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Alien Influences
Alien rituals. Human children. Dire consequences.
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Alien Influences
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By Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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Bantam Books
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$5.99/$7.99 Canada Canada
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Paperback, Nov. 1997
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ISBN 0-553-56998-8
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Review by Susan Dunman
 ountiful is an inhospitable desert planet memorable only because it's the source of Salt Juice, one of the most exhilarating intoxicants available, and one that has no known side effects. A small colony on Bountiful amply supports itself by manufacturing and selling Salt Juice, but while the adult colonists are preoccupied with the drug, the attention of their children is focused on the Dancers, a native sentient race so named for their agility and grace.
When six of the town's children are brutally mutilated and murdered, the aliens become prime suspects, and prominent xenopsychologist Justin Schafer is called in to investigate. Evidence points to the Dancers, who, with a very different physiology, carefully remove the heart, lungs and hands of their adolescents to insure the youngsters' healthy growth into adults. As the colonists prepare for revenge, Justin comes to the horrible realization that it is the human children who are responsible for the grisly deaths of their playmates. Assimilating Dancer culture, the children innocently kill each other while mimicking a Dancer rite-of-passage ritual in a misguided attempt to speed up the growth of their own human bodies.
In typical bureaucratic fashion, the legal system must now decide how the remaining eight children, who have taken on some Dancer traits, will be tried. It will be the first test case of the Alien Influences Act, and it's unclear if the juveniles should be classified as children or adults, humans or aliens, humans under alien influence, or aliens with human characteristics. In a world they no longer understand, the infamous "Dancer 8" will have to use all of their alien abilities if they want to realize the freedom they so eagerly sought when trying to become adults on Bountiful.
Peter Pan syndrome in reverse
In Alien Influences, Kristine Kathryn Rusch offers a disquieting view of the impact culture has on perception, and of how unfamiliar situations can be easily misinterpreted. Unlike the "Lost Boys" of Never-Never Land, who vowed they'd never grow up, the children of Rusch's Bountiful desperately wish to speed the process along so they can become adults immediately.
The story carries with it vestiges of both The Martian Chronicles and Stranger in a Strange Land: The ephemeral Dancers are both benevolent and menacing, bringing to mind Bradbury's ghostly Martians. And a reflection of Heinlein's hybrid human/alien can be seen in the innocent, but deadly, human children who hold Dancer thoughts and powers. These elements give the book a familiar feel even as Alien Influences charts new territory. The combination of mystical aliens and precocious children, along with careful plotting, creates a sense of mystery and intrigue that inspires non-stop reading.
The author's ability to capture a child's naive perspective of extraordinary events is particularly impressive. Contrasting adult and child interpretations of the same situation makes for some interesting comparisons that illuminate the fragile nature of communication. And the underlying theme of this work is a familiar SF trope: the universal search for freedom. Rusch transforms the tragic murder of childhood friends into a quest to right a monumental wrong and to discover the meaning of identity.
This is inviting terrain for those who enjoy explorations of ideological landscapes, although hard SF fans might not find Alien Influence's focus on ideas over machinery appealing.
A good story with interesting aliens and a happy ending.
-- Susan
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Titan
If not for the courage of her fearless crew....
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Titan
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By Stephen Baxter
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HarperPrism
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$23.00
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Hardcover, Nov. 1997
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ISBN 0-06-105259-0
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Review by Curt Wohleber
 n the first decade of the 21st century, NASA's days are numbered.
There's no money or political support for replacing the aging fleet
of space shuttles, but the unmanned Cassini probe to Saturn finds intriguing--though inconclusive--evidence of life on the moon Titan.
Astronaut Paula Benacerraf, celebrated survivor of the crash of the
space shuttle Columbia, leverages her short-lived prestige to
assemble one last space mission. It's a desperate gambit, for the crew
has no guarantee of a ticket home. The shuttle Discovery won't be
able to carry enough fuel for a round trip, so the six astronauts will
have to await the development of a post-shuttle space fleet or else
establish a self-sustaining colony drawing on Titan's abundance of water-ice and complex organic chemicals.
It's a brutally unpleasant journey, slightly less comfortable than spending six years aboard the Mir space station. And at the end the crew faces a poorly-equipped, one-way expedition across a hostile planet that's more deadly than Antarctica. Worse still, the Discovery's zero-gravity hydroponic farm becomes less and less productive as the voyage goes on. Other equipment breaks down, crewmembers die, and the most experienced and level-headed of the six astronauts gradually goes insane.
Once on Titan, Benacerraf and the surviving crewmembers face a
menace greater than a whole army of oozing, insectoid aliens: a grave
shortage of essential vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Meanwhile,
back on Earth, a newly militarized NASA cancels plans to send automated
cargo rockets to Titan. Things look bleak indeed for the fledgling colony.
Real spacecraft, cartoon characters
Titan is a gripping adventure but lacks the unusually fine
characterization and interpersonal drama that distinguished Baxter's
Voyage among hard science fiction novels. The novel's
villains are caricatures rather than characters, such as the rogue Air Force
general who speaks in B-movie dialogue and who hatches a ludicrous scheme to stop the Titan voyage. Then there's U.S. president Xavier MacLachlan, a politician so hyper-reactionary he would make Pat Buchanan blanch. Despite a "wafer-thin" victory at the polls, MacLachlan has no trouble implementing the most sweeping agenda ever attempted by an American president--building, as it were, a bridge to the 14th century. He abolishes the teaching of evolution, closes down university research
laboratories and insists that schools teach only pre-Galilean
astronomy.
The crew of Discovery is rendered more realistically, but they
don't seem like people who would volunteer for a six-year, one-way
journey to hell. Astronauts are necessarily risk-takers, but even the most fanatical mountaineers and polar explorers never plan to take up permanent residence at their forbidding destinations. Baxter convinces readers that a mission to colonize Titan is possible, but not that anyone stable and competent enough to function as a member of a shuttle crew would willingly embark on such a journey.
If Baxter's portrayal of individuals falls short, his vision of humanity
as a whole rings true. Along with Titan's gritty technical realism, Baxter offers a grand vision of space and an eerie, awe-inspiring
glimpse of the far future. And just when the story seems headed either for a depressing anticlimax or a contrived finale involving friendly Titan aliens, the mission succeeds in a way the crew hadn't originally planned, in an interesting twist on the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact, it's no coincidence that Baxter sends his crew on the shuttle Discovery (the name of the spaceship in 2001).
Titan wouldn't make a good recruiting tool for
NASA's astronaut program, but it's a grand ride anyway.
-- Curt
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