Review: In the Belly of the Whale

In the Belly of the Whale by Michael Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. This was closer to 4.5 stars, but not enough to push it to 5.

The book tells the story of a generation starship on its way to a far flung star with the purpose of expanding human habitation. The ship is home to roughly 40000 humans largely consisting of people taken from Asian and UK/European cultures. The ship has completed less than a millennia's worth of travel with more than a millennia to go. The crew are all great, great, great....great grandchildren of the first generation that launched from the Earth.

Roughly 80 years prior to the current story, the ship experienced a catastrophe where a section of the ship collapsed rendering that section theoretically uninhabitable. "Theoretically" as there are people who live there. They don't live well, but they are free of the strictures and structures imposed on the crew.

Those legal and social constraints form the core of the conflict within the novel. There are two leadership classes. One is in charge of navigation of the ship. These elites are viewed as being mostly benign as they are prevented from having children and thus cannot form any sort of dynasty. Instead, they "adopt" the next generation of navigators from the crew based on aptitude.

The other leadership class runs the various systems needed to keep people alive; i.e. food, air, water, maintenance, security, etc. Those leaders have evolved a self-limiting social structure whereby their children frequently inherit positions of great power. They use the power of those positions to accrue great wealth and still greater power.

The rest of the crew finds this situation intolerable. A mutiny/revolution eventually unfolds.

That is the general plot of the book. The subtext comments on what it means to be elite, what it means to lead, and what sort of organizational principles are needed to ensure that power is not turned toward the support of private/personal interests at everyone else's expense. The author does a great job of keeping the subtext from subsuming the plot/text of the book and becoming a thinly veiled polemic.

There are two features of the book that limited my enjoyment. The first is the number of characters. The book begins with a listing of the cast/crew including formal and informal names. Perhaps my age may be getting in the way, but the number of characters and the number of names (formal/informal/nicknames/positional) for each character got in my way a few times. There wasn't enough differentiation between the characters/names.

The second feature is the author's choice to include disparate scenes within a single chapter with no visual demarcation between those scenes. The book will spend several paragraphs and/or pages following one set of characters. The following paragraph then jumps to a different group of characters and different location without any additional visual indication that the location has shifted. This sort of jump occurs several times within a single chapter. This storytelling technique was unusual, quirky, and periodically disconcerting. Perhaps it is a byproduct of reading an e-book rather than a physical book.

One very positive feature of the book is the author's ability to show a culture that exists hundreds of years after our own. There are many cultural facets that are obviously derived from our time. But it is equally obvious that time has changed those cultural touchstones. The result is that the reader experiences a bit of anticipation for the next moment when an echo of our modern society is revealed through the lens of a culture that exists hundreds of years in our future.

Another positive feature is that the author has carefully considered the technical demands of maintaining a starship and crew for thousands of years. What limits must be put in place to prevent over population? How can problems associated with inbreeding be avoided? What sort of weapons are going to be acceptable? How much security/surveillance will be tolerated?

Overall, this is a highly enjoyable book. Well worth the effort.

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Review: Cloud Castles by Dave Freer

Cloud-Castles by Dave Freer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review which is a reasonable estimate of my experience.

Cloud Castles was written by Dave Freer and it won the Prometheus Best Novel Award for 2023 that is presented by the Libertarian Futurist Society. The award is named for the mythic hero, Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mortals. Prometheus represents human effort and in particular the quest for scientific knowledge even while risking overreach and unintended consequences. The Prometheus Award is presented for works that illustrate either the positive benefits of individual liberty or the negative consequences of a larger society imposing restrictions on the individual.

The book follows our protagonist, Augustus Thistlewood, as he embarks on a personal mission to help the less fortunate citizens of the planet Sybill III. Augustus, later just "Gus", is a scion of the Thistlewood family. While focusing on an engineering degree, Gus wandered into a sociology class and decided to add to his courseload by taking sociology courses. From there, he was inspired to "help" the less fortunate by "uplifting" them. Gus hails from the Azure civilization of humanity.

