Probably my favourite book, of my favourite genre, hard science fiction.
What I really love about this book, is the number of subplots it has, including the famous rescue mission of the coffee maker.
I really enjoy the slow pace at which this book is written, lasting five or six chapters to show the main plot. Before that, the author tells us the situation of his universe just when the action has already finished. It does explain the stories of two not so important characters although the first encounter which the protagonist, Lord Rod Blaine, has to face against his bosses in the navy.
I want to put special emphasis on the protagonist, he is not the usual hero. I see them very real in the sense that this kind of protagonist would occur in real life, hard science fiction.
The first time I read the book, I didn’t give too much importance, I thought it was a quite normal protagonist.
This second time I saw that he is a poor miserable man, he always messes up in all his missions, he’s not a good professional. Starting at the first one in New Chicago, where he does a risky move and, according to his superior, he interposes his own interests, ore royal interests, before to the navy. If he was another person, he would have already been fired.
Clearly is due his “Lord” title. He has a lot of lucky situations, for example, the real captain has to give the ship away. He was intended to have the ship for a few months, but, he encounters the probe and has to lead the expedition to the Mote.
He does an appalling job filling his ship with strange alien creatures and he casually forgets to tell to the Lenin, violating a direct order. Losing the best navy’s starship due his fault. When they return, besides that, they treat them as a hero. "Everybody can lose a ship in hell", like nothing happened. The captain of the Lenin was a better professional, in the same situation, he made exceptions and errors, but he did a better job than Rod, the protagonist.
Another subplot is the story around the Lenin’s captain, everybody treat him like a devil for destroying an entire planet. But he could destroy McArthur ship to ensure the future of the humanity and he didn’t, he was reluctant to destroy it at the end, while Rod surely wanted to destroy it. So the bad guy was not so bad after all, and the protagonist could be far worst in the Lenin’s captain skin.
Returning to Lord Blaine, he basically saves himself for being part of the royal family, even Sally marries him for that reason. This character is like the politicians, no matter how much they screw up, his bosses end up saving his ass.
His counterpart is Renner. He, being a nobody, keeps escalating positions and doing perfectly, all the dirty jobs. In fact, he saves humanity. It is him who managed to ensure that Rod and Sally ended up together. Rod is a little bit useless, but it is the Lord who has all the medals around his neck.
Jerry Prounelle, the coauthor of the book, worked with something related to military technology, he is an expert on it. I had never read a book which treated these kinds of details so well.
I think that it is a good decision to send an expedition of scientific/mediatos while in the back, they had an entirely navy military ship, allowed to destroy the first ship if the aliens discover too much about human technology.
If this kind of situation occurs in real life, with all the corruption and ineptitude, it would be impossible to make a cork in the Mote’s world.
The aliens would end up conquering our worlds and exterminating us.
Or, what I consider more plausible seeing the history of humanity…
Eventually we would end up exterminating the Mote race.
No comments:
Post a Comment