Humanity does not play well with others in this untraditional and engrossing SF tale.
Archival fragments, testimonials, and ephemera tell the story of space-traveling humans discovering two alien races in dire straits and how the multiple species enter into bitter conflict while sharing Earth.
In this SF novel, Jacobson uses an epistolary style to describe—via ingredients in some kind of multimedia “virtual exhibit”—a fateful clash of Earth and alien cultures. In the mid-22nd century, after humanity attains technology to explore millions of galaxies, Earth explorers stumble across the Laffians, tall humanoids in need of a helping hand. They escaped the tectonic destruction of their home world to settle the only other planet they could find supporting life, which they dubbed Adalaffa. But Adalaffa is a globe completely covered in ocean, and the refugees have to unhappily adopt a floating subsistence existence off the ubiquitous (and carnivorous) seaweed. With superior star-mapping, Earth’s emissaries promise the Laffians a better planet—but only in exchange for the aliens meeting impossible harvest quotas of precious Adalaffian flora. The flora turns out to have restorative properties for Earth’s badly damaged biosphere. Ultimately, the Laffians figure out they are getting the raw end of the deal and rebel. This leads to the Laffians meeting (and becoming allies with) the HoFe, another species victimized by Homo sapiens. The HoFe are tree-dwelling feline creatures with a strong warrior heritage—and a doomed home planet for which time is running out. Can the three races possibly share an abundant Earth in peace, acceptance, and respect?
In a narrative woven from bits and pieces of correspondence, diaries, official reports, and even a sort of movie script excerpt, the plot is fragmentary and a bit sketchy in aspects—asking readers to swallow that the distressed, less advanced Laffians and HoFe could suddenly mount an effective Earth conquest (even granted that all of the planet seems ground under the high heel of one bitchy but strategically vulnerable corporate-monopoly CEO). That being a given, the two alien species, charitable and ethical despite their grievances, attempt a cooperative existence and try to blend together into an established society. But the author’s intriguing point of view is similar to that in the Walter Tevis classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. Humanity’s pathologies, such as religious extremism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, consumerism, and capitalism, turn out to be, as with H.G. Wells’ microbes, the subtle threats that undermine and daunt the interplanetary visitors, no matter their thoroughly benign intentions. Previous books by Jacobson took a strong LGBTQ+ orientation, and indeed here, as in Ursula Le Guin’s landmark The Left Hand of Darkness, the aliens are ambisexual, flipping from male to female as mating conditions dictate. While it’s not a prominent theme, a significant subplot deals with the first domestic coupling of a Laffian and a human (“It was our court case that made marriage between our species legal”). And, as with all things where humanity is concerned, complications ensue in this absorbing story.
Humanity does not play well with others in this untraditional and engrossing SF tale.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781604893632
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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