Sybill III is a gas giant with a dense solid core surrounded by a gaseous environment. There is an elevation range with the right gas mixture to support humanoid life. There are clouds that are thicker than Earth clouds. There are plants that have evolved to live on/in those clouds and end up creating a sort of spongy surface where people can walk. Other lifeforms have also evolved to live on the spongy plant/cloud structures. There are some interesting features to this biome.

The only "city" is called Big Syd. It exists on a massive antigrav plate. The descendants of a crashed prison ship now live on a few square miles of the plate. The only effective "government" are the many street gangs that run their various territories.

The population is dominated by the warring remnants of two alien races; the Thrymi and the Zell. The Thrymi are quite aggressive and will take humans as slaves to work on their cloud castles (roll credits!). The Zell generally leave the humans alone unless they encounter them out on the plant/cloud platforms. The Zell then capture the humans, sterilize them, and drop them back on Big Syd regardless of where the Zell first encountered those humans.

The one stabilizing force is that an Azure admiral arrived with his fleet in the wake of the deaths of Azure citizens visiting Sybill III. He threatened everyone with death if another Azure citizen ended up dead. This limits the ability of the Bid Syd denizens to respond to Gus' arrival.

Gus received field training from a charitable organization known as the "Blue Men". He is ideologically motivated to help out those whom he believes are beneath his status. Gus is also a bit clueless. Upon landing on Big Syd, he promptly has his bag and watch stolen by Briz. Gus thinks that Briz is leading him to the one good hotel on Big Syd and follows along.

A few narrow alleys later and Briz ends up saving Gus from a predator (human variety). Gus has no idea that he had been a victim of theft (courtesy of Briz) and narrowly avoided being murdered (also courtesy of Briz).

This sets the tone for much of the book. Gus wanders around trying to "uplift" the locals. He is delightfully unaware that each of his endeavors almost uniformly ends up crushing a criminal enterprise without meaningfully "uplifting" anyone. The sole exception is when he teaches mathematics to a bunch of trafficked underage girls. Gus thought he was visiting a normal school for girls and wanted to "uplift" them. He taught them the skills needed to know that the brothel owner had been shorting their pay and responded accordingly.

None of the locals in Big Syd are interested in being "uplifted".

Knowing about the admiral's threats, the street gangs (and others) are hard-pressed for an easy solution to Gus' interference with their various rackets. Eventually, they find a way to give him to the Thrymi. This ends poorly for the Thrymi. Gus and Briz eventually free themselves and discover that there are people living on the cloud/plant platforms.

This new population has fewer resources but has much better societal relationships. They farm what they call "the outback".

Gus discovers a different way of dealing with these farmers. They value hard work and Gus is willing to work hard. Eventually, he applies his engineering knowledge to build things that improve the lives of the farmers. In return, they improve his life as well. The free-will commercial exchange of goods fosters positive growth in the local culture.

The story ends well for almost everyone. The Thrymi, the Zell, and the various gangs are set for a bit of a rude awakening. Gus, his old family, and his new friends find they have many mutually beneficial opportunities.

And Briz...gets a piece of the action, but not the piece one would expect based on the beginning of the book.

There are several elements that work well. Gus is generally clueless which leads to some amusing circumstances. Gus learns that the best "uplifting" is when it is done with people instead of "for them" or "to them". Briz has several moments of self-discovery. The biology of the flora and fauna living on the clouds is logical as is the impact of coming from a home world with slightly higher gravity. There weren't any logical breaks in the worldbuilding to undermine the suspension of disbelief.

One element that is less effective is the general observation about sociologists and other "do-gooders" who seem to have no practical knowledge about how the world actually works. The plot elements of that assertion are a little too "on the nose". For example, I took the "Blue Men" to be an aspect of our modern United Nations.

Another questionable element is the binary contrast between the city and the country. All of the Big Syd denizens are morally compromised. All those living in the outback are hearty, honest, and hard-working. The manufacturing giant Thistlewood family is also presented as being almost uniformly good. A bit more nuance in this book and it would be a solid 5-star effort.

