Synopsis

History

First publication: Leading Edge #50, October 2005

Review

I’ve been hearing nothing but praise and adoration about this author. I’ve never before read anything he has written. I’m not sure that this was the best place to start with him, but it had the criteria I was looking for at this moment: inexpensive, short and science fiction. I don’t find this to be the earth shatteringly brilliant story that his admirers claim he writes, but it is a good story - a completely competent space opera in the tradition of Poul Anderson and Alan Dean Foster. Well written, exciting and with some interesting ideas. In some ways the one character reminded me of the Mule from the Foundation Trilogy. And that’s where this falls a little short of the admiration I am hearing about this author. I can see pieces and parts of many different classic space operas put together here. Not quite to the point of becoming derivative though - this still has enough originality to make it worth reading. On the basis of this I have to see Sanderson as a completely competent SF author, but not the all-time greatest that admirers seem to claim. Not by a long way. But still have to recommend this novelette to any fans of space opera.

The one thing I really wish he would have changed is the antiquated idea of an asteroid field being made up of really close asteroids making travel though it immensely dangerous. Who knows what all exists out in the universe, but such an asteroid field would most likely destroy itself in a short time from collisions with other asteroids. We have flown spacecraft through our system’s asteroid belt without incident and even flown through Saturn’s rings without destroying any spacecraft. This is a minor complaint that can be overlooked, but I wish authors would just drop that old notion. It’s as antiquated as Martian canals.

This story does make me want to read one of Sanderson’s better known novels.
-Gregory Kerkman