kw: book reviews, science fiction, space opera
In the middle of reading a number of heavier works, both fiction and nonfiction, Starship: Mutiny by Mike Resnick was pure escapist space opera for me. Heavy on the dualism: military discipline vs subversive righteousness; "the Republic" (which seems to be anything but) I vs an ill-defined "Toroni Federation" enemy; white hats and black hats all around.
I like the protagonist/hero, Wilson Cole, a thinker and doer. The byplay between him and various "by the book" adversaries makes any of them the poster child for my maxim (viz. M. Twain), "Someone who is unwilling to think is no better than someone who cannot think" and its corollary, "...and is probably much worse." Cole doesn't bother to outgun an adversary, but out-thinks him or her (boneheads of both sexes, and several species, abound).
Cole is assigned as a mid-rank officer on an aging starship staffed by malcontents. Sort of a halfway house. It doesn't take him long to make a tidy collection of both friends and enemies, nor to find "the enemy" active in a corner of space that nobody expected. As his successes pile up and his popularity (with the brass) plummets, Cole is in his element.
As someone who has built a career—a rather good one—by doing for customers what I've been ordered not to do, I know right where Cole is coming from. Like him, I've been tempted to hoist the Jolly Roger a time or two. Considering that the second volume in the proposed quintology is Starship: Pirate, it'll spoil nothing to tell you that Cole finally does just that.
Mike Resnick is just a couple years older than I am. I expect the quintology to get into print at a rate of about a volume each year or two. It's gonna be a fun decade.
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