Earthbound by Joe Haldeman

Color me surprised! At the end of Starbound, I really thought Haldeman wouldn't publish a sequel. Now, I just think he shouldn't have.

It's a pity when an author gets to the point where he has nothing new to say, yet tries to say something, anyway. Haldeman's early works were wonderful, with The Forever War as a prime example.

The story begins with Carmen and her friends at the NASA space center, where they come under attack by various enraged Earth folk, who may perhaps blame them for the problem with the Others. The Others have destroyed Earth's moon to create an asteroid belt around the planet to discourage space travel, and when that didn't work, they turned off all electricity for the world. Nothing that requires electrical power works, and this results in massive deaths from the obvious causes.

One thing for all my hoplophilic friends to note, Haldeman makes the common error of saying that the spacefarers were attacked by people with "automatic" weapons. I can barely imagine a scenario in the future when fully automatic weapons will be more easily accessible than they are now in the U.S., and Haldeman really hasn't laid the groundwork for that situation, so it's likely he's referring to "assault style" semiautomatics here.

There were a number of little "glitches" in the story, when something functioned that shouldn't have, with electricity turned off completely, that bothered me, as well.
When the Others briefly return the power, the merry band makes their way on a NASA jet to Camp David, where the interim president hopes to recruit them, then to California, where one of their members grew up on a farm commune that might be doing all right without modern conveniences, then takes a trip to Eugene, Oregon to bargain for some resource books, then attempts to return to California, but end up in a plane crash when the Others unexpectedly turn off power again.

At one point in the tale, the governor of California sets off a bunch of "hell bombs", nuclear weapons which make everything within a radius of five miles highly radioactive, along the entire state border, to cut the state off from the rest of the world. Just do the math, people, and divide the amount of miles along CA's border by 10 (2 times the radius), and you'll wonder how even a state as large as this one gets enough fissionable material to create that many bombs.

The story "wanders" about just as aimlessly as Carmen & Co. do, nothing significant happens. Give it a pass.

Short Takes

(11/16/08) Joe Haldeman's new Marsbound seems to be his attempt at YA fiction. It's a bout a teenaged girl who emigrates to Mars with her parents and younger, pesty brother...wait a second! Can you say Podkayne? It's such a Heinlein ripoff. Haldeman's writing is always pretty good, though, so it's worth the read, but breaks no new ground.

(11/17/08) Finished the Haldeman book - pretty anticlimactic ending.

(11/23/08) Read a couple chapters of a book by Ron Paul, Revolution: A Manifesto. Interesting libertarian ideas, there.

(12/14/08) Reading the latest in the Greywalker series, Underground - slow so far.

Starbound, by Joe Haldeman

The first book in this latest series by Haldeman, Marsbound, was a pretty good read, very much an homage to Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars, in my opinion. The heroine, Carmen, was the first human to make contact with the "Martians", who are actually beings designed by The Others, vastly powerful entities from insterstellar space. They have been observing humans on Earth for thousands of years, and apparently decide that they are too dangerous to be allowed to survive, so they attempt to destroy Earth at the end of the novel. Obviously, their plans are thwarted, otherwise we'd have no sequel in Starbound.
The governments of Earth, Luna and Mars have decided to send an expedition to contact The Others, to try to plead with or reason them out of their decision to destroy Earth. Carmen, and her husband, Paul, are two of the members of this mission, which will take seven years, subjective time, but much longer from an Earth reference frame, due to relativity effects.
Most of the novel is the story of their voyage, which is mildly amusing. There are four humans from Mars, three from Earth, and three of the "Martians" on board the voyage. Their interactions and discussions of alien philosophy go on for about three and a half years, to the "turnover" point when the ship must begin deceleration. At that point, I think even Haldeman got tired of their issues, and decided to cut things short. When they enter free fall at turnaround, they are met by a representative of the others, a biological construct, who tells them they are to be allowed to meet The Others, instead of being destroyed out of hand. He makes use of a very convenient (to us and the author) way to travel without experiencing subjective time, all the way to the home planet of The Others, and then back to Earth. Thanks, Joe, for saving us from another ten years of Peyton Place in Space.
On their arrival at Earth, they deliver the aliens message, but once again Mr. Haldeman takes a short cut, leaving us with a very unsatisfactory ending. If there turns out to be a third in this series, I'd be really surprised.