Space opera for the new Century

kw: book reviews, science fiction, space fiction, robots

I must confess I haven't seen a single episode of Battlestar Galactica, neither the 1970s version nor the "reimagined" early 2000s version. So I went to the Wikipedia Article to get oriented, once I was about halfway through. Sagittarius is Bleeding by Peter David, who has written a handful of Star Trek-based novels, is based on the more recent series. For the two or three other computer-literate folks who may be as uninformed as I was, the Wikipedia material is a good grounding.

The book's core idea is, "What is Human?", which I understand is a recurring theme in the reimagined series. While most of the robotic Cylons are metallic minions whose appearance leads to their being called "toasters", a small but unknown number are "humanoid", and are apparently indistinguishable from humans, even upon autopsy or by blood tests (A supposed diagnostic blood test is found early in the book to be a mirage, at least to the reader if not the majority of the characters). Whan a Cylon prisoner is found to be pregnant, by a human father, the dilemma deepens.

The President of Humanity (one of several titles), Laura Roslin, is having recurring, disturbing dreams that turn out to be prophetic, or at least some kind of guidance. Not that it helps her much. Because the core cultural value of the 30,000 humans left living (at this time 150,000 years ago) is religious, prophecies abound, and the rather dreadful prophecies of the Edda (a scripture) of the Midguardians (a Norse-inspired construct: Midgard refers to the "world of men" in old German, but to a more mystical realm in old Norse) promise to have a more profound impact.

I found the going rather uneven. There is a lot of ruminating by all the main characters, so that I found myself spending too much time in their minds. This tendency, found in nearly all modern sci-fi, is unfortunate. After a rather wooden few opening chapters, though, the plot proceeded briskly enough. I finished rather glad I'd read it, and that is my criterion for a book worth reading.