Perestroika and Prophecy

Nine Layers of Sky by Liz Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I kept this book from 2003 because it had a big impact on me; I remembered it had something to do with technology and environmentalism. I re-read it this week. One of those sci-fi prophecy books, evidently. It takes place in post-Gorbachev Russia and an alternate world (aliens, indigenes, or elves included), and the entire “real-world” emotions of a woman space scientist who’s cleaning for a living, and the despair and particularly the government sound just like America today. Putin is even mentioned as one of Russia’s Great Men at the time and I have to say he has achieved his revenge here in 2018, just 15 years on. Every tactic of propaganda and gaslighting, used in the recent/current American political scene—every tried and true tactic of totalitarianism is part of the background of the story...also how much women have to fight for respect and make do without it. It is kind of awkward and a the author writing nowadays probably wouldn't have written such sexist scenes--but it's Russia, paternalistic Russia. And as we've been made aware, not much has changed since the 1970s in many countries for many men and women in the real world. And not much in the way of politics has changed in all human history, either.
It’s a good book and offers up for hope dreams, change, science, and alternate worlds. For our dreams, we should look both to the past and the future. But please not the Russia or the America of today.
I recommend the book, especially as a re-read.


View all my reviews

The Chaplain's War by Brad R. Torgersen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brad R. Torgersen has taken some standard science fiction tropes (Earthlings under threat from insectoid aliens, young people signing up for war) and made them fresh through an unusual viewpoint—that of a military chaplain, or more accurately, a chaplain’s assistant—an accidental chaplain’s assistant, at that. Harrison Barlow is just a regular guy who likes to help people, and ends up assigned to the Chaplain’s Corps, even though he’s a nonbeliever who never had religious training of any kind. Faith and religion are often touched upon in fantasy, but not often in science fiction, and this insider/outsider perspective serves very well as Harry moves into adulthood surrounded by the questions of life and death, duty and fellowship, and humanity and personhood that accompany the folks at the front lines of armed conflict.

Never fear, there is no preaching here. The book is a novel full of action, not a philosophical treatise, so the reader is engaged by flashbacks to boot camp and enemy action and all the things that led to Harry’s current position as a man who brokers an alien peace.  As always, peace is threatened. Is it a miracle when governments act beyond self-interest for the good of all? Is the sum of the law and the prophets to help people? Can a non-believer inspire others to faith? If you are doing the works, is faith necessary? These are some of the questions never asked directly in the book, but certainly occurring throughout the action. I read a review by a humanist who was satisfied, and as a believer I am satisfied, with the answers and questions I took away from the novel—the hallmark of a great story, like a great teacher, that leads you to the door of your own understanding and lets you go.  Like David Drake’s Redliners, this is a book that goes beyond the standard military sci-fi.
Highly recommended.
(I received an egalley from Baen  and Netgalley for review.)


View all my reviews

New Year. Old Friends

How the Ancestors Lived

Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kim Stanley Robinson has imagined the life of one of the artists of the Chauvet cave in France. It's a novel of history and character, and though there is adventure, danger, and romance, Robinson views it as day-to-day life and not as plot. As are most of Robinson's books, it's an exploration of utopia, but in a possible past, instead of a possible future. I still haven't finished reacting to it. Its images will stay with me for a long time, and now I'll look at the cave paintings, too. If this theme and pre-history fascinate you, too, this is a must-read.


View all my reviews