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james_davis_nicollThrough Struggle, the Stars - A Human Reach Novel
By John J. Lumpkin
I read this because, well, I was bribed. As it turns out, the book falls squarely into my areas of interest. Although it is self-published, it is no worse than the professionally published MilSF I see and better than most; assuming the author does not have Jim Monroe-style objections to the idea, some major publisher might want to consider snapping Lumpkin up. Had I purchased it on a whim, I would not have been disappointed.
The author has clearly done some research and has avoided some of the outdated tropes other authors unthinkingly adopt; sadly, there are still some areas he needs to work on [0]. Although many of the comments that will follow may seem negative, this is a book for which it is not completely nonsensical to offer constructive criticism; the flaws are ones that the author could conceivably address in future works (although probably not without abandoning this setting).
The novel is set about 2140. The US has been eclipsed as a major power, although it seems to be a respectable second-ranker on par with the position France or the UK were in around 1960; the main powers are Japan and China. Advances in technology have given humanity access to the stars via artificial wormholes; both access to raw materials and concern that a single planet is too vulnerable has inspired the various nations to expand into the solar system and beyond. Wormholes are expensive and seem to be funded at the nation-state level; as a consequence nations see their extrasolar colonies as a measure of national worth. It reminded me a bit like the race for Africa in the 19th century; arguably the profit levels just are not there to justify the effort but rational goals are not really part of the process.
Although nobody wants a general war, diplomatic and military ineptitude leads to one. The fact that nobody has fought a real war in space means there will be a brutal learning curve as factions discover which of their doctrines actually work; paralleling this are lessons in how vulnerable the space based infrastructure is [1]. Although you'd think a century or so would have been long enough for the US to come to terms with its status, the adminstration in power sees America's fall from supremacy as an affront; when the chance comes to exploit the growing rift between Japan and China, President Delgado jumps at it.
The aspect we get to see is a daring plan to retrieve Sun Haisheng, the leader of the Taiwanese independence movement, from a distant planet so that he can be dropped into China to stir up nationalist fervor; even if the plan had worked, you have to wonder if any of the geniuses who came up with this were familiar with how cunning gambits like this worked out in the past, from sending Lenin off to cause trouble for the Czar to various adventures in Central Asia.
As protagonist Neil Mercer soon discovers, there is a huge gap between how the plan was envisioned back in an office on Earth and how it works out in the field, particularly when there is an escalating shooting war going on. There is a lot of hostile territory between where Sun Haisheng is and where he needs to be and Neil's side is not the one that enjoys the edge in either absolute numbers or in tactics; adding in an irate and highly motivated Chinese intelligence officer with a grudge against Neil and his friends is just the cherry on top of this crap Sundae. Without spoiling too much the book very quickly turns into a running example of how badly simple plans can go wrong.
The novel itself was functional enough; the characters are a little flat and Neil seems oddly conflicted about killing people on the other side for someone who signed up with the military. He's also a bit naive about why the US did the things it did when it was on top,going by "But America had long since abandoned its crusade for worldwide democracy as too expensive and antagonistic." Frankly, I am not at all keen on the antagonist's motivations but at least his quirks are not painted as flaws all Chinese are prone to.
I've seen other MilSF books where the good guys are on the short end of a series of curb stomp battles but the examples that come to mind involve the black hats using zerg-rush tactics, not being better at carrying out a war than the protagonists.
One point of praise: MilSF has a great store of outmoded or just plain stupid ideas about how war in space would work. Lumpkin has at least gone to the effort of using such resources as Atomic Rockets to try to work out for himself how space combat might work. There is no stealth in space here and rockets do not zoom around at absurd accelerations. I am little unclear why crews on starships are sohigh large; I'd have expected a lot more automation.
The main problems I have with the setting may be due to a mismatch between the situation the author wanted to have (a declining America trying to pull off a Mussolini and leap back to prominence as a great power) and the Sfnal props he elected to use to tell that story. Artificial wormholes + wanting a lot of star systems under human control requires the setting to be a minimum number of years into the future, even given the relativistic probes used to carry the wormhole ends and the unrealistically short delay between developing the technology needed to reach the stars and actually using it. Consider, for example, the typical lag between NASA deciding on a particular space probe proposal and that probe actually being launched. The geopolitical situation would have made more sense in the mid or perhaps late 21st century but the limitations of the handwavium he used pushed the date back at least half a century too far.
There are also some details I wondered about: climate change seems to be completely absent as an event and I had to wonder why Japan and not India as the great power and if Japan, how they handled their current demographic issues.
Despite my quibbles, I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it. I would also be interested in reading another book by the same author.
0: Lunar helium three *choke* For much of the book, I could live with the 3He + D fusion plants because the source was said to be gas giants but then the author made it clear the original source of 3He was the Moon. Sigh. 11Boron + p, will there never be any love for you?
1: This reminded me a bit of James S.A. Correy's Caliban's War, where kicking the legs out from under the shared infrastructure everyone's lives depend on turns out to be a bad idea.
