A Long Time Until Now by Michael Z. Williamson

Williamson takes a break from his Freehold and mercenary stories here to play around in the time travel genre. While he is quite capable of spinning an interesting read out of nothing, while his characters attempt to build a civilization in the Stone Age. I'm not certain he's really brought anything new to the genre that hasn't previously been offered by Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Frankowski's Conrad, Flint's Ring of Fire, and Weber's Safehold stories.

A U.S. military convoy in Afghanistan bumps into some sort of temporal anomaly and are transported into Paleolithic times, where they must attempt to stay alive and preserve what civilization and technology they have brought with them.

Some other groups get displaced from their own timelines into the area and the story, as well, including a Roman legions which gives them a great deal of trouble before being cowed into a reluctant cooperation. Does this story by any chance tie into one of the Misplaced Legion stories by Turtledove?

There was a point, at the end of the book, when I thought the entire story was a "shaggy dog" for the entire purpose of making fun of the bureaucracy (such as the EPA) response to people who return from time travel to the past, like, "please fill out this form telling us how many endangered species members you killed while you were there." Pretty much all of the species from the Paleolithic era would now be extinct, so everything they killed was "endangered".

One of the things this book does is to experiment in multi-POV like crazy, and it somehow oddly works. After a short time to establish the setting and story line, Williamson jumps from one character to another, multiple times within a chapter.

If you enjoy reading about the types of workarounds they figured out to achieve a level of technology that provided at least a few of the comforts of home, with only sticks and rocks on hand to begin with, you'll probably enjoy this one. It's also good to be reminded every once in a while just how "nasty brutish and short" our lives would be without modern medicine, hygiene, agriculture, domesticated animals, and so forth. The good old days weren't all that good, merely old, after all.

When Diplomacy Fails by Michael Z. Williamson

I'm sorry to say that When Diplomacy Fails is probably the least remarkable of all of Williamson's stories set in the Freehold universe. The only thing I can think of is that it's meant to be a transitional  book, getting things ready for some new, politically twisty and explosively good action in his next novel.

Shortly after successfully protecting Caron Prescot from multiple assassination attempts, earning her gratitude and, in Aramis' case a bit more, Ripple Creek gets an assignment to protect Bureau of State Minister Joy Highland as she goes on a diplomatic tour on a very troubled planet. A willful bureacrat used to getting her own way turns out to be just as challenging to protect as a headstrong young heiress, and given the sheer number of political and religious factions on Mtali there are plenty of folks who would be happy to see her dead, including some factions within the UN who see her as a threat to their candidate for the top spot in a coming election.

There are plenty of gun battles, a kidnapping, and Elke gets to blow stuff up a lot, so the action doesn't drag at all, once the stage is set. I just don't feel as if the characters were developed more thoroughly, the plot had no major twists, and I just felt as if it wasn't up to Williamson's usual standards.

Do Unto Others by Michael Z. Williamson

Our favorite mercenary band from Ripple Creek has been given what would appear to be a plum assignment, guarding a rich heiress to an offplanet mining fortune, Caron Prescott, as she finishes up her engineering thesis on Earth. But more than one entity wants either to kidnap her, kill her, or incapacitate her in some way, and the attacks on her person escalate to the point where the place that seems to be the most secure is on her family's mining planet of Govannon, so Alex, Aramis, Jason and Elke and their friends transfer there as soon as she is done with her final exams.

Things seem quiet at first, but our friends are so wonderfully paranoid about protecting their client that they begin to acquire and stash weapons, supplies and (for Elke) explosives, and to plan ways to escape and evade attackers. As the latest addition to the management team of the mining consortium, Caron spends much of her time visiting the various facilities, learning about how operations are proceeding. She misses the signs, but someone is agitating the miners, and the workforce is a powder keg about to explode, seemingly unrelated to the attacks from outside.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop, the suspense builds nicely, and we begin to get an idea about who is really responsible for the attacks on Caron. It all comes to a head when her father is killed in a "mining accident" and the crew from Ripple Creek decides to protect Ms. Prescott at all costs. A great running battle scene ensues, and Elke finally gets to blow things up, nearly to her heart's content.

There's an interesting passage which is either about how the "evil capitalists" create wealth for all through a trickle-down effect, or perhaps it's about how technologies developed for our space race benefit society, or maybe even a little of both:

"This wasn't just a mine, it was a research facility, a resort, a peek into the future of space habitats, and might solve several problems with all