, via cultural osmosis, just as I did: Dorian Gray, a handsome youth, has his portrait painted by a painter who idolizes him. On seeing it, Dorian wishes that he would not lose the physical perfection depicted in the painting–that the image of him should age and decay instead of him. (There’s probably some solid material here for a Daniel J. Boorstin-inspired reading of Dorian Gray, if you’re into that sort of thing, or need to write a paper for an English or Philosophy class.)

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. You might get it. And Dorian does.

That’s the basic plot of the story, and frankly, anyone familiar with Victorian melodrama will not be shocked by much of what happens here. Honestly, for as avant-garde as Wilde liked to appear to be, the theme of Dorian Gray is not that different from the elements of the Gothic villain archetype parodied in Gilbert & Sullivan’s 1887 operetta Ruddigore, where the accursed nobleman Sir Despard sings:

When in crime one is fully employed
Your expression gets warped and destroyed.
It’s a penalty none can avoid!
I once was a nice-looking youth;

But like stone from a strong catapult
I rushed at my terriblе cult –
Observe thе unpleasant result!
Indeed, I am telling the truth.

Wilde’s conception of sin is hardly any different; he just uses the portrait as an effective plot device to convey it.

Okay, but that’s just the bare bones of the plot. As you might expect from such an eminent purveyor of witticisms, the writing is chock-full of clever quips and cleverer ripostes, especially from the mouth of the cynical Lord Henry Wotton, who continually tempts Dorian Gray into acts of increasing depravity with his non-stop banter at various fancy parties.

And banter at various fancy parties is the main activity in this book. When I think of Gothic horror, I think of old mansions, creaking floorboards, and moaning ghosts, not Chopin and cucumber sandwiches. M.R. James would no doubt approve of the way Wilde keeps the horror elements to a minimum, only occasionally intruding on the otherwise fashionable and vapid scenes from the class struggle in Mayfair. Imagine a season of Frasier except there’s one episode of Dexter in the middle of it.

Gray just keeps doing one bad thing after another, until finally, there comes at last a day when, sick of crime, he vows to sin no more, and so, in agony, calls welcome Death to free him from his cloying guiltiness.

So, I guess what I’m saying here is if you want a Victorian meditation on morality that also has plenty of wit and Gothic horror, watch Ruddigore instead. I recommend the Stanford Savoyards’ production from 2012, with production design inspired by Tim Burton. 

But how does all this inform Mr. Bertocci’s latest offering?

Well, perhaps I am as much a product of my time as Wilde was of his, and just as the Victorian tropes of Dorian Gray seem trite and predictable with the benefit of critical distance, so too will Translating the Wildest appear as a typical work of early 21st-century fiction to readers in future centuries. If there are any.

But to me, it seems far more inspired than many books, including the classic that the protagonist is translating.

First off, unusually for Bertocci, this book is science-fiction. Set in the year 2187, it’s written with an epistolatory framing device, the book is framed as a series of messages from a woman named Amicayle, who is translating Wilde’s prose into the language of the Ilvenica, the mysterious, but seemingly peaceful race of intelligent aliens who have come to Earth and a seeking to learn more about our history and culture.

What follows is a chaotic running commentary on her attempts to capture the meaning of Wilde’s novel while juggling her own personal life and, eventually, some strange happenings involving the Ilvenica themselves.

It’s one of Bertocci’s most original works. Stylistically it’s a departure from his slice-of-life millennial literary short stories, while still retaining the same wit and insight his loyal fans have come to expect. While I didn’t think Dorian Gray itself was the classic it was hyped up to be, I was still glad I read it just to be able to enjoy Translating the Wildest to the fullest. That said, it isn’t essential that you read the former to appreciate the latter.

Through the lens of Victorian literature, Bertocci explores the meaning of art, humanity, and our place in the universe. Earlier I compared Dorian Gray to Frasier with a serial killer episode; Translating the Wildest is like an episode of The X-Files with a literary criticism episode. And as Wilde himself might have said, “the only thing worse than the truth being out there…”

by on

Do you remember a few weeks ago, when I rhapsodized about my love of powered armor? Well, related to that, I also have a fondness for giant battle tanks, mechs, and other giant armored weapons platforms. Maybe, like other aspects of my personality, it’s thanks to Metal Gear Solid.

