n Mike Moscoe's new novel, The First Casualty, war has broken out between Earth and a group of its colonies. On the mining Pitt's Hope--which is loyal to Earth--the miners have been drafted into the marines to defend the planet from invasion by the colonials. Mary Rodrigro, a cynical veteran miner and now a sergeant, doesn't want to have anything to do with the war. She thinks the best chance for her team to survive is to try to contact the invading army and surrender immediately. But before they have a chance, the colonials launch a missile that kills two of her soldiers. In the ensuing battle, Mary's leadership and the resourcefulness of her team turn almost certain defeat into a major victory, and Mary is decorated and promoted for her heroism.
Ray Longknife is a career soldier and the leader of the colonial invading forces. He correctly concludes early on that he's facing green troops, but miscalculates the resistance they're able to muster. He himself is badly injured in the battle. His lover, a senior pilot under his command, Rita Nuu, gets leave to help him recover, and they become engaged. Her father is a major Wardhaven industrialist, and Longknife learns that he has some ties to a group that wants to remove President Urm, who has become a ruthless dictator, from power. Longknife volunteers to help with the plot to overthrow the government.
Earth hasn't just been conscripting miners for war. It's also conscripted entire merchant spaceships and their crews. Mattim Abeeb's ship, the Sheffield, is among them. As with Rodrigo's team, Abeeb's crew quickly establishes itself as more innovative and effective than the career navy ships and crews. Then it goes through a bad jump, finding itself 30,000 light years across the galaxy. And the discoveries they make to find the way back may make the purpose of the war irrelevant.
Books about war can be hell
The first half of The First Casualty is dreadfully awful, consisting mostly of a detailed depiction of two major battles, one on the ground and one in space. Unfortunately, during this entire period, author Mike Moscoe fails to construct a cultural context for the war. Even in the second half, where the novel improves considerably, it's never really clear, other than some vague economic rationale, what the leaders of the two sides hope to gain from the conflict, or at least preserve. Instead, they are depicted as simply manipulative and evil. The two battle scenes mentioned consist mostly of dialogue filled with military jargon, with little comprehensible sense of the physical setting. For example, in only a few places does it even become clear that Pitt's Hope has no atmosphere, and that the combatants are in spacesuits.
The logic of this novel isn't much better. While it's at least plausible that the miners and merchants might be more resourceful than the career military with respect to obtaining nonstandard equipment and using it in innovative ways, Moscoe extends this superior talent to actual military tactics (and to almost everything else imaginable as well).
Moscoe's pacing does improve in the second half of the book, and as he puts less emphasis on battles and more on his characters and their plight, the novel gets considerably better. His settings never really come alive, and the politics remains simplistic and vague, but he does develop some sympathetic characters. In some ways, the book actually takes an interesting perspective as a military science fiction novel that's highly critical of war and of the military's traditions and practices.
But by the time Moscoe gets to the more effective sections of the book, it's too late to overcome The First Casualty's significant weaknesses. And even these sections don't rise above the level of mediocrity. In the end, The First Casualty doesn't offer anything that other books haven't done much better.
rother Rod and the artificial sentient Reverend Mother Artemis of the Sacred Order of the Spirit rescue orphaned children from other worlds. They raise the children on Prokaryon, a world where the native life forms are based on arsenic and triplex DNA. Although terraforming technology exists that could make the planet comfortable for humans, the Sacred Order of the Spirit is opposed to "ecocide." Instead, the children they adopt have to be "lifeshaped" so that they can interact with Prokaryon's environment without being poisoned.
Humans on planets everywhere have long since encountered other intelligences, but they have all been created by humans: sentient machines, and "hybrid simians." Centuries into the future, intelligent aliens have yet to be found. But Prokaryon is an oddity. Rainstorms appear fortuitously to quench forest fires, and the entire planet is so orderly as to appear ecosculpted. Are the "hidden masters" of Prokaryon real, or more wishful thinking by people hungry for company in the universe? All scientific research has turned up no reliable signs of sentient life on Prokaryon.
Then Proteus Unlimited, a huge interstellar corporation, is granted the right to boil off the native flora and fauna of Prokaryon and terraform the planet. The corporation plans to net huge profits by sending humans down to mine Prokaryon. The only thing that can save the planet is the discovery of native intelligent life. While Brother Rod and Mother Artemis find unlikely allies in their quest to save their home, their best chance at stopping Proteus Unlimited may initiate the worst holocaust humanity has ever faced. Human and artificial intelligences discover that sometimes one does indeed need to sweat the small stuff.
Building a world the old-fashioned way
Readers who enjoy puzzling out the biology and ecosystems of an author's created world will enjoy The Children Star. It is set within the same universe as Slonczewski's Door Into Ocean series, a place she has imagined in fine detail. The sensory descriptions are especially impressive; readers can see, smell, hear, touch and taste Prokaryon. It's clear Slonczewski has used her background as a biologist to construct a plausible world.
The sentient beings that Slonczewski imagines have much in common with humans. They can be vengeful or altruistic; curious or complacent. They argue with, fear and love each other. They tell each other stories. The characters are complex and memorable, although they often feel wooden. Readers who value characterization and the exploration of interpersonal relationships may find this aspect of the novel weak. Still, Slonczewski seems committed to representing a diversity of human experience. It's gratifying when a writer's characters come from a variety of cultural and economic backgrounds and represent a range of sexualities. These characters also vary in age, from newborns to the elderly
Another strong aspect of The Children Star is that Slonczewski doesn't shy from examining the tough moral questions raised by Homo Sapiens' mastery of nature: Once humans have the ability to impart intelligence to their constructs, will it be ethical to deny human-made "smart machines" the right to self-determination? And will human and artificial intelligences recognize other sentient beings if they encounter them? As is intelligence itself, Slonczewski's answers to these questions are multifaceted and fascinating.
