The Children Star | |||||||||||||
Joan Slonczewski | |||||||||||||
Tor Books, 349 pages | |||||||||||||
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A review by Greg L. Johnson
Prokaryon is a planet which is inhospitable to humans unless they
undergo a grueling process of genetic modification known as "life-shaping."
This process is much more arduous for adults than for children. There
appears to be no intelligent native life, yet the few settlers have noticed
several oddities. Trees grow in orderly rows, and it only rains in the
evening, unless a shower is needed to put out a forest fire. One of the
settlements on the planet is a colony of orphaned children, run by Brother
Rod and Mother Artemis of the Spirit Brethren.
The story begins slowly, taking time to let us get to know the
planet, Brother Rod, and Mother Artemis. Problems begin when an interstellar
corporation, Proteus Unlimited, obtains ownership of Prokaryon.
Interstellar law forbids the terra-forming of planets with indigenous
intelligent life, but there is great pressure to open up Prokaryon for
settlement. L'li, the most overpopulated human occupied planet, is
suffering from plague, and desperately needs a place to alleviate its
overcrowding. Proteus proposes to destroy the existing life on Prokaryon,
exploit the mineral resources, and create a world humans can live on
without the need to alter their genetic structure.
This, of course, would be the end of Brother Rod and the orphan
colony. The story thus becomes one of finding a way to save the planet by
solving the mystery of Prokaryon's ordered ecology, and the possible
existence of intelligent life on the planet.
And a gripping story it is. Slonczewski does a good job of
introducing enough biological detail to keep the reader guessing along with
the characters, but not so much that the plot becomes bogged down in
exposition. The ending realistically leaves the colonists with some of
their problems solved, and others looming ahead of them that are a result
of the discoveries they make.
The book does have one major flaw. The bad guy, Nibur Letheshon,
the owner of Proteus Unlimited, is strictly a cliché. As far as we can tell, he
acts greedily, arrogantly, and selfishly simply because he is greedy,
arrogant, and selfish. The only things we learn about him as an individual
are that he likes his dog and seems to prefer virtual to actual reality.
The basic situation of the story, evil corporation versus good-hearted
orphans, by itself makes it obvious where our sympathies are expected to
lie. It's hard to imagine that many readers would side with Nibur, even if
he had been portrayed as more than just a one-dimensional villain.
Still, the existence of Nibur and his corporation serve their
purpose in the story, which is to give the rest of the characters a
compelling reason to solve the mystery of life on Prokaryon. That mystery
drives the story, and well-drawn characters like Brother Rod, 'jum, the
young refugee he rescues from L'li, and Sarai the Shaper, pull the reader
into the story and involve us in solving the mystery.
The Children Star is a well-written novel that is a worthwhile
addition to the future history Slonczewski began in
A Door Into Ocean and Daughter of Elysium.
It's a bit of a shame, then, that a villain whose characterization fails to rise above the level of a
stereotype prevents this good novel from being a great one.
With this review, reviewer Greg L. Johnson sets a personal record for number of reviews published in one year, almost equalling the number Lisa DuMond turns out in a typical month. His reviews also appear in the The New York Review of Science Fiction. |
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