The titular “trolls” in this story are massive battle tanks called “Bolos”. Our protagonist is a man named Jackson who has awakened from suspended animation in some sort of military base. He stumbles outside to find the door guarded by one of these huge units. He manages to evade it and sets out to find his way home.

Unfortunately, as often happens in science-fiction stories, he realizes he’s been asleep far longer than he realized, and that the world has turned into a war-torn dystopia. He returns to his old home, and finds it a ruin, inhabited only by an eccentric old man.

Gradually, Jackson learns that this ravaged hell-scape is ruled by a mysterious figure called “the Baron,” who is believed to possess powerful and terrible mana which enables him to control the “troll” guarding his estate—that is, another Bolo. With help from the old man, Jackson makes his way there, and infiltrates one of the Baron’s social gatherings by disguising himself as a haughty officer.

So far, this sounds like a typical post-apocalyptic affair. And it is, but what sets it apart is the style of writing. It’s written like a hardboiled Chandler-esque detective story, with memorable lines and plenty of gallows humor. Darkly comic metaphors and similes abound: “The joy ran out of his face like booze from a dropped jug.” “The grin fell like a stripper’s bra.” etc.

At one point, the old man tells Jackson many of his shotgun shells are spent:

“There are shells–but the magic is gone from many.”

“That’s the way magic is, Pop. It goes out of things before you notice.” 

And then there is this magnificent passage from Jackson’s infiltration of the Baron’s estate, which I cannot resist quoting at length:

This was Baronial country, all right. A pair of guards stood at the far end of the corridor.

I’d passed half a dozen with no more than a click of heels to indicate they saw me. These two shouldn’t be any different—and it wouldn’t look good if I turned and started back at the sight of them. The first rule of the gate-crasher is to look as if you belong where you are.

I headed in their direction.

When I was fifty feet from them, they both shifted rifles—not to present-arms position, but at the ready. The nickle-plated bayonets were aimed right at me. It was no time for me to look doubtful; I kept on coming. At twenty feet, I heard their rifle bolts snick home. I could see the expressions on their faces now; they looked as nervous as a couple of teen-age sailors on their first visit to a joy-house.

“Point those butter-knives into the corner, you banana-fingered cotton choppers!” I said, looking bored and didn’t waver. I unlimbered my swagger-stick and slapped my gloved hand with it, letting them think it over. The gun muzzles dropped—just slightly.

“Heard the rifle bolts snick home!” “Banana-fingered cotton choppers!” It’s all so vivid, and, despite being a tense moment in our hero’s journey, rather funny.

If I have a complaint about the book, it’s that it all moves a little too fast. There a surprising number of plot twists packed into this for a short story, and sometimes it feels like we receive a really head-turning bit of information, but have to move on to the next thing before it’s even been processed. It’s a little like a Twilight Zone episode, if the Twilight Zone had had the budget to build futuristic battle tank sets. Can you imagine?

I highly recommend this story to anybody who enjoys sci-fi adventure or Golden Age pulp stories told with flair and wit. And, of course, to my fellow giant tank enthusiasts. I haven’t talked about it much so as not to spoil anything, but rest assured that the Bolos see plenty of action in the last act of the story.

by on

Sentient Secrets is a short story that packs a lot into a few pages. It’s a teaser for the novel Sisters Arcana. The protagonist is Lulu Wren, whose company mandates her to do a journaling project with an AI assistant.

At first, Lulu finds the exercise tedious, stupid, and cringeworthy. But soon, after gathering enough input from her, the AI starts producing new entries in her voice. More than that, it soon seems that entries in the journal have predictive power.

It was a compelling concept, and made me interested in reading Sisters Arcana. I’ll probably pick that one up at some point.

I am, as you may have noticed, extremely interested in non-linear conceptions of time. Try reading about the delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment sometime. It doesn’t actually demonstrate that information can be sent backward in time. However, it takes advanced knowledge of quantum mechanics to explain why it doesn’t demonstrate that, which means that it’s close enough to time-travel for government work.

