A blast from the past, picked up because I was intrigued by the "SPOILER ALERT" title, and the whole central concept: during a war which is going very badly for humankind, against an adversary so very alien that no one is even very sure how they provoked it, three space ships are limping home to Earth, staffed by officers and crew wounded so badly that they technically died and have been reanimated as quasi-cyborgs. And just as these walking wounded are in a position to take themselves off to relative safety, they realize that they are the only thing that stands between those implacable aliens and Breakaway Station, the last surviving link between Earth and its colonies. No surprises, then: this is not going to end well ...
Whew!! Good stuff, eh? Well, yes -- it would have been, perhaps, in the hands of an Iain M. Banks, a Joe Haldeman, an Ann Leckie, a James S.A. Corey -- someone who would have nailed the existentialist horror of men and women awakened from their own deaths to find that they were little more than robots -- albeit robots who were still suffering agonies from their phantom limbs and terrible burns, but were denied painkillers because it might lessen their alertness. An author who could, perhaps, have managed to convey the desperate fear of living with their memories, and coping with their current plight, without resorting, every third paragraph or so, to repeating "S/he was very, very afraid." Someone, dare I say it, with more of a lighter touch, who could have seen the absurdity of a crew of Robbie the Robots, clanking metal contraptions and featureless plastic-egg faces, wheeling around the bridge on juddering caterpillar treads ... I would pay good money to see what China Mieville would have done with this ...
But ... it could have been worse. It was a page-turner, although (short as it is), by the end, I wanted him to forget the parts with random Plucky Individuals facing the alien Jillies on other earth bases, and just get on with it Based on a couple of the other reviews I skimmed, I was bracing myself for seriously Neanderthal attitudes to the female characters and, yes, Meredith did seem to honestly believe that, in the face of the utter genocide of the human race, the only thing a red-blooded girl (note: NOT "woman," never woman) would be interested in would be getting her guy's ring on her finger, and offering him a last chance to bump uglies, as hoardes of Jillies were boarding through the airlocks, or the neutron bombs were falling around them. Sheesh.
Yes, the humans call the aliens "Jillies." Just ponder THAT for a moment. Alien creatures, with a completely different anatomy, who seem to be able to communicate among themselves telepathically, but unintelligibly to normal, red-blooded Humans. Whose intentions and motivations are a complete mystery ... Sheesh.
But I enjoyed it, and I would definitely recommend it as a historical oddity. An interesting stop on the SF road that would eventually lead to Iain M. Banks, Joe Haldeman, Ann Leckie, James S.A. Corey and even China Mieville -- to his credit, Meredith clearly understood that space opera could tell an important, moving story about human resilience and sacrifice, and if he was still stuck in the attitudes of his time, that doesn't entirely diminish it as a worthy effort.
Whew!! Good stuff, eh? Well, yes -- it would have been, perhaps, in the hands of an Iain M. Banks, a Joe Haldeman, an Ann Leckie, a James S.A. Corey -- someone who would have nailed the existentialist horror of men and women awakened from their own deaths to find that they were little more than robots -- albeit robots who were still suffering agonies from their phantom limbs and terrible burns, but were denied painkillers because it might lessen their alertness. An author who could, perhaps, have managed to convey the desperate fear of living with their memories, and coping with their current plight, without resorting, every third paragraph or so, to repeating "S/he was very, very afraid." Someone, dare I say it, with more of a lighter touch, who could have seen the absurdity of a crew of Robbie the Robots, clanking metal contraptions and featureless plastic-egg faces, wheeling around the bridge on juddering caterpillar treads ... I would pay good money to see what China Mieville would have done with this ...
But ... it could have been worse. It was a page-turner, although (short as it is), by the end, I wanted him to forget the parts with random Plucky Individuals facing the alien Jillies on other earth bases, and just get on with it Based on a couple of the other reviews I skimmed, I was bracing myself for seriously Neanderthal attitudes to the female characters and, yes, Meredith did seem to honestly believe that, in the face of the utter genocide of the human race, the only thing a red-blooded girl (note: NOT "woman," never woman) would be interested in would be getting her guy's ring on her finger, and offering him a last chance to bump uglies, as hoardes of Jillies were boarding through the airlocks, or the neutron bombs were falling around them. Sheesh.
Yes, the humans call the aliens "Jillies." Just ponder THAT for a moment. Alien creatures, with a completely different anatomy, who seem to be able to communicate among themselves telepathically, but unintelligibly to normal, red-blooded Humans. Whose intentions and motivations are a complete mystery ... Sheesh.
But I enjoyed it, and I would definitely recommend it as a historical oddity. An interesting stop on the SF road that would eventually lead to Iain M. Banks, Joe Haldeman, Ann Leckie, James S.A. Corey and even China Mieville -- to his credit, Meredith clearly understood that space opera could tell an important, moving story about human resilience and sacrifice, and if he was still stuck in the attitudes of his time, that doesn't entirely diminish it as a worthy effort.
