A PLANET OF WRATH AND TEARS

An American astronaut returns from deep space to find Earth a post-apocalyptic ruin in Alexander’s SF novel.

The author continues the fraught adventures of futuristic hero Leif Grettison, begun in Starman’s Saga (2019). Leif is a regret-filled soldier-spacefarer centuries hence, repeatedly ensconced in the midst of pivotal world events in spite of himself. In this installment, Leif has arrived back in North America from deep-space missions to humanity’s few, faraway interstellar colonies. In his absence (telescoped hundreds of years by Einsteinian relativity), the superpower nations of Earth launched an apocalyptic war, killing billions and ratcheting society back to a feudal structure (due to weaponized malware viruses, computer technology is permanently offline). As a rare, practically mythical returning “Starman” astronaut, Leif’s presence (and his two-fisted sense of fairness and justice) catalyzes a rebellion against the bandit-warlords and despots of what was once the United States of America. Belatedly, Leif is informed of an electrifying development: At a minimally functioning spaceport, Earthbase, on the barren Great Plains west of the Mississippi, an extraterrestrial radio signal has been received. Driven by hopes of some breakthrough for humankind at the species’ lowest moment, Leif and a small band of followers set out to investigate. But Earthbase is populated by a degraded, moribund bunch of retired astronauts and squabbling factions raising cattle in disused spacecraft hangars. Leif’s arrival and eagerness to take action, naturally, shakes things up. The author’s sure hand with storytelling, SF tropes, and whip-crack plot twists keeps the momentum moving forward, and regular followers of the “Leif the Lucky” series (an ironic tag if there ever was one) should know the story has less repetition than readers might expect as the bitter, battle-hardened protagonist goes from one dysfunctional setup to another. The resolution of the “first contact” scenario, one of the oldest warhorses in SF, is a bit perfunctory but still satisfying, and of a piece with the series’ overarching cynicism—as Leif laments, “Goddamn war, and warriors, and me along with all of it.”

A solid, even surprising, middle chapter in a quasi-military SF saga of consistent fatalism.