[REVIEW] Flare Star
Apr. 21st, 2004 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldPaula Downing's Flare Star was one of the first books that I ever bought, back in 1991. A couple of years ago, I'd boxed it along with the other science-fiction books that I rarely read and put it in the basement. Over the Christmas holidays at home, though, I took it out of the box and re-read it. I found that unlike some of the other science-fiction books I'd bought at that time, I still liked this book. After I saw a copy of Flare Star at a used bookstore on Princess Street yesterday afternoon, I decided that I had to mention here, at least briefly.
I think that one reason I really like Flare Star is because, unlike in conventional Star Trek, it's set in a universe where technologies and people face practical limits upon their actions. (That might be why Deep Space Nine is my favourite Trek--the Bajorans and Cardassians certainly have limits and problems, and the Federation's ideal state isn't war. But I digress.) In the future a couple of centuries from now, humanity--organized into six hegemonic consortia, supranational blocs--has identified plenty of extrasolar targets for colonization; the main problem is getting to these targets. After a brief flirtation with sublight generation starships that's ended by the natural hazards of space and the psychological catastrophe of deep space isolation, the physicist Shaukolen develops an eponymous superluminal stardrive that finally lets humanity leave Sol system. Unfortunately, the drive has a maximum practical range of 12 light years, and humanity lacks the economic resources that would be needed to either equip long-range merchanter fleets to support distant colonies or to build up systems at the edge of the Shaukolen drive's range into waystations for these same colonies. And so, humanity must content itself with a relatively slender crop of worlds, with the garden planets of Alpha Centauri with their incompatible biospheres, the worlds of Tau Ceti with their eccentric orbits, and innumerable outposts and settlements on inhospitable at dim orange and red dwarf stars.
The action begins on the EuroCom freighter Ceti Flag, about to arrive at Wolf 359. Wolf 359 is the first stop on a tour of vacuum colonies including the ones at Lalande 21185, and Ross 128 ending with a return to Sol. Ceti Flag's pilot, the Scotsman Jason Roarke, is beginning to feel trapped in his dead-end job, at odds with his occasional lover Helena and his captain/her occasional lover Yves, and yearning to become a hero. It's at this interval that Ceti Flag's sensors can't pick up the Wolf II colony's beacon. It turns out that although Wolf 359 has a reputation as a relatively quiet flare star, this reputation is just beginning to expire. There has already been one major flare, killing hundreds of colonists. Roarke is placed in the position of dealing with his fellow crewmen and the traumatized Wolf colonists as he tries to arrange the evacuation of the survivors before their erstwhile sun begins to flare again.
I like Flare Star, a lot. The science seems good; the writing style and characterization are always at least adequate; and the different subplots are balanced nicely and well-structured in and of themselves. Flare Star is available online as an e-book. People could spend their book money and get less reading pleasure.
I wonder what happened to Paula Downing. Like Alexander Jablokov, she seems to be another up-and-coming science-fiction writer of the 1990s who has subsequently disappeared from the public gaze.
I think that one reason I really like Flare Star is because, unlike in conventional Star Trek, it's set in a universe where technologies and people face practical limits upon their actions. (That might be why Deep Space Nine is my favourite Trek--the Bajorans and Cardassians certainly have limits and problems, and the Federation's ideal state isn't war. But I digress.) In the future a couple of centuries from now, humanity--organized into six hegemonic consortia, supranational blocs--has identified plenty of extrasolar targets for colonization; the main problem is getting to these targets. After a brief flirtation with sublight generation starships that's ended by the natural hazards of space and the psychological catastrophe of deep space isolation, the physicist Shaukolen develops an eponymous superluminal stardrive that finally lets humanity leave Sol system. Unfortunately, the drive has a maximum practical range of 12 light years, and humanity lacks the economic resources that would be needed to either equip long-range merchanter fleets to support distant colonies or to build up systems at the edge of the Shaukolen drive's range into waystations for these same colonies. And so, humanity must content itself with a relatively slender crop of worlds, with the garden planets of Alpha Centauri with their incompatible biospheres, the worlds of Tau Ceti with their eccentric orbits, and innumerable outposts and settlements on inhospitable at dim orange and red dwarf stars.
The action begins on the EuroCom freighter Ceti Flag, about to arrive at Wolf 359. Wolf 359 is the first stop on a tour of vacuum colonies including the ones at Lalande 21185, and Ross 128 ending with a return to Sol. Ceti Flag's pilot, the Scotsman Jason Roarke, is beginning to feel trapped in his dead-end job, at odds with his occasional lover Helena and his captain/her occasional lover Yves, and yearning to become a hero. It's at this interval that Ceti Flag's sensors can't pick up the Wolf II colony's beacon. It turns out that although Wolf 359 has a reputation as a relatively quiet flare star, this reputation is just beginning to expire. There has already been one major flare, killing hundreds of colonists. Roarke is placed in the position of dealing with his fellow crewmen and the traumatized Wolf colonists as he tries to arrange the evacuation of the survivors before their erstwhile sun begins to flare again.
I like Flare Star, a lot. The science seems good; the writing style and characterization are always at least adequate; and the different subplots are balanced nicely and well-structured in and of themselves. Flare Star is available online as an e-book. People could spend their book money and get less reading pleasure.
I wonder what happened to Paula Downing. Like Alexander Jablokov, she seems to be another up-and-coming science-fiction writer of the 1990s who has subsequently disappeared from the public gaze.
