pdonovan's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
otherwyrld's review against another edition
4.0
This novel is the first of a series by the author concerning a mission by the scientific spaceship Daedalus and its crew of seven to recontact former Earth colonies who have been isolated for hundreds of years after the home world effectively abandoned them due to environmental collapse, amongst other woes. The book therefore has to put in the worldbuilding, introduce the main characters and have an adventure, all within the confines of 176 pages.
The first part is achieved with the expedient of a 20 page exposition dump in the prologue. The second part is pretty much skimmed over in this book, beyond a very few broad brushstrokes that give little more than names and specialisations for the crew at least.
This leaves much more space for the story itself, which spends a long time as a good old fashioned romp set around the idea that the arrival of newcomers into a seemingly idyllic society can open up unseen cracks in that society to the point of civil war or revolution.
If that was all that this story was about it would be a solid 3 stars, but the whole point of this series is to look at the ecological and societal ramifications of humans colonising and living on alien planets, and what it might do to them over generations. This is where the authors biological and sociological expertise comes into play (I believe he has advanced degrees in both areas), and where the book earns an extra star.
Given that this novel was first published in 1976, it makes a lot of points about the environment and ecology that is still relevant today. It plays quite a lot into the new environmental movements of the 1970s, particularly the Gaia hypothesis. It also delves into ongoing arguments over space travel, with the protagonists son arguing that we have to fix our own planet before we move on to making the same mistakes on other worlds.
To be fair, the Florians (the people of the new world) have tried to make themselves a better world, but by limiting the knowledge of how Earth got it wrong they themselves fell into a trap of their own making by creating an unequal society. Any time you have haves and have nots you are always going to have an engine of change on your hands and this is what happens here. It also means that most of the populations doesn't have the information to recognise that their planets own ecology is working against them. It takes the crew of the Daedalus to show them that this is an issue that will only get worse with time.
It's been a good many years since I read this series first, and these books are one of the few where I have kept them to reread at some point. Alas, it will probably be the last time as well as the book fell apart during my reread. Maybe one day the series will be reprinted or appear as an eBook because it would be a shame to lose these stories to future generations.
The first part is achieved with the expedient of a 20 page exposition dump in the prologue. The second part is pretty much skimmed over in this book, beyond a very few broad brushstrokes that give little more than names and specialisations for the crew at least.
This leaves much more space for the story itself, which spends a long time as a good old fashioned romp set around the idea that the arrival of newcomers into a seemingly idyllic society can open up unseen cracks in that society to the point of civil war or revolution.
If that was all that this story was about it would be a solid 3 stars, but the whole point of this series is to look at the ecological and societal ramifications of humans colonising and living on alien planets, and what it might do to them over generations. This is where the authors biological and sociological expertise comes into play (I believe he has advanced degrees in both areas), and where the book earns an extra star.
Given that this novel was first published in 1976, it makes a lot of points about the environment and ecology that is still relevant today. It plays quite a lot into the new environmental movements of the 1970s, particularly the Gaia hypothesis. It also delves into ongoing arguments over space travel, with the protagonists son arguing that we have to fix our own planet before we move on to making the same mistakes on other worlds.
To be fair, the Florians (the people of the new world) have tried to make themselves a better world, but by limiting the knowledge of how Earth got it wrong they themselves fell into a trap of their own making by creating an unequal society. Any time you have haves and have nots you are always going to have an engine of change on your hands and this is what happens here. It also means that most of the populations doesn't have the information to recognise that their planets own ecology is working against them. It takes the crew of the Daedalus to show them that this is an issue that will only get worse with time.
It's been a good many years since I read this series first, and these books are one of the few where I have kept them to reread at some point. Alas, it will probably be the last time as well as the book fell apart during my reread. Maybe one day the series will be reprinted or appear as an eBook because it would be a shame to lose these stories to future generations.
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