|
|
Nimisha's Ship
Being marooned brings grave dangers...and great opportunities
 |
Nimisha's Ship
|
|
By Anne McCaffrey
|
|
Del Rey
|
|
$25.00/$35.00 Canada
|
|
Hardcover, Feb. 1999
|
|
ISBN 0-345-38825-9
|
|
|
Review by Susan Dunman
 n Vega III it's customary for the high nobility to contract with each other to produce worthy heirs within each First Family. When Lady Rezalla, a scion of Vega's elite social upper crust, makes appropriate arrangements with Lord Tionel, the result of their union is the child Nimisha. As Nimisha is the body-heir of Lady Rezalla, Lord Tionel is under no obligation to have any contact with this particular offspring. But the wealthy owner of Rondymense Shipyard sees a budding design engineer in the talented young girl and breaks with tradition to take her under his tutelage.
Meanwhile, Tionel's own son and body-heir, Vestrin, prefers aristocratic entertainments to learning about the family business and soon becomes jealous of his unexpected rival. As Nimisha and her father are developing a prototype long-distance star cruiser, Tionel is killed in a freak accident. Nimisha inherits the entire shipyard operation despite vehement protests by Vestrin and his mother, who consider themselves the rightful heirs. Ignoring her half-brother's indignation, Nimisha takes the newly completed ship on a shake-down cruise, leaving her own daughter, Cuiva, in the care of grandmother Rezalla.
All goes well until the ship is sucked into a wormhole and then ejected into uncharted space. Hoping distress beacons will eventually reach civilization, Nimisha tests her survival skills by exploring a nearby planet that has the remains of wrecked spacecraft on its surface. Back home, Nimisha's daughter faces survival challenges of her own when it is learned that Cuiva may now be the sole heir to Lord Tionel's massive fortune.
Good...perhaps too good
Author Anne McCaffrey--who is best known for her Pern series about mighty dragons--has created an entertaining space adventure with a heroine who's determined to conquer the "final frontier." McCaffrey envisions a feudal society set in the far future where planets are ruled by the heirs of the families who first colonized each world. Holding great power and wealth, these First Families are expected to make significant contributions to their society. Nimisha is a character who more than pays her royal dues by breaking out of her expected societal role to achieve success.
She's also more fairy tale than human being. Beauty, talent, intelligence and being an obedient daughter top the list of graces with which she is endowed. She's also a great lover, mother, starship pilot and mechanical engineer...obviously not the average spoiled-rotten rich kid. Amazingly, this lack of realism doesn't seem to hurt the story at all. What does seem to harm the plot is a lack of any real threats to Nimisha. She is so good at everything she does that there's never any real danger of her failing. This isn't all bad, but those who enjoy adrenaline-pounding, edge-of-the-seat reading will be disappointed.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for a relaxing novel that doesn't make the heart monitor spike every time a page is turned. And the vivid descriptions of planets, spaceships and expeditions are particularly gratifying, making up for the occasionally slow dialog. Clearly, McCaffrey shows that she's a storyteller who can weave mesmerizing tales about more things than dragons.
Bigger-than-life heroes, or in this case, heroines, always appeal to me. If you're not feeling too deadly serious, this one might help get you through the winter blahs.
-- Susan
Back to the top.
The Chase of the Golden Meteor
There's gold in them there stars!
|
The Chase of the Golden Meteor
|
|
By Jules Verne
|
|
Bison Books
|
|
$13.00
|
|
Trade Paperback, 1998
|
|
ISBN 0-8032-9619-3
|
|
|
Review by Clinton Lawrence
 n Jules Verne's The Chase of the Golden Meteor, two rival amateur astronomers in Whaston, a small Virginia town, have discovered a new meteor. The two, Dean Forsyth and Dr. Sydney Hudelson, are friends, but each is obsessed with claiming discovery for himself. Independently, they write letters to two national observatories, informing them of the discovery. Unfortunately, the weather turns cloudy, and each becomes frustrated by his inability to make further sightings. In fact, their original observations lasted only seconds, so neither was even able to calculate a trajectory for the meteor.
Eventually, the skies do clear, and the Pittsburgh and Cincinnati observatories confirm and announce the discovery. At first, Whaston celebrates the achievement of its two citizens. Forsyth and Hudelson, however, each believe the other is trying to steal credit, and their rivalry evolves into open hostility, with the town broken into factions over the matter. What makes things even worse is that Francis Gordon, Forsyth's nephew, is engaged to Hudelson's oldest daughter, Jenny, and the feud is threatening to disrupt the wedding plans. This upsets not just the two lovers but every other member of each household, all of whom are wholeheartedly in favor of the nuptials.
Further observations reveal two surprises: the meteor is in a stable orbit 400 kilometers above the Earth, and it consists of pure gold. Immediately, both Forsyth and Hudelson regard themselves as the rightful owners of the meteor, exacerbating their feud. Meanwhile, in Paris, an eccentric young inventor named Zephyrin Xirdal creates a device that can disrupt the golden meteor's orbit, causing it to fall where he chooses, and he directs his banker-godfather to buy a certain piece of land. As his contraption begins to affect the meteor's orbit, and astronomers notice the perturbations, world governments convene to decide how to distribute the wealth when the meteor does fall.
Science fiction or satire?
The Chase of the Golden Meteor is one of Verne's last novels, first published three years after his death in 1905. This edition--a reproduction of the 1909 version by London publisher Grant Richards--contains an introduction by SF author Gregory Benford in which he explores Verne's role as the father of hard science fiction, and discusses this novel in particular. And while it's possible to see within The Chase of the Golden Meteor how Verne's narrative methods could naturally lead to both the literary strengths and weaknesses of what has become known as hard SF, this novel is not a good example of that sub-genre. Instead, the science and technology are props that play subordinate roles in what is primarily a satire on obsession, greed and vanity.
As a satirist, Verne is nowhere near as sophisticated or salient as Jonathan Swift or Mark Twain, each of whom turned to SF when their purposes suited them. But he shows considerable skill in adopting a light-hearted, bemused narrative voice in exploring situations that have potentially catastrophic consequences. And the novel is quite funny in places. In fact, the plot reads much more like a restrained thematic predecessor to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World than an early example of hard SF. There aren't any profound revelations about the human condition, and Verne's observations aren't ideological or controversial, but he is effective at making them entertaining and accurate.
The Chase of the Golden Meteor is clearly a competent, but minor, work, both in Verne's legacy and in the development of science fiction. But it's a nice book to have back on shelves, and the University of Nebraska Press has done well to reprint it (under the Bison Books imprint) in an attractive edition with more than 20 illustrations. It's a quick read, and entertaining enough to be well worth the time.
Much of the fun of this book lies in the little details and side commentary in Verne's narrative. On the whole, I found the technical explanations the least interesting part of the novel, and I get the feeling that Verne did as well.
-- Clint
Back to the top.
|
