es Avery, an artist who creates multisensual movies called "virtual dramas," has been infected with a controllable but incurable alien virus that causes hallucinations during times of stress. As part of his convalescence, he takes a vacation on the sparsely populated agriculture and tourism planet Meadow, staying in a villa in the small town of Haven. While walking on a nearby nature trail, he finds a man's body, recently deceased. After some momentary doubt, he is able to convince himself that the corpse is not a hallucination. When he returns with the local police officer, however, the body is gone, along with any obvious evidence of the apparent crime.
Still shaken by his experience, Avery meets Dona Tharmody, an offworlder who has been working on Meadow for some years as an artificial-intelligence repair technician. She is sympathetic to his desire to surreptitiously investigate the mystery. Dona has become friends with several influential people on Meadow, including Sen. Karl Damien and his political antagonist, Charles Laszlow, who disagree on the fundamental political and legal issue facing Meadow—how to handle the existence of an indigenous sentient species, the Nerudi. Damien learns that the discovery of the Nerudi has prevented the interplanetary mining and agriculture company that originally settled the planet, Intercorp, from fully developing Meadow, and has kept the planet from full membership in the interplanetary human league.
Avery continues his amateur sleuthing, learning more about the people of Haven and Meadow's history and politics, and appears to be uncovering some sort of broad conspiracy. But only after gunmen attack him and Dona during a tour of seaside cliffs do they begin to uncover the true nature of what has been happening on Meadow.
Like a diamond in the rough
Don D'Ammassa is best known as a science-fiction book reviewer, but in recent years he has also become a prolific writer of SF, horror and mystery fiction. Haven is set in the same future as his novel Scarab, which was published earlier in 2004. D'Ammassa's latest novel is perfectly paced, with interesting characters and setting. All of the characters and plot elements play integral roles in the story—there are no extraneous bits anywhere in the book. From start to finish, Haven is an extremely well crafted mystery/suspense/adventure novel with an interesting science-fiction setting.
But despite the consummate craftsmanship, Haven is almost totally devoid of the kind of thematic power and sense of wonder evoked by superior science fiction. The novel is formulaic and utterly predictable, composed almost entirely of the stock elements of adventure fiction plotting and pacing—the hesitant protagonist, his love interest, the amateur sleuthing, the chase scene, the amoral corporation, the happy ending, the last-minute surprise twist. All of the interesting science-fiction elements—the alien virus, the alien Nerudi—appear primarily as mere plot devices. The Nerudi are a very interesting creation, their intelligent society based on a mutual gift-giving ethic and their interactions limited by their unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of others before formal introduction. But the Nerudi are almost never onstage, and their unique culture is discussed but never really shown. Likewise, the alien virus afflicting Avery never provides more than momentary doubt that what he is experiencing is real. I can't help but wonder what thematically profound metaphors of the human condition a writer like Ursula K. Le Guin would explore using the Nerudi, or what levels of reality-questioning uncertainty a writer like Philip K. Dick would evoke using the alien virus from this novel.
Although Haven is far from the cutting edge of science fiction, it is nevertheless a very readable novel that will satisfy fans of mystery and adventure fiction. The novel provides sound evidence that D'Ammassa's growing authorial skills will lead him to more ambitious future works.
