Classic SF: Power Play, Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Power Play

Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

ISBN: 0345388267

Read January 28, 2015
Third (final) book of the Petaybee trilogy (Powers that Be, Power Lines)

Oof.  The well water gets a bit gritty towards the bottom.  Overall storyline concludes nicely - the assholes from the two previous books hire a notorious space pirate to kidnap Yana, Marmion, Diego, and Bunny.  Meanwhile, the planet and the people on the surface (mainly Sean, Johnny, and 'Cita/Aoife/Goat-Dung/Youngling) repel invaders intent on despoiling the ample hunting grounds and medicinal biota of the planet.

Plot-devices that were faintly apparent and easy to overlook in the first books got much worse: the slang is dated and ill-used, the language (especially dialogue) is stilted and ridiculous, and situations are obviously contrived for effect rather than sense.

Despite that, and the many eye-rolls and sighs, I did enjoy reading it, and I'm glad I finished off the set.  Namid especially is a good character, and it was nice to see the religious supplicants actually being useful characters (although we never find out what happens with "Brother Granite" who isn't who he appears to be).

Also, with the epilogue, can we stop with the fantasy of women giving birth with no pain and it being a magical dreamy perfect experience that ends with them immediately rising from the birthing pool looking "flat-bellied and lithe again"?  Seriously?  It's patronizing.

Classic SF: Power Lines, Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Power Lines

Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

ISBN: 0345387805

Read January 21, 2015
Second book of the Petaybee trilogy (Powers that Be, Power Play)

Book two of the set was as interesting, perhaps more-so than the first, but suffered from un-wrapped threads at the ending, especially regarding Shush.

Petaybee has just forced a confrontation with Intergal, and they've sent a duo of company execs to determine the best course of action to continue making money from the planet.  The lady capitalist Marmion is our added protagonist, along with Goat-Dung (good grief) and Coaxtl on the planetary side.  Our new antagonists appear in the form of the "ethnographer" Matthew Luzon, and the continuing obstruction of Torkel Whittaker from the first book.

The planet is melting, the growing season is either early or the climate is shifting, and Intergal is desperate to find pockets of colonists who don't believe Petaybee is a benevolent sentient being (since finding anyone who doesn't believe that it's sentient at all is a bust) and Luzon is off to the southern continent to find them.

There are missing siblings, miraculous rescues, pointedly-useful biota, and general asshattery from the corporation.  I thought the pacing was better, and the variety of cultures and attitudes was refreshing, but at the end, there were too many strings to tie up, and some were left to hang, or were tied up in ways that don't make sense even by the very loose plotting standard set by the rest of the book.

Still, fun to read.  I'm going to try the last, just so I can say I finished the trilogy.  

Classic SF: Powers that Be, Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Powers that Be
Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
ISBN: 078572852X
Read January 16, 2015
First book of the Petaybee trilogy (Power Lines and Power Play)

Really more Science Fantasy than SF, this is very much like Pern in that "psy" type abilities and planetary sentience are treated as having equal possibility with space travel and terraforming.

Most extra-Solar work these days is done by Intergal, a massive company that discovers, colonizes, and exploits the resources of planets across the galaxy.  Our hero is an ex-company soldier, who was injured during a "terrorist attack" on a remote colony world.

Now she's sent to Petaybee, a small rural, backwards ice-ball of a planet, to live out her last few years on the company's dime before her injury does her in.  Except, now that she's here, would she mind horribly integrating with the locals (a bizarro mix of Inuit and Irish cultures) and spying on them because they keep obstructing company efforts to locate and mine the planet's valuable resources?  If so, she'll find that her pension is increased, and she'll get access to the company base, rather than the useless empty company store meant for the locals.

Now, she's stuck between loyalty to her employer, and a growing sense of unease that the company is about to commit a terrible moral offense against a sentient mind.

I enjoyed it enough to pick up the next, but it was a bit weak in places.  It's fairly obvious that the weird Irish/Inuit blend was the reason for the story, and everything else was sketched in to support that odd premise.  The company goons are company goons, the locals are nearly all wonderful people, and the "powers" of the planet and the genetically-altered (good lord the dithering about with genetic manipulation and genetic alteration and adaptations was enough to drive one nuts) residents were even more thinly-related to actual science than the magic dragons of the Pern books.

Fun to read for the history lesson, and to see how far the genre has come; I'm reading Ancillary Justice at the same time, and the contrast is mind-blowing.

  

Goodwill Find! Fantasy: The Coelura, Anne McCaffrey, illustrated by Ned Dameron

Found this at the Goodwill, in the children's section, which I disagree with slightly - I don't think the story would hold a child's interest very well, being a glorified love story.

The Coelura
Anne McCaffrey, illustrated by Ned Dameron
ISBN: 0312930429 (this illustrated edition from 1987, original story from 1983)
Read November 5, 2014

I want to say this is a good book, because the story and the world and the illustrations (let's be honest here and say that my delight was MOSTLY because of the illustrations) were so much fun to jump into for a short afternoon read.  I read it over lunch, it's only 156 paperback-sized pages, and many of those pages are illustrations.  If it weren't for the copyright page, I'd be highly temped to say that the illustrations came first, and the story was created as an attempt to mesh them all together, but knowing the story was written first makes me somehow gleefully happy at the bonkers illustrations of characters, environments, and poses that Dameron decided needed interpreting.  His vision of the protagonist at age 14 is especially delightful, and very reminiscent of the eighties.

So, is this a good book?  Sadly, not really.  The language is stilted and grasping for "alienness" in phrases and descriptions, the characters all speak and act like they're college theatre majors doing their first Shakespeare production, with lots of expansive gesturing (in the text, as well as the illustrations) and very proper, very formal, very unrealistic dialogue.  The plot isn't any great shakes either - in 120 pages, it ought to be trim, but a lot of time and energy are wasted on the wordy dialogue-laden intro, then the follow-up manages both to totally fulfill cliche expectations while missing a giant Chekov's gun in regards to one specific character which changes the entire climax and denouement of the story (in my opinion for the worse).  Also, egregious editor fail:  bells "peal" and one can "peel" fruit.  Different words, different meanings.

Summary: (spoilers?)
Caissa is the "body-heir" of a planetary regional governor (no more specifics, just that he's obviously rich and important and part of "society" in this place - our descriptions of jobs and titles are forever maddeningly vague) and thus will inherit all of his wealth and glory and positions, in addition to whatever she manages to accrue on her own.  Her "womb-mother" is obsessed with fashion and the high-life, and doesn't spend much time on this small world with nothing other than hunting and a small court of provincials.  Mom leaves one day in a huff, declaring that she's still owed part of her "contract" that dad hasn't fulfilled, and Caissa is now curious.  She discovers that there is a missing species on the planet, but meanwhile she just had her first serious proposal to be a mother to a body-heir of another society person (her dad is adamant that she consider the proposal for political reasons that STILL, even after finishing the story, remain unclear), and she's so miffed by his inept and condescending advances that she runs away to fly her personal aircraft out in the wilderness to seethe and pout.  Out there on her own she hears a faint distress beacon from the restricted islands which are connected to the missing species, finds a crashed ship, and the rest of the story proceeds according to exactly what you're thinking it will, discovering the "missing" species and their purpose and value, establishing a love-interest, and putting very shaky legs on a mystery/conspiracy.  There are random detours and red-herrings that spawn at random intervals, flap around wildly to be sure to be noticed, and then are utterly ignored.

So, good story?  Not exactly.  It was a bit frustrating, and more amusing to read than actually good or interesting, but it was a fun experience, and there were those excellent zany illustrations to pore over!