Time-travel is a bit mind-bending to think about, and that is probably why it’s one of those concepts best suited to machine minds, which are entirely comfortable with hallucinations and things that sound cool but make no logical sense to those of us made out of meat.

This kind of techno-sorcery is what is going on in Sentient Secrets, and if this blend of esoteric mysticism and modern computer technology doesn’t put you in mind of the CCRU, well… congratulations, that means you’re a normal, well-adjusted person. How did you even find this blog? Were you perchance led to it by The Almighty Algorithm?

Well, like Hunter S. Thompson said, “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” The computer age is proving to be a weird one indeed, and Sentient Secrets is a concise distillation of that weirdness.

by on

Literary theorist Georg Lukács said that novels were “the epic of an age in which the extensive totality of life is no longer directly given.”

Well, who am I to argue? But let me just say that I think it is hard to capture all that in a single novel, unless maybe you’re doing it the Russian way. But the short story collection, now there’s a way to capture “the totality of life.”

Pacotti is like Mark Paxson and a few other gifted writers of literary fiction who have this extraordinary ability to inhabit the heads of different people and show the world from their perspective. This collection is a beautiful mosaic of unique characters in varied circumstances, all written with care and empathy. Whether it’s the wife of an alcohol smuggler in Tehran, a pair of rebels in a dystopian Hong Kong, or a young boy growing up believing he will never be as brilliant as the rich kids in his class due to their chemically-induced mental advantage, Pacotti invites us to walk around in many different shoes.

Of course, I knew of Pacotti first from his work on the dystopian video game Deus Ex, and later from his prophetic neo-noir cyberpunk horror thriller Demiurge. Both of these are absolute classics of 21st-century sci-fi, and each share many things in common with the stories found in this volume.

The most obvious common element among these stories is… drugs. Not just the typical illegal kind (though those certainly show up) but all manner of mind-altering substances, both real and, at least so far, imagined. Pacotti returns again and again to the subject of chemically changing the patterns of the brain.

And yet, at the same time, he clearly isn’t just a materialist who sees consciousness as just an accidental product of a bubbling stew of chemicals. There is an implicit human core that is somewhere beyond the reach of the drugs, and that’s the part that makes Pacotti’s work so haunting. Over and over, we meet characters exposed to the most fundamentally anti-human and unnatural circumstances, but what makes the story work is the undeniable basic humanity struggling to break through.

I haven’t done a very good job describing these stories, and I am sorry for that. The power of them is a hard thing to concisely summarize; it’s more like a feeling that gradually steals over you as you read, and find yourself rooting for (or against) his vividly-drawn characters.

I liked all the stories, but probably my top three are “Evil Spirits Travel in Straight Lines”, the eerily prescient “Conversations with the Noösphere” and “Incantation.” All the stories are available on the author’s website, so I encourage you to check these out, and read the rest if you enjoy them as much as I did. Pacotti is one of the great sci-fi authors of our era, and when the history of fin de millĂ©naire literature is written—if it is written—it will be impossible not to include his name in it.

by on

The great Noah Goats once told me something I’ve never forgotten. “Berthold,” he said to me, “books lead on to books, sometimes in strange ways.” Then he closed up his butterfly knife and walked away into the darkness.

Okay, I’m embellishing. But he really did tell me that. And he was right. Today’s book is a case in point: it’s written by one of the authors of Best, which I reviewed last week. Reading another book by an author of a book you’ve enjoyed may not seem that strange, but what piqued my interest is that while Best, is a light-hearted rom-com satire of academia, Kenai is military science-fiction.

This got my attention. There aren’t many authors who dabble in genres as diverse as that. (Full disclosure: I have also written a light-hearted rom-com satire of academia and military science-fiction. Now are you starting to get an idea of what kind of eccentricity it takes? 🙂 )

Kenai tells the story of Jess Amiko, an ex-space marine trying to forget her past. During her time in the service, she was railroaded into serving a prison sentence for war crimes. They really gave her the Breaker Morant treatment, minus the firing squad, obviously. Which isn’t to say she doesn’t have plenty to feel justifiably guilty about! She does, and… she does.

