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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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