Skip to main content

Star Binder (SF) - Robert Appleton ****

This is what I'd call a good old fashioned science fiction book - and it's none the worse for it. Star Binder follows a long tradition in what used to be called juvenile SF and now young adult books, which have teenage protagonists but that are enjoyably readable by adults - a tradition that ranges from James Blish's 1962 A Life for the Stars to Brandon Sanderson's modern Skyward series. These in themselves fit into a wider grouping of books where youngsters succeed where adults can't - think of anything from Harry Potter to the Famous Five.

The main character, Jim Trillion, is a thirteen-year-old, fending mostly for himself with his friend Sergei on a rough and ready colonised Mars. As a result of a brave action, his is recruited into a secret training programme that feels militaristic, but at the same time clearly isn't. So far, so average - and if this were all there was, with a few good action scenes, I'd feel it was a bit meh. But what Robert Appleton does very cleverly is to bring in a couple mysteries where we don't initially understand what is happening - these really pull the reader in, and are handled very well.

Jim and Sergei's initial adventures kept me reading, but when things get mysterious, the narrative moves up several notches, taking us away from the confines of Mars to find we're dealing with something far bigger in scope. I was also really pleased that this doesn't appear to be part of a huge series - at the moment few other than luminaries such as Adam Roberts seem capable of writing standalone science fiction (or fantasy) novels - they all have to be part of an immense plan for future books. Admittedly, the world building here allows for things to go a lot further, but this book works entirely as a standalone.

I have seen a one star Amazon review by someone who thinks this is cultural Marxism (whatever that is) - this entirely misses the point. Jim's friend Sergei has Belarussian roots (just as Jim has British roots) - and Sergei does go on about the 'Soviet way' - but the underlying ethos of the book seems to be about going beyond the ties that bind. Admittedly the way the teenagers in the training establishment are allowed to form factions that are not prevented from attacking each other seems a highly ineffective way to train people (even if it's not much different to the approach of some old public schools), but I wouldn't say there was much Marxism going on here.

It's not perfect. The final mysterious situation is so complex that it's quite hard to get your head around - and Appleton resorts to a bit of 'get out of jail free' plotting. Even so, there's some genuinely interesting and original thinking here, which is why I think it fits so well in a timeline stretching forward from Blish's equally intriguing ideas.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin Five Way Interview

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (born in 1999) is a distinguished composer, concert pianist, music theorist and researcher. Three of his piano CDs have been released in Germany. He started his undergraduate degree at the age of 13 in Kazakhstan, and having completed three musical doctorates in prominent Italian music institutions at the age of 20, he has mastered advanced composition techniques. In 2024 he completed a PhD in music at the University of St Andrews / Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (researching timbre-texture co-ordinate in avant- garde music), and was awarded The Silver Medal of The Worshipful Company of Musicians, London. He has held visiting affiliations at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL, and has been lecturing and giving talks internationally since the age of 13. His latest book is Quantum Mechanics and Avant Garde Music . What links quantum physics and avant-garde music? The entire book is devoted to this question. To put it briefly, there are many different link...
Post a Comment
Read more

Should we question science?

I was surprised recently by something Simon Singh put on X about Sabine Hossenfelder. I have huge admiration for Simon, but I also have a lot of respect for Sabine. She has written two excellent books and has been helpful to me with a number of physics queries - she also had a really interesting blog, and has now become particularly successful with her science videos. This is where I'm afraid she lost me as audience, as I find video a very unsatisfactory medium to take in information - but I know it has mass appeal. This meant I was concerned by Simon's tweet (or whatever we are supposed to call posts on X) saying 'The Problem With Sabine Hossenfelder: if you are a fan of SH... then this is worth watching.' He was referencing a video from 'Professor Dave Explains' - I'm not familiar with Professor Dave (aka Dave Farina, who apparently isn't a professor, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate for someone calling out fakes), but his videos are popular and he...
Post a Comment
Read more

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on...
Post a Comment
Read more