The Wrong Stars (SF) - Tim Pratt ***

This solid space opera is sold as as being 'ridiculously fun' and 'fun, funny...' - so I was expecting something rather Douglas Adams-like - but it's certainly no comedy in space. The characters certainly attempt banter, but to be honest it's not very good (Tim Pratt should take a look at something like Ben Aaronvitch's Rivers of London series for banter lessons.) However, if you take the book on as a straightforward tale of slightly dodgy space traders (who are also sort-of law enforcers) and strange aliens, it's significantly more successful.

At risk of damning the book with faint praise, I mildly enjoyed it, but certainly won't be rushing back to read the sequels (almost inevitably for a modern SF book, this is 'Book One of the Axiom'). The characters are a touch stereotyped and don't really develop. The plot is sort of interesting - a survivor of an ancient sub-light long range vessel returns to the Solar System thanks to an unknown drive. Said survivor has encountered aliens, which everyone assumes (despite fairly strong evidence to the contrary) are the only alien species so far encountered, known as Liars because they... (you guessed it). Only it's more complicated than that.

The scales get pushed out of balance when a habitat with 50,000 inhabitants is destroyed and our heroes take on the strange aliens despite impossible odds.

There's certainly quite a lot going on here. And if you like straightforward space opera, The Wrong Stars may well appeal. But it didn't rank high on my list, I'm afraid.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

Search This Blog