Review: Dark Eden

I wanted to like Dark Eden and I did initially. The repetition didn't put me off at first and then it became monotonous and then expected: good good, bad bad, and so on. Borrowing from George R. R. Martin and other authors who decide to tell their story through various characters by choosing to tell the story from a single point of view and picking up where the previous character left off is getting a bit dated, but did move the story forward, albeit from an often oppositional point of view.

What I found most interesting was the narrative that one man and one woman decided to populate a planet they had chosen to remain on by themselves and the only birth defects were hare lips (bat-faced) and clubfoot (clawfoot) deformities after generations over 163 years of breeding indiscriminately and frequently. The Family must stay together, which is the central theme challenged by one newhair (teenager 15 years old at the beginning of the story) who has deliberately killed a leopard instead of climbing a tree to get out of the leopard's way. John Redlantern is first lauded and awarded one day free of community chores and then hunted as his unorthodox behavior continues and is viewed as disruptive until he is finally hunted by a batfaced older Redlantern who has been denied slipping with any attractive female, especially the female he most desires, a Spiketree female who publicly and often spurns him for Juicy John Redlantern, a handsome newhair who is also the slipping (sexual) favorite of the Redlantern branch of the Family. For a group/branch leader such behavior is frowned upon because she was his surrogate mother, though not John's biological mother, and he was consider too young for slipping (sexual intercourse).

The evolution of Earth speak is charming, if confusing at times: veekle for vehicle, Secret Ree for secretary, and so forth. (I still cannot parse Strornry and any enlightenment is most welcome.)

Eden is dark except for the plant and animal adaptations of producing their own light and heat on this dark and nearly completely undisturbed and unexplored planet and all long for the Earth they have been told about but never seen with its brilliant light from above as bright as a Whitelantern tree's interior. The Family members, the generations of Angela and Tommy's progeny, a black woman and a white man, have stayed where the Landing vehicle (veekle) arrived and took off from with the three men, two fugitives and one policeman sent from Earth to bring them back after they stole the galactic cruiser, Defiant, to go joy riding because one of the thieves was listening to Jesus instructing him to take the Defiant and fly off into the vastness of space to explore and find new worlds, according to the story handed down by the Oldest (blind and infirm oldest of the Family) every Any Virsiry (anniversary) 365 wakings (days) from the previous annual recitation and re-enactment of Tommy and Angela's story.

That generations of Tommy and Angela's offspring have remained in the same vicinity for nearly 200 years is as surprising as it taking that long for some curious youth to ask questions and demand answers as to why they have to stay in that exact spot while the resources dwindle and the Family go hungry when there must be more places to explore and settle down. It is not mentioned, but their continued inbreeding from the same shallow genetic pool would continue breeding the same defects, clubbed feet and hair lips, often with continued and increasing defects until they breed themselves out of existence.

It is unfortunate that it took Chris Beckett 2/3 of the narrative to get to the point and then raced through the last 1/3 of the book to wrap it all up with the ending I suspected at the beginning. That was a bit of a let down in the end, though there is room enough for more, vastly more. An interesting book with too many repetitions and far too little development after seemingly endless insight into John Redlantern's motives and actions. Beckett raced through what should have been the focus of the story instead of the rushed ending. 3/5 stars is the best I can give. Moderate execution of a treasure trove of possibilities. Better luck next time, Chris.

Review: Forsaken Skies by D. Nolan Clark

Forget what you know about science fiction writing. Do not expect the usual tropes. What hides within the pages of Forsaken Skies is not what you have come to expect of science fiction stories. D. Nolan Clark gives you an exciting chase at the beginning and then drops you onto a poly space station servicing the usual travelers, freight, and soldiers on their way to wars or stopping on their way from a war. That is where the story stalls and where I almost gave up on Clark's tale.

The chase was exciting -- a battle hardened pilot chasing down a kid fleeing from a murder in an expensive racing yacht nearly colliding with an automated container ship hauling . . . passengers? From that point the story gets weirder and boring. What could I expect from the commander of a space station who never gets out of his space suit or lowers his helmet? Or an elder from a breakaway group and her aspirant coming to meet a con man intending to fleece them of four years of improvements for their desolate planet? Or a marine who used to be a pilot afraid to fly? Or even an ace turned con man to pay off his debts? Forget about the rich kid in the pricey yacht or the 300-year-old pilot turned rich man's bodyguard and his ex-second in command who redirects a wing of Navy planes for a fool's errand. You won't get the real story unless you can get through the sketchy details about characters who seem to be cut from substandard literary cloth. Clark has buried the lead so far down the wormhole it will take determination and curiosity greater than Pandora's to get to the whole point of Forsaken Skies so why bother?

I bothered because not because I enjoy the minute details of hard science fiction, but because I wanted to give Clark a chance to show me something worth my time.

And he did.

It took two-thirds of the book to get to it. It was almost worth plodding through the dross to find the Arkenstone of Clark's series.