Once she is finally released from prison, Amiko works as a private security guard on the world of Kenai, assisting with an archeological dig to uncover the ruins of a lost civilization.

Naturally, things don’t go smoothly. Amiko soon finds herself under attack by mercenary thugs, meeting sentient trees, and generally having a whole bunch of experiences that make her question her own sanity.

Interwoven with all this are flashbacks to her time in the service and in prison, including the lengthy counseling sessions she underwent as part of her rehabilitation. These scenes serve to flesh out her character, and also serve another purpose…

…a purpose which I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge. You see, about halfway through the book, there’s a very clever plot twist that forces you to reevaluate a good deal of what came before. And after. But I can’t explain what that is without spoiling it, and that would be very wrong. Now, I could it put it behind a spoiler tag, ’tis true. But in these days of AI combing through everything to slap together answers for inquiring minds, I can’t guarantee my spoiler might not find its way into some LLM-generated reply to a query, and I wouldn’t want that. Therefore, it’s very important I not talk about some of the things that happen in this book.

(Curiously, it occurs to me that not talking about some of the things that happen is also a key plot element in the book itself. There appears to be some sort of recursive hyperstition effect at work in this text which affects not only the book itself, but also writings about the book. But probably best not to think about it too hard. “How quaint the ways of Paradox! / At common sense she gaily mocks!”)

But anyway, what I can say is that this is a fine MilSciFi adventure. Who doesn’t love the trope of a flawed protagonist on a quest for redemption? Especially if that quest for redemption involves the liberal use of POWERED ARMOR!

Gad, I love powered armor. Any story is automatically rendered better by the inclusion of powered armor. Remember how like 15 years ago there was a fad for rewriting classic works of literature but with zombies? That really never moved me, but if they did it with powered armor? Pride and Prejudice and Powered Armor even sounds better!

In short, I unhesitatingly recommend Kenai to anyone who enjoys science-fiction and clever, mind-bending plot twists. Be sure not to skip over the author’s note at the end if you’re a writer, it reveals interesting details about the process.

by on

There’s nothing like a good redemption story. And if that redemption story also happens to feature space pirates and interstellar battles, so much the better!

Sol Linocass is a divorced dad down on his luck. His attempts to win back the favor of his ex-wife invariably seem to go sideways. He can’t hold a job, and he’s an alcoholic. His life, in short, is going down the tubes, and his dream of a better future thanks to his skill as a pilot from hours in simulators doesn’t seem likely to materialize any time soon.

But one day he stumbles across top secret information hidden in some scrap he hauled in from the junkyard. Sol may not be the best decision-maker in the world, but he is wise enough to know just what the government would do to get their hands on such data. So, he decides to flee as fast as he can, by joining up with his sister Trudy and her rag-tag crew of space pirates.

Trudy is the opposite of Sol in many ways; competent, organized, and in command of her life. She makes it very clear to Sol that once they leave port, he’s not her little brother, he’s just a member of her crew. She stops just short of making a “row well, and live” speech, but it’s very clear who’s in charge here.

I’m not usually one to want prequels or retellings or things like that, but I would love to read the story of this book told from Trudy’s perspective. She’s a fantastic character, especially once you know the whole story, and can appreciate all the different concerns she’s required to balance.

What follows once Sol joins the crew is a spacefaring adventure full of danger, intrigue, political-machinations, and double-crossing. It reminded me a little of Frank Herbert’s sadly neglected novel The Dragon in the Sea, about a submarine crew where everyone suspects everyone else of being a double agent. With everything that’s at stake, Sol never knows who can be trusted. (In the sage advice of Natalie Portman in My Blueberry Nights: “You can’t even trust yourself.”)

But in the end, everybody has to put their faith in something; and ultimately that’s the decision Sol is forced to make under the highest pressure imaginable.

There are so many things I could praise in this book: the obvious points are the compelling and twist-filled plot, and the vivid, memorable characters. It reminded me of a Carrie Rubin novel in that regard. (And yes, there is even a bit of a medical subplot to it.)

A less obvious, but equally important quality is how Holtschulte handles the world-building. World-building is key in a science fiction story since, you know, it’s set in a different world.

