RogerBW's Blog

2011 military science fiction, first of an ongoing series. In 2029, previously-unknown aliens destroy three cities, with a warning: "Never again attempt to develop this kind of technology." Earth responds in the only way possible: space battleships! Spoilers.

I was reminded of those SF stories from the 1960s, as the alien attitude in popular consciousness shifted from "we want your women" or "we are Space Commies" to "whoa, you humans are far too dangerous to be let out on the interstellar scene". This is a story in which the aliens are entirely justified in having that attitude.

There are a bunch of miracle technologies all developed at the same time: super-tough armour plating, a reactionless thruster, artificial gravity, and a jump drive. Which doesn't work within a gravity field, but at Lagrange points there's no gravity [sic], so it can instantly hop between any of them, including over interstellar distances.

It's the last one that turns out to be the forbidden technology, because unless you're extremely careful with it it has a small but non-zero probability of creating a black hole and destroying your entire solar system. That seems to me like a fairly good reason to try to discourage people from messing about with them. (But these aliens are pretty stupid, so rather than say "that's nifty, please now join the Galactic Federation where jump drives are kept under strict control" they blew up three cities with apparently no plan for what to do next.)

But Humanity Must Be Free! So space battleships. When our viewpoint character is taking one of the three on its shakedown cruise, she spots an enemy scout ship… and immediately attacks, with no attempt at communication. (Her XO objects, but he's a Bad Person and therefore Wrong.)

The one prisoner from this engagement goes from "what a pity our species can't possibly ever get along" to "I will tell you everything about my side" quietly and off-camera.

Later an alien computer system is casually cracked and decoded.

When people aren't being heroic, they screw. A lot.

When the enemy uses space fighters, the heroic Earthians invent space fighters of their own and have them ready to deploy in a few weeks.

There's no military discipline aboard this warship. A mutineer is patted on the back and given a lower-responsibility duty. (This doesn't go well.) Adams doesn't seem to know how chains of command work.

At times this feels like a deliberate parody of military SF, because Adams is apparently aware that behaving stupidly will often lead to bad results… but he still has his characters behaving stupidly, and we're apparently meant to feel sympathy for them.

The writing is sort of OK-ish, though the surprising plot twists are very predictable; the book isn't over-long; but I have no interest in reading more about these people or this universe. Followed by The Sands of Karathi.