1993;
531 pages. Book One (out of four) in the
“Harvest of Stars” series. New Author? : No. Genre : Science-Fiction; Dystopia; Speculative
Fiction. Overall Rating : 7*/10.
A few centuries from now, Earth is a quite
different place. Canada, Mexico, and the
USA are no more; they’ve all be conglomerated into one totalitarian entity,
ruled by the Avantists, a decidedly leftist-leaning group.
Rebellion
isn’t exactly boiling over, but it simmers in places; one of which, surprisingly, is the
mega-corporation called Fireball Enterprises.
Its CEO is a download (more about those later) named Anson Guthrie.,
and it’s just a matter of time before the Security Police (“Sepo”) arrest him on
some trumped-up charge.
But
Guthrie’s in hiding in North America, and ace spaceship-pilot Kyra Davis has
been dispatched to smuggle him out of there.
That is no small task since Orwellian technology exists and it has to be assumed that the Sepo can see
and hear just about anything they want to within the Avantist realm. We hope Kyra succeeds, but the question
arises: Where on Earth will Guthrie be safe?
Well, let’s think outside the box, er… sphere. How about the Moon?
What’s To Like...
Harvest of Stars
is divided into three discrete sections. Part 1 (“Kyra”) is the longest (40% of the book), and is mostly a dystopian thriller. Part 2 (“Eiko”; 30% of the book) focuses more about
political intrigue, and Part 3 (“Demeter”; 30% of the book) is where speculative Science
Fiction finally kicks into gear.
There’s
a Dramatis Personae list at the very
beginning, which I found very useful.
Not a lot of time is devoted to the backstories of the
characters, but both minor and major ones receive names, and often pop up again hundreds of page later. So it is nice to be able to flip to the start of the
book whenever someone reappears, and get refreshed about who they are. There
are some flashbacks, but the author signals this by inserting the word “Database” into the chapter’s header. I thought this was an innovative way to avoid confusion.
The settings are somewhat limited for the first two sections: Earth, the
Moon (“Luna”), and an orbiting space colony called “L-5”. The settings in the
Demeter section are much more interesting: three planets circling a binary set of suns in the faraway
Alpha Centauri cosmos.
The story takes place far enough in the future to where a separate race, the
Lunarians, has evolved on the moon. The
newly-evolved Metamorphs on Earth were also neat to meet. Poul Anderson mixes in some Arabic and French
vocabulary, and a slew of Spanish expressions.
In this future world, we’re all polyglots.
There’s only a smidgen of cussing, and even a couple of
new euphemisms: “MacCannon” and “flinking”. I liked those.
The
thing I enjoyed the most about Harvest Of
Stars were the “downloads”. By the
time of the storyline, technology allows you to “clone your brain” into a
mechanical body. Indeed, you can make
multiple copies of your mental/psychological self. This adds a certain amount of mayhem to the
plot, and also gives some innovative new options for coping with the
dilemma of intergalactic voyages, and of course, immortality.
Harvest Of Stars is a standalone book,
as well as part of a series. I found
the ending to be superb; it'll leave a lump in your throat.
Kewlest New Word ...
Halidom (n.)
: something regarded as sacred; a holy relic.
Others : Agley (adj.); Gyrocephalic (adj.); Pollulated (v.); Contumacious (adj.); Fleered (v.); Knaggy (adj.); Asymptote (n.); Apotheosis (n.); Quivira (n.).
Excerpts...
“Sing a song of
spacefolk, a pocketful of stars.
Play it on the
trumpets, harmonicas, guitars.
When the sky was
opened, mankind began to sing:
‘Now’s the time
to leave the nest, the wind is on the wing!’” (pg. 343)
”Eiko, it’s such
a forlornly long shot.”
“Does that mean
it is ridiculous?” the other replied.
Her gaze went into the swaying, whispering, light-unrestful green. “Some fantasies came to me while I sat, often
and often, high in the Tree. Fancies
about evolution. It has no purpose, the
biologists tell us, no destiny; it simply happens, as blindly and wonderfully
as rainbows. Nevertheless the scum on
ancient seas becomes cherry blossoms, tigers, children who see the rainbow and
marvel.” (pg. 389)
“Word would leak out like …
like electrons quantum-tunneling through any potential barrier I can raise.” (pg. 22)
For
me, the whole first section of Harvest Of Stars
was a slog. This was probably
because I read Poul Anderson books for Science Fiction adventures, and
frankly, there isn’t any to be found for quite a while in this book.
Yes, our heroes are running from the Big Brother types, but I never got
the sense that they were about to be caught.
We
at last get up into space in the second section, but it’s still kind of a slow
go. Things aren’t helped by Anderson
seeming to want to tell you all about his libertarian viewpoints and why leftists
are such meanies. Plus, he never seems to use one word, when a dozen will serve just as well.
But if you can trudge through all the politics and tediousness, you arrive
at section 3, and that, quite frankly, is a masterpiece, and
demonstrates why Poul Anderson is considered a top-tier sci-fi writers of all time.
We’ll
rate section 1 at 5½ stars, section 2 at 6½ stars, and section 3 a whopping 9 stars, just to make the math come out even.
Averaging them out comes to:
7 Stars. And
BTW, the concept of downloading one’s self was extremely timely, as I am also currently reading a non-fiction book about Philosophy. The author, Peter Cave, gives a number of
situational conundrums, including the fascinating one: “what if you could clone yourself?” (*)
As
any good philosopher would, Cave asks all sorts of muse-worthy questions,
such as which one is the “real you”?
Further, if you were to kill your clone (or if the clone kills you),
would we call it murder? Suicide? Or was no crime at all committed? Food for thought.
(*) : actually, Cave speculates about what would happen to "you" if the two lobes of your brain were put into separate bodies. But it works out to be the same as being cloned.
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