Skip to main content

Galllowglass (SF) - S. J. Morden ****

All fiction has to take liberties with the realities of space travel, but some handle it better than others, and S. J. Morden has gone further than anyone else I can remember in pinning down the detail to make this space-based thriller feel particularly gritty and realistic. The storyline has two key themes: the runaway and asteroid mining. The central character Jaap (Jack) Van der Veerden is an ultra-privileged young man who is determined to escape the clutches of his controlling parents, who through pretty much limitless expenditure intend to live forever, meaning he can apparently never escape their clutches and financial control.

He gets away with the SF equivalent of running away to join the circus - running away to space. Luckily, although he has no practical experience, he does have the theoretical knowledge to be an astrogator and gets a position on a dodgy expedition to retrieve a mineral-rich asteroid. I find it impossible to believe that Morden wasn't inspired by the Robert Heinlein's juvenile classic Starman Jones, where the central character, Max Jones, runs away  to space to escape his difficult family and, despite not being qualified, ends up as an astrogator who saves the day. Here, despite only having the theory, Jack is also the one to mean the difference between life and death.

Morden manages an excellent balance between the nitty-gritty detail of staying alive in the harsh conditions of space, while trying to get a partly rubble asteroid moving, with enjoyable tension and action. Usually, there's a danger that a book that goes into some of the technical detail of space travel will lack narrative drive, but this remains a real page turner. And there's a huge third act twist that makes Jack's life even more complicated and brings in a massive problem that may be insuperable.

All this is very well done, and deserves five stars, but there was a third element that was grafted on, which hadn't got the opportunity to work with the plot and just feels very artificially placed. The storyline is set against an Earth in 2069 facing the drastic impact of uncontrolled climate change. That in itself is not a problem, although it plays hardly any role in the plot, other than a reason for some irrational behaviour by one character. But every chapter begins with a lengthy climate change quote, initially from deniers then giving the scientific viewpoint. It feels as if the author cares about climate change and shoehorned it into a story that had very little to do with it. I care about climate change too - but I wouldn't bring it into a piece I was writing about quantum physics, say.

In the end, this is a minor irritation, but one that is sustained throughout the book by the chapter openers. However, that didn't stop me really enjoying the actual storyline and the expertise with which Morden handles it - noticeably better than his already promising previous novel One Way. I'll certainly be back for more of his writing.

Paperback:

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune )   underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more