ake Holman, seeking to escape Earth's problems and his own, forms Mira Corporation and gathers together diverse groups of people to fund a one-way voyage of interstellar colonization. More than 6,000 people leave aboard the Ariel for the seven-year trip to the planet Greentrees that will leave Earth 70 years behind them. The diverse group includes a few crew and scientists, the extended family of Gail Cutler and large contingencies of Quakers, Chinese, Cheyenne Indians and an Arabic royal family.
Only the Swiss Space Fleet crew and a handful of leaders stay awake, while most of the passengers are in cold sleep. They find Greentrees to be a planet of unearthly beauty, and most of the colonists begin building Mira City, while the Cheyenne go off to re-establish their ancient culture. As they begin to explore the planet, they make a startling discovery: small groups of primitive but intelligent simian aliens they call Furs that clearly did not evolve there. Each settlement is markedly different—some passive, some violent and aggressive, some seemingly addicted to disorienting drugs.
As they ponder the mysterious Furs, the colonists detect a fast incoming starship. Earth is in crisis and can provide no help or counsel. Holman prepares to meet the aliens, hoping they are peaceful, but militants among the crew disobey his orders and attack the aliens. Holman and the Quaker leader finally open peaceful communication with the aliens, biochemically interconnected plants they call Vines. The Vines explain they have been at war with the aggressive, technologically superior Furs for centuries.
Soon the Furs show up in their own starships, kill the Vines and capture the humans. They must find a way to survive in the middle of an interstellar war between two very different alien species and hope their decision does not doom Earth as well.
Engaging hard SF with complex characters
Nancy Kress has become a dependable author of complex and imaginative science fiction over the past decade, and Crossfire is a worthy addition to her oeuvre. She combines interesting (if not always likable) characters and situations with complex themes and believable milieus to get the most from her stories and novels.
The characters Kress has chosen for her colonization voyage are a group whose diversity is worthy of Kim Stanley Robinson: the pacifist Quakers, the primitivist Cheyenne, the secretive but amiable Arabs, the disciplined Swiss and the hardworking Chinese, along with Jake's leadership and Gail's family, provide ample opportunities for both conflict and resolution within the colony. This diversity of groups and individuals works well in the thematic investigation that is the real heart of the novel: collectivism versus individualism, as embodied by the alien Vines and Furs.
The character and philosophy of each of these alien races created by Kress are driven by their biology. The Furs are aggressive individualists, with a highly technological culture, who are fanatical in the protection of their race and its genetic purity. The Vines are pacifistic, collectivist plants that live in a complex matrix of life, with a complex ability to control biochemical functions, and willingness to use it to defend themselves, but no hard technology. It sets up a clever and interesting thematic struggle between right-wing and left-wing values.
The only failing in this excellent novel is that while Kress seems to intend to show the good and bad aspects of both alien races, she is unable to keep an even playing field throughout the story. She obviously grew to like the Vines better, and by the middle of the book the Furs are presented as unequivocally evil. The fascinating potential for the thematic investigation of collectivism versus individualism thereby gets short-circuited.
