wenty-year-old Hunter Blake, a trained paramedic who aspires to full doctor status,
has lived all his life in a small, sheltered community on the asteroid Cicero.
Cybernetic mining machines there quarry the planetoid for ores to supply the Federation of
Independent Space Colonies (FISC), an authoritarian government whose archrival is the
USDC (United Democratic Space Colonies). Apolitical, with a narrow worldview, Hunter
hopes only to attend college on Mars, where perhaps he can resume his old relations
with his girlfriend from schooldays, the gorgeous Tehani Wilawa, who is now, for reasons
of poverty, reluctantly serving as a high-class escort in the Martian entertainment
district called Sybaris.
A return visit by the glamorous and infamous Tehani to Cicero coincides with
the receipt by Hunter of an FISC-sponsored award, a prestigious scholarship to Mars.
After rekindling their affair, the two young adults board a space freighter for
the red planet. Unluckily, their craft is overtaken and hijacked in transit by a group of
pirates who call themselves "Utopians." Hunter and Tehani are held for ransom
while the other passengers are set safely adrift in a lifeboat. After a colorful
stop at a rough pirate trading station, the two abductees find themselves on the
secret asteroid headquarters of the Utopians. Here is where Hunter's real education
begins.
As the most qualified medical person among the pirates, Hunter is made head of their
infirmary. He begins to learn more of the pirates' libertarian philosophy and lifestyle.
The responsibilities given to him cause him to mature rapidly, as does a serious
affair with his teenaged assistant, Ursula, who eventually becomes pregnant with
Hunter's child. But when Tehani is ransomed back to Mars, Hunter feels conflicted.
Eventually, he convinces the grateful leader of the Utopians to grant him his
freedom.
Hunter heads to Mars in a "stolen" ship, masquerading as an escapee from the pirates.
But the authorities suspect the
hidden story of Hunter's "collaboration" with the
pirates, and he soon finds that his experiences have unfitted him for "civilized"
life--at
least under the restrictive rules of the FISC.
Growing up among the stars
The young-adult novel of maturation among the stars boasts a respectable roster
of titles. Among others are almost all of Robert Heinlein's juveniles, dozens of Andre
Norton novels, Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage, David Gerrold's Jumping
Off the Planet, and even to some degree John Varley's The Golden Globe.
Gentry Lee--whose previous collaborations with Arthur Clarke on the Rama
series exhibited a solid, if stolid imagination--weighs in with just such a book
here. But in its old-fashioned tropes it fails to advance the form by much, if
at all.
Alluringly although misleadingly titled (no war ever actually occurs), and set in
the 2400s in a colonized Solar System whose static and meager accomplishments resemble
a more optimistic writer's projection for our next fifty years, Lee's novel is
resolutely mundane. All vividness and sense-of-wonder have been determinedly blanched
from his tale, perhaps in a misguided quest for greater mimesis. Given Lee's
scientific background and his NASA experience, his portrait of life in space
indeed has a certain heft and believability. But the inclusion of disturbingly
archaic terms such as "Nazis" and "movies"--much as if a person in the year 2000
were to casually refer to "Jacobites" or "papyri"--and a generally low level of
biotech (partially explained by a legislated ban) and other cutting-edge sciences
renders this a novel that could have appeared--with only a few cuts in the sex
scenes--in the pages of a 1942 Astounding.
And that's a shame, since Lee's characters are all likeable and intriguing,
especially the oddball pirates. (Although naming the pirate chief "Lance" was not
a wise decision.) Hunter's growth in wisdom and values rings true--but his whole
tale might have taken place without major tinkering equally well during World War
II or, for that matter, in the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson. Heck--Lee's pirates
even have cybernetic parrots!