Cloud Castles is a solid choice that illuminates the objectives of the Prometheus Award and the Libertarian Futurist Society. It illustrates the benefits of people participating voluntarily in mutually satisfying relationships. To a lesser extent, it illustrates the harm of letting small powerful groups control society.

There is a strong Australian flavor to the language and perspectives used in this book. Language aside, there are references to old Australian outlaws. Also, the city's name "Big Syd" is an obvious reference to Sydney, Australia.

This is a fun if not terribly difficult book.

Dave Freer's acceptance speech for the Prometheus Awards is presented in Part 1 and Part 2.

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Review: Summer's End

Summer's End by John Van Stry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3.5-star review. Every time I talked myself into rounding it up to 4 stars, I found another reason to make it 3 stars.

I picked up Summer's End because it is a finalist for this year's Prometheus Award given to works of fiction that explore or incorporate libertarian themes. Prometheus Award winners are almost always pretty good. This is a worthy finalist.

Our protagonist is Dave "Mongoose" Walker. A former gang-banger who was literally scared straight and made it through enough college to get a certificate as a 5th-class engineer. In the opening pages, his brother tells him trouble is coming Dave's way. His brother has acquired an engineering position for him on a tramp starship. Go now. Dave does.

The author does a great job of using Dave to bring us into a reality of interplanetary travel and settlement. Dave learns a bit about repairing/maintaining various parts of the ship. But we are spared the description of weeks of travel between destinations. This keeps the story/action moving and interesting.

Dave has all sorts of unusual challenges tossed his way. His biological mother's new-ish husband wants him dead for political reasons. Dave ends up being taken by pirates/buccaneers (there apparently is a useful difference). He just happens to have a skill that he can use to negotiate for his release.

This leads to one major criticism of the book. Coincidence. While every book has to have a specific set of narrative circumstances occur for the book to make sense, it begins to strain credulity when, later in the book, so many of Dave's issues are either caused by and/or resolved by people that were tangentially introduced earlier in the book. And in most cases, those people all know each other in some capacity or another independent of their relationship with Dave. The world is a small place, but it ain't that small. Also, there are more than a few occasions where a character that is of interest to Dave for one reason just happens to have the skill set needed to solve an unrelated problem that Dave is dealing with.

A second criticism is basic spelling, grammar, and wordsmithery. A common complaint that I hear about books published by Baen is that there isn't any clear indication of editorial input. The spelling and grammar errors were just enough to tip my inner editor. There were a few instances where I found the phrasing of a sentence or a paragraph needed to require required* re-reading a few times to determine what the author was intending to say. 

A third criticism is how the author treats a sizeable number of female characters. They are "hot". Hot as in "Hot babe sittin' beside me in my 'Cuda." At least one other review notes that female characters are "frustratingly" undeveloped. With the exception of Dave and one or maybe two other main characters, all of the other characters are undeveloped.

Take away (or diminish) two of those criticisms and this becomes a solid 4-star review (maybe 4.5) as the author does a very good job of incorporating a lot of real-world social structures and issues. He dials them up a bit and projects current trends to create a believable future where people are leaving Earth to avoid overregulation. He also points out that leaving Earth is not a panacea; some new polities develop some pretty horrendous beliefs and corporations really aren't to be trusted.

The slow burn in the book is about social structures and trust. Dave succeeds because he demonstrates himself to be worthy of trust primarily because his life has shown him that trust is the only real value a person has. Gangs, families, business partners, corporations, neighborhoods, cities, and societies all rely on high levels of trust if they are going to continue to exist.

The characters and plot were compelling enough to keep me reading all the way to the end. The conclusion was satisfying. I'd like to read more about all of these characters in the future and see if the author can develop them more fully.

*Read the text that was striked out.  Read the replacement.  Which one reads more clearly.  This book contained too many similar passages.  

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