By John J. Lumpkin
I read this because, well, I was bribed. As it turns out, the book falls squarely into my areas of interest. Although it is self-published, it is no worse than the professionally published MilSF I see and better than most; assuming the author does not have Jim Monroe-style objections to the idea, some major publisher might want to consider snapping Lumpkin up. Had I purchased it on a whim, I would not have been disappointed.
The author has clearly done some research and has avoided some of the outdated tropes other authors unthinkingly adopt; sadly, there are still some areas he needs to work on [0]. Although many of the comments that will follow may seem negative, this is a book for which it is not completely nonsensical to offer constructive criticism; the flaws are ones that the author could conceivably address in future works (although probably not without abandoning this setting).
The novel is set about 2140. The US has been eclipsed as a major power, although it seems to be a respectable second-ranker on par with the position France or the UK were in around 1960; the main powers are Japan and China. Advances in technology have given humanity access to the stars via artificial wormholes; both access to raw materials and concern that a single planet is too vulnerable has inspired the various nations to expand into the solar system and beyond. Wormholes are expensive and seem to be funded at the nation-state level; as a consequence nations see their extrasolar colonies as a measure of national worth. It reminded me a bit like the race for Africa in the 19th century; arguably the profit levels just are not there to justify the effort but rational goals are not really part of the process.
Although nobody wants a general war, diplomatic and military ineptitude leads to one. The fact that nobody has fought a real war in space means there will be a brutal learning curve as factions discover which of their doctrines actually work; paralleling this are lessons in how vulnerable the space based infrastructure is [1]. Although you'd think a century or so would have been long enough for the US to come to terms with its status, the adminstration in power sees America's fall from supremacy as an affront; when the chance comes to exploit the growing rift between Japan and China, President Delgado jumps at it.
The aspect we get to see is a daring plan to retrieve Sun Haisheng, the leader of the Taiwanese independence movement, from a distant planet so that he can be dropped into China to stir up nationalist fervor; even if the plan had worked, you have to wonder if any of the geniuses who came up with this were familiar with how cunning gambits like this worked out in the past, from sending Lenin off to cause trouble for the Czar to various adventures in Central Asia.
As protagonist Neil Mercer soon discovers, there is a huge gap between how the plan was envisioned back in an office on Earth and how it works out in the field, particularly when there is an escalating shooting war going on. There is a lot of hostile territory between where Sun Haisheng is and where he needs to be and Neil's side is not the one that enjoys the edge in either absolute numbers or in tactics; adding in an irate and highly motivated Chinese intelligence officer with a grudge against Neil and his friends is just the cherry on top of this crap Sundae. Without spoiling too much the book very quickly turns into a running example of how badly simple plans can go wrong.
The novel itself was functional enough; the characters are a little flat and Neil seems oddly conflicted about killing people on the other side for someone who signed up with the military. He's also a bit naive about why the US did the things it did when it was on top,going by "But America had long since abandoned its crusade for worldwide democracy as too expensive and antagonistic." Frankly, I am not at all keen on the antagonist's motivations but at least his quirks are not painted as flaws all Chinese are prone to.
I've seen other MilSF books where the good guys are on the short end of a series of curb stomp battles but the examples that come to mind involve the black hats using zerg-rush tactics, not being better at carrying out a war than the protagonists.
One point of praise: MilSF has a great store of outmoded or just plain stupid ideas about how war in space would work. Lumpkin has at least gone to the effort of using such resources as Atomic Rockets to try to work out for himself how space combat might work. There is no stealth in space here and rockets do not zoom around at absurd accelerations. I am little unclear why crews on starships are so
The main problems I have with the setting may be due to a mismatch between the situation the author wanted to have (a declining America trying to pull off a Mussolini and leap back to prominence as a great power) and the Sfnal props he elected to use to tell that story. Artificial wormholes + wanting a lot of star systems under human control requires the setting to be a minimum number of years into the future, even given the relativistic probes used to carry the wormhole ends and the unrealistically short delay between developing the technology needed to reach the stars and actually using it. Consider, for example, the typical lag between NASA deciding on a particular space probe proposal and that probe actually being launched. The geopolitical situation would have made more sense in the mid or perhaps late 21st century but the limitations of the handwavium he used pushed the date back at least half a century too far.
There are also some details I wondered about: climate change seems to be completely absent as an event and I had to wonder why Japan and not India as the great power and if Japan, how they handled their current demographic issues.
Despite my quibbles, I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it. I would also be interested in reading another book by the same author.
0: Lunar helium three *choke* For much of the book, I could live with the 3He + D fusion plants because the source was said to be gas giants but then the author made it clear the original source of 3He was the Moon. Sigh. 11Boron + p, will there never be any love for you?
1: This reminded me a bit of James S.A. Correy's Caliban's War, where kicking the legs out from under the shared infrastructure everyone's lives depend on turns out to be a bad idea.