Forsaken Skies earned 4/5 stars for taking so long to get to the meat. The other four stars are because the meat was worth the trek as the characters earn their salt in their corporate monopoly (hence poly) control by reducing humanity to the bottom line of a balance sheet. Even heroism counts only if it is profitable. An old campaigner like Aleister Lanoe had to fight for a cause he finally believed in by riding to the rescue of an impoverished elder of a barren planet nearly killed by a wealthy kid fleeing the murder of his father in Daddy's private racing yacht.

D. Nolan Clark may start a trend with his storytelling. All told, Forsaken Skies was worth digging to the heart of the mountain for the payoff. In the end, I liked Lanoe's worthy cause. At least it didn't take me 300 years to share it with Lanoe.

White Cat Solar System

Bleary-eyed, I sat on the commode looking out the bathroom window. There was once a screen in the window but the landlord removed it four years ago when I toilet had to be replaced. The screen sits on the porch repelling mosquitoes, moths, and insects, ground-based and with wings, from a spot on the corner near the old gas, electric, and water meters and I have a clear view into the parking lot that encompasses two-thirds of my cottage.

Into this predawn world strolled a white cat and I perked up immediately as I always do when an animal is nearby. I patted the window sill and called to her (it must have been a female with her aloof and silent manner). She cocked her head at me and took a couple of tentative steps. I called again, "Here, kitty, kitty," and patted the window sill. She looked serenely about her and gracefully padded closer, stopping every few steps to glance about and take the lay of the land.

As she came closer, her left eye glowed a brilliant amber and I held my breath. She was lovely with white fur so perfect and clean. I wanted to hold her on my lap and hear her purr as I stroked and caressed her. She moved closer and the gold of her left eye was nearly eclipsed by the brilliance of her right eye, which seemed at a distance to be blue, the purest crystal blue of a South Pacific island lagoon. She moved closer, each step a lithe dance of springtime and youth and slender trees swaying in a soft breeze. Yes, the right eye was blue, but the left eye was like ancient amber, brilliant warm gold.

She came to the edge of the planter box on the side of the house beneath the bathroom window and no further, pausing with tilted head and artful glance before strolling off along the planter to disappear around the corner of the cottage.

At that moment when I saw this glorious little white cat, I smiled and have smiled randomly throughout the day as summer made its presence known. Her cool glance is all the respite I shall have today since the clouds that have come and gone for the past two months have gone, leaving behind gossamer cirrus clouds wafting along in the Colorado blue sky.

I retreated to my bedroom where I cross stitched while watching and listening to travels among the planets to the farthest reaches of the solar system. The marvels above are as beautiful and distant as the white cat this morning and provoke as many smiles as sighs.

To see the pitted iron ball of Mercury molten in the face of the sun and frozen when it turns away its face is stirring. Venus with its corrosive clouds of acids and volcanic landscape is as mysterious as Mars and its red face and volcanoes towering above  even the most devastating sand storm. Jupiter's red spot tantalizes as it swirls around the planet, a storm that would engulf the Earth, but the moons are spectacular and strange. Io's geysers and volcanic eruptions change the landscape every day while Europa sleeps beneath a watery ice covering that hides the possibility of life. Ganymede generates it's own magnetic field and Callisto sleeps in ancient dream beneath a pitted surface of meteor strikes and sleeping volcanoes that may never rouse again.

Saturn's rings are the remains of dozens of moons while the rest dodge collisions among the numerous rings of ice and rock shepherded by smaller moons. Among the rings of Uranus the moons have an easier go and with the incomplete rings standing above the planet. Miranda may have been smashed and reformed like a jigsaw puzzle, but the moons of Ariel, Umbriel, and Oberon keep company with the shepherd moons of Cordelia and Ophelia that keep a swarm of eight smaller moons from crashing into or increasing the size of Uranus's ten rings.

Neptune, watery Neptune, far from the sun and more beautiful that the sea. Neptune has waked from its icy sleep long enough to capture Triton, a moon so cold it freezes a thought before it's born, but Triton still has its way since it circles Neptune retrograde, moving closer and closer as gravity pulls it in for a final kiss that in billions of years will spin Triton's remains into another ring of debris and ice. Nereid, Proteus, and the remaining moons keep close to Neptune's side, mere shadows in orbit.

Beyond where Neptune holds sway as the guardian of the inner planets lurks Pluto, once a planet and now deemed lesser than its companions in spite of capturing its own move with the force of its embrace. Charon circles Pluto in a close dance, but not until Voyager went by was it possible to see that this downgraded planet has four more chaperons in its journey through the universe: Nix, Styx, Hydra, and Kerberos.

As much as we see and think we know, there is always more to learn, more to see, more to experience. Satellites and orbiting satellites show us so much of our neighbors and the vastness of the universe, but how can ignore the yearning to see with our own eyes the wonders before and around us?

Like the white cat with her mesmerizing eyes of blue and green I enticed closer this morning, I long to push out among the stars and planets and moons and touch the face of the Universe. I may not hold it on my lap or caress it while it purrs, but I can get close enough to see the bright spots of possibility among the black void in between.

NOTE:  The photo is called White cat on a cushion is by Rebecca Korpita