Tall Boy Sun contains a bare minimum of world-building. It conveys just enough information about the setting that we can follow what’s happening, and not a bit more. There are no info-dumps or long-winded expositions here, which is perfect.

When you read an exposition-heavy section in a character-driven novel, it has the effect of taking you out of the moment, and reminding you that you are just reading a story. For comparison, imagine reading a novel set in the present day: if it weighed you down with a bunch of needless backstory about politics and history of our own world that wasn’t relevant to the story, it would be distracting and even a little confusing. You would be asking, “why would the author need to tell me this?”

We accept more explaining about the world and setting in sci-fi or fantasy novels, but how refreshing it is to read one that feels like it really is of a piece with its setting! Tall Boy Sun‘s world is so well-built that it ceases to feel like it was built at all, and feels as if the writer truly inhabits the world being described, and simply penned a novel set in it.

There are many more praiseworthy things in this book, such as Trudy’s colorful crew, and the sinister antagonist Gilbert Bane, who is a mixture of Boba Fett, the Red Baron, and the Dread Pirate Roberts. But, it’s more fun if you can just discover the world and denizens of Tall Boy Sun for yourself. I highly recommend this book, even if sci-fi isn’t one of your typical genres. It is first and foremost a book driven by its characters, who are as well-crafted and memorable as any you’ll ever meet.

Now if we can only get a spin-off about the adventures of Captain Trudy…

by on

You remember the other week when I reviewed that “biography” of Baron Ungern-Sternberg and talked about how it was cool to read a book that didn’t over-explain things to the reader? Well, this book is like that too, only it’s an alternate history story rather than a biography.

You can tell things are different in this world. The story is about the Energy Wars of 1994, when terrorists of unclear affiliation attacked the Johnson Space Flight Center.

General Gus Grissom, who apparently did not die (I think–see below) in the Apollo 1 program in this timeline, is heading the response to the attack. Under his command is the narrator of our story, Peter Caudell, with the framing device of Caudell telling the story many years later to his daughter.

It’s a very short book, taking only about ten minutes to read, but it packs a lot into those ten minutes. Mostly raising more questions than answers. Which is good if you’re like me. My motto is that the best books are the ones that leave you questioning what’s even real.

Still… it would have been nice to have things a bit more fleshed out. The author does include an Afterword which explains some things, but even the explanations raise questions. For example, there’s a note about where the clones of Stalin are located in this alternate world.

This is why I included the parenthetical note about Grissom above. There are multiple references to clones throughout the story, in a way that suggests they’re important, but I could never figure out exactly what the deal was with them.

But in a way, this makes the story feel more authentic. I feel like clones were all the rage as the sci-fi trope of the 1990s. I know I was a big fan of clone-related stories when I was a kid. AI and robots and simulation theory are all right for these young people with their short pants and their comically oversized lollipops, but me, I’m from the Old School. Give me that old-time warehouse with rows of clones in test tubes. If it’s good enough for the Galaxy of Fear, it’s good enough for me.

Anyway, back to the story: it’s well-written but kind of incoherent. But I’m strangely okay with that, because it really does feel like reading a fragment of a dispatch from some other reality.

by on

What’s more important: having a good system, or having good personnel? Broadly speaking, this distinction can be used across many fields of endeavor, whether it’s debating what makes a superior NFL team or evaluating how to run a company. It can be applied to the study of history—think Carlyle’s “Great Man” theory vs. Marxist interpretations where economic and sociological factors are primary causes. It’s a major division across academic disciplines, i.e. “the Humanities” as opposed to “the Sciences.”

All Tomorrows is a work of speculative science fiction that seems to lean heavily on a systematic analysis of life itself; that is, evolutionary biology. It is framed as the work of a future alien xeno-biologist recording the history of humanity as it evolved and journeyed into space. Like Gibbon standing among the ruins of ancient Rome, the narrator is reflecting on all the trials and challenges faced by the many species that originally came from Earth.

The initial “next steps” for humanity as described in this book include journeying to Mars, and of course, the inevitable Earth vs. Mars war that follows. From there, humans begin breeding to become better adapted to space travel, and over the millennia turn into a variety of strange creatures.

