Coming Home, by Jack McDevitt

Coming Home is the seventh novel in the Alex Benedict series, and next up in my reading of the Nebula nominees for this year.  I'm struggling with whether to damn this novel with faint praise or be a bit more direct.  I'll let you be the judge from here.

Alex Benedict is an antiquities dealer nine thousand years in the future.  His Boswell (hence narrator of these stories) is Chase Kolpath, ace pilot and beautiful assistant.  This installment has two story lines--Benedict's tracking of lost artifacts from the early space age, and the rescue of his uncle Gabe from a ship caught in a spacetime warp.

McDevitt is a solid speculator--we have some history on civilization's collapse, and a recap of encounters with the alien Mutes.  But it still rings odd to have people basically not changing traditions over ten thousand years, and using technologies that aren't even current now.

My main issue here is that this work is just dry as dust.  McDevitt always has that tendency, but sometimes the stories are fun anyway.  This was more of a slog.  Everyone is perfectly reasonable and speaks in the careful way office workers at major corporations speak.  You can't tell men from women, good guys from bad ones.  Makes it awfully hard to build dramatic tension, and this one doesn't.  I'm going to have forgotten all about it in a week or so.  The book is worthwhile if you are a fan of the series as it does advance the story.  Not otherwise.  Two stars from me.

Firebird, by Jack McDevitt

So now I have caught up on the Alex Benedict series, with its latest installment Firebird, nominated for a Nebula this year. 

This one is quite an entertaining read.  One can see the maturing of the series as it goes along--the characters get better, and more interesting stuff is in the plots.  In Firebird, physicist Christopher Robin (and no reference to Pooh!) is investigating the occasional appearance of mystery ships.  They fade in, but are often so ancient they can't communicate, and fade out again.  Robin himself disappeared mysteriously.  Some of his belongings are brought in for auction, which puts Kolpath and Benedict on his trail.  And solve it they do, though the tension is still simmering between them.  Kolpath is getting somewhat tired of Benedict's moral "flexibility". 

It is still weird reading stories set 10,000 years in the future, with people still using technology the way they did 10 years ago (like setting the password on their notebook to "brane"--goodness).  Not only do things not change, they got frozen in 2001. But the stories are entertaining.  Would I have enjoyed "Echo" if I had read the other four books first?  No doubt.  But I just didn't have time to catch up all the series last year.  It would have been another six books.  Well, I probably could have, but that would be all I would read in the year.  In the future I'll try harder, because a good series does develop from the beginning even if the author assures you you can jump in anywhere.

3 stars for this one, in an old-timey sort of way.

The Devil's Eye, by Jack McDevitt

Continuing my catch-up on Alex Benedict, I turned to The Devil's Eye.  The books continue to get more interesting in this series.  Kolpath and Benedict get involved in a mystery that takes them to Salud Afar, a world a month out from anywhere in the Confederacy.  They are lured by a famous author with a large check and her own mind wiped clean, and end up saving a world.  There's a lot more action in this one, and we see more of Chase Kolpath as an action hero.  I'm beginning to think that calling it the Alex Benedict series is meant as irony, or something.  But she's still pretty casually slutty in a way that doesn't really build out her character, and that still galls.

In any case it's a good engaging read.  Next up would be Echo, but I have read it already.  I'm not sure my conclusion would change, as Chase Kolpath goes in a very different direction there that, if I recall correctly, would end up taking away from her and possibly simply be a response to criticism.  Reinforces the notion that one really needs to read a series from the beginning to be fair to an installment.  But I'm not going back now.

3 stars for this one.

Seeker, by Jack McDevitt

Continuing with my catch-up of Alex Benedict, I have finished Seeker.  This is the third book in the series, and it won a Nebula in 2004.  It start out somewhat slowly, like the first two.  Chase Kolpath, the narrator of the series (still no billing) is going through something of a slutty phase.  But toward the end I can at least see what the award nominators were thinking about--it definitely picks up, with satisfying twists and turns.  The characters get to show what they're made of, and there's even some interesting speculation on how a planet could be habitable in orbit around a brown dwarf.

I still have my objections to the series.  Some seem to think it's a strength that he depicts society as pretty much unchanged over a period of ten thousand years.  Just more spread out.  Just doesn't seem plausible, especially for current speculative fiction.  We've seen the pace of change quicken.  But it's a decent story overall, and worth getting into if you are yearning for a mystery with some space opera flavor.  I give it 3 stars.  Next up is The Devil's Eye, we shall see what that brings. 

Polaris, by Jack McDevitt

Polaris (Amazon link because my public library server is down) is the second novel in McDevitt's Alex Benedict series.  Upon starting it I immediately wondered why his assistant Chase Kolpath doesn't get billing, as at least two of the books, Polaris and Echo, are told from her perspective.  So Polaris is our first view of Benedict from Kolpath's eyes.  Not too flattering.  But then again, the series hasn't really picked up speed for me either.  These are mystery novels with big-picture ambitions, but in the end seem to be told small.  Protecting the key to immortality (spoiler, ha ha) is an interesting idea for one of the Big Four back in the '50s, but it seems just a tad less innovative now.  There is some room to grow here, but it just doesn't feel like McDevitt's going to take it.  There's mild adrenaline toward the end, but not enough to make it worth a novel. 

Many seem to like him, though, so I will persevere.  The next book, Seeker, won a Nebula. Could be we're going to pick up here.

2 stars for this one.

A Talent for War, by Jack McDevitt

I am catching up several series this year, Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict series being one of them.  His novel Firebird is up for a Nebula this year, and Echo was nominated for 2010.  I read Echo (see my review) of sequence, but I never like to do that, and in this case thought it might have been unfair to the book.  So I have gone back to the beginning and read A Talent For War, from 1989. 

