Another science fiction devoured. (Why review books?)
http://www.czerneda.com/novels.htm
The book:
Smart savvy herione (Earther Gail Smith) played off against a street smart heroes Pardell and Malley from the Thromberg station. The solar system and earth are quarantined against the vague Quill (what is it? the book leads off pointing out that humans are clearly the only intelligent life in the universe). Gail is from once side of the Quarantine, Malley and Pardell from the other. It all weaves nicely together.
The experience:
Let's talk about Sunborn by Jeffrey Carver, because I picked up in the Company of Others after tossing aside Sunborn. Sunborn reminds me of a poorly written mockery of science fiction that one might see on a mediocre Saturday Morning cartoon trying to make fun of sci fi. Stilted characters. The author seeks to create a "rich" world by injecting new bizarre traits or situations every other page. He doesn't have the creativity to pull it off. The pages read like they were rolled off an assemlby line of the bizarre where the workers were having a bad day. Page one. Let's stamp something bizarre. OK, here's a telepathic link. Page two ... low on the bizarre. How about an intelligent sun? Page three ... oh pick a random page of P K Dick. An so on.
My reading of In the Company of Other's benefited greatly from the relief of coherence and quality it provided. I devoured it overnight, and had an unpleasantly tired Tuesday as a consequence. To add to the amusement of this book, at around 2AM I looked through the front window to see the (unabashed) neighbor boy sneak out with a gaggle of friends. Not large enough to be a posse and they look unaltered by sensibility reducing substances -- so it looked like good clean mischief. I just smiled with fond memories of those summer's of freedom that precede financial independence.
I suspected, as I read it, that I've read the sequel. The story tempo and characters seemed extremely familiar. I can't find a sequel, so it's entirely possible that I swallowed it whole before and forgot most of it. Overall, a perfect pulp sci fi experience.