Speaking of strange creatures, they eventually encounter a species referred to as “the Qu”, beings with a God-complex who remake other lifeforms they encounter in experimental ways, leading to some true abominations. The Qu have seeded other worlds with lifeforms based on dinosaurs from Earth’s past, and once they meet “the Star People”, they are disgusted with this upstart species, and remake them into a variety of abominations as punishment.

Eventually, the Qu depart, and evolution continues to take its course, eventually leading to the rise of a machine-intelligence based empire with no regard for biological life. This empire also eventually experiences its downfall, and over hundreds of millions of years, new species of intelligent life arise to take their place.

As the timescale implies, the scope and span of this book is huge and sweeping. There are no “characters” as such, unless we consider whole species as characters. Many of the creatures described seem disturbing and abominable, although perhaps if given the chance, they would say the same about us. Evolution produces many strange things.

Although the book appears to be heavily steeped in systematic thinking, at the very end, the limits of such thinking are revealed. I won’t spoil it, but the title has a significance that becomes apparent only in the last line. This is where the comparison to Gibbon feels most apt; even when discussing the evolution of life on a massive scale, the author somehow never loses sight of the particular, of those little details that we categorize as “human.”

The book is illustrated by the author with images depicting all the different creatures described, which offers us a glimpse of how deeply unsettling and bizarre they are. H.R. Giger would be proud.

All in all, the book is a great way to stretch your imagination and think in cosmological scales. I’d even go so far as to say it’s inspiring, because all the vast cycles of rise and fall imply many untold stories within them. Highly recommended to fans of science-fiction.

by on

New Dawn is a military sci-fi thriller. The premise is that a dystopian Earth sent the titular colony ship to Mars, crewed by dissident and free-thinking scientists and explorers, who rebelled against the authoritarian Earth governments. The ship disappeared, and it was assumed that all the crew had been lost.

Many years later, New Dawn reappears in the sky above Earth, with a mysterious crew and sending ominous messages demanding Earth submit to their demands or face an invasion.

The Earth nations quickly scramble to fight back against this foe, including rounding up a team of their best engineers and scientists to go aboard. They are some of Earth’s most brilliant minds—and, as it happens, some of them have crossed paths before, and not in pleasant ways. This leads to tension between people like the brilliant engineer and his bitter ex-lover, as well as the young graduate student who would very much like to become his current lover.

There’s plenty of emotional turmoil among Earth’s military personnel as well. We have the daring Italian pilot who flies for NATO and the young Russian who fights alongside him. These two were probably my favorite characters in the book.

And then there’s the sinister NATO intelligence officer who oversees the whole operation. A classic manipulative bureaucrat, using blackmail and coercion to get others to play into his hands.

It’s an interesting concept, and the characters have potential. Unfortunately, a number of things didn’t work for me. The dialogue is quite stilted, and much of the prose seemed choppy and repetitive. Also, a number of key plot points were telegraphed early on.

Also, early on in the book, a traumatic event happens to one of the characters. It’s mentioned briefly, and then people carry on as if nothing happened. Then it comes up again much later in the story, as part of a plot twist (although this is one of those things that I could see coming), but then it’s dropped again, and it really shouldn’t be. Because it calls into question the whole modus operandi of what is being presented as a largely sympathetic faction, but it’s just hand-waved away in a couple pages. I wish could be more specific, but I don’t want to spoil it.

The book feels very much like the later Tom Clancy books: many of the plot beats are predictable because it’s quite clear who is supposed to win. Also, like Clancy, the book does get politically heavy-handed towards the end. I’m not against political messaging in books, and I try not to let whether or not I agree with an author’s views color my opinion of a book.

But what does color my opinion of a book is whether the political commentary is handled deftly or not. I mean, what is the point of putting your story in a futuristic sci-fi setting if you are just going to have exactly the same political dynamics as present-day Earth? To me, the advantage of a different setting is to be able to create allegories and analogues to political issues, to allow discussion of topics that otherwise would be too charged to raise.

In summary, I think New Dawn is an interesting concept, but the execution was so-so. But I will say this much: I kept reading it, because I wanted to know what would happen next. And to me, that’s the ultimate test of a story.