Mysteries are very difficult to write in SF, as Isaac Asimov pointed out (I can't find the quote, I believe it's at the beginning of one of the Wendell Urth mysteries). One has to simultaneously:

1. Not cheat--use a speculative trick to resolve the mystery, and
2. Not sound contrived--making something a mystery that in the SF setting one is creating, should not be mysterious.

 I think McDevitt does some violence to both of these, though not severe.

Alex Benedict is introduced here as a dealer in unique collectables.  He comes into a large fortune from his uncle, Gabe Benedict, along with a major mystery about the very founding of the Confederacy, a loose organization of planets formed under the pressure of defeating the Asuryyeans, the only other known alien race.  The Ashuryyeans are telepaths, not quite as advanced technically as humans but posessed of a lot of firepower.  The story of Christopher Sim, leader of the resistance to the Asuryyeans, figures prominently.  He is lionized in popular culture, but how he really died drives the story.

One gets an intimation of trouble when the major point of the book--that Sim might be a fraud--is on the book cover.  This isn't revealed until late in the book, but you know it if you read the cover material.  Hmm.  In the end there are some surprises and bigger fish fried, but it seems odd.

I find McDevitt a pretty dry read, but a lot of people like him.  I understand the comparison to Asimov, in that they both do not have much in the way of style.  They just tell the story.  Asimov, though, had the advantage of an open field to develop new ideas--he was a pioneer.  McDevitt comes into a more mined-out area, where telling a story that has been told before requires a fresh approach and deeper exploration.  This one doesn't really cut it for me.  But the rest of the series has been nominated for three awards, winning one, so I'll keep going.  Two stars for this one, as it is.

This novel made me think a lot about the assumption SF authors make about nations.  Once action becomes interplanetary, it seems very natural for planets to assume the role of nation-states.  Intrastellar SF thus sounds a lot like 18th century colonial interactions, with long sea voyages separating far-flung states.  So it's been nearly from the beginning, and it isn't slowing down--see my previous review for an assumption that the planets will have one government each.  I recall a couple of examples where this assumption is not made, or is at least remarked upon, but the quotes don't come to mind.

Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City, by Jack McDevitt

I read a story like Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City, and it makes me wonder if I just don't like short stories.  This one was nominated for a Nebula in 2002.  And it's not a bad story.  It's just not much of anything.  Not-too-bright liquor store owner hears about the discovery of aliens, and barely notices.  OK, whatever.  I don't mind having read it, but I would not have gone out of my way for it.  Two stars because it isn't offensive or incompetent, but sometimes they work pretty hard to fill a category.

Echo, by Jack McDevitt

Whenever I decide to pick up a series, especially in trying to cover award nominees, I am faced with the dilemma of where to start it.  Do I choose the award nominated book at the end, or go to the beginning, or what?  Echo is the fifth book in McDevitt's Alex Benedict series.  In this case, I decided to pick up the latest one and see how it went.

Well, it went OK I guess.  The cover of the library book I borrowed has Stephen King saying he is the "logical successor" to Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.  Lofty company.  I have enjoyed some McDevitt stories, but that's a lot to put on.  I can see the analogy, though, since McDevitt is a matter-of-fact writer who lets the science and the storyline drive the book.

Not so sure it worked well this time, and it may have to do with the point of view.  This installment in the series is written from the perspective of Chase Kolpath, his young, attractive and talented assistant.  He is at some pains to depict her in a non-exploitative way, which ends up making her a somewhat cardboard character.  And since we see Alex only through her eyes, he ends up that way too.

The plot matches these somewhat thin characters pretty well.  Benedict is an antique dealer, and they get a line on a tablet with some inscriptions in an unknown language on them.  Sunset Tuttle, the one-time owner, was on a quest to find intelligent life in the universe--in all man's travels there has been only one other race.  They pursue the mystery doggedly and in places miserably.  The ending could be rather spectacular, but ends up rather understated.  This kind of old-fashioned work has its place, but I think I'd want the science to be edgier and more forward to carry this book.  It's just FTL ships and far-flung colonies, and the personalities are supposed to move the load.  They are not quite up to it.  3 stars, but only just.

The Fort Moxie Branch, by Jack McDevitt

Most authors feel underappreciated.  They occasionally express it in metafiction, and here we have an example.  The Hugo and Nebula nominated The Fort Moxie Branch is the story of one such author, who finds a branch of a shadow library--containing only unpublished great works.  But this library takes those works and sequesters them, the return being conditional.  Our protagonist has been offered a place, his novel being simply too good for philistines of this era to appreciate.  Will he take it?

Of course these stories are not what they were--the long tail of the Internet changes everything.  Obscure works can indeed live on.  My favorite of these is Michael Coney's Flower of Goronwy--still unpublished after all these years, and a really fine work if it could just find an audience.  The Fort Moxie Branch is a fun little story, but go read Flower of Goronwy while you still can.

Cryptic, by Jack McDevitt

If we were to find sentient life outside of Earth, would they be friendly or not? This is the core of all SF involving aliens, and we have another take on it in Cryptic, by Jack McDevitt. It's a Hugo nominee from 1984. In it, the current director of the SETI project finds what looks like a signal stowed away without publicity by the previous director, and the story revolves around what that current head does to find out about the signal. Why was it hidden? Turns out it was double-hidden--it shows signs of encryption at its core. And there were similar ones from two separate but nearby stars. To the author, this indicates that they are at war.
Of course we know much more now about security. Even as the Cold War drew to an end, SF writers who wrote on human conflict focused much more on large states facing off, than on terror by small actors. Now we'd say those transmissions were just taking normal precautions. If aliens use even techniques we know about now, these, combined with the sheer alienness of the content, will render them impossible to decipher. And that would be normal, rational behavior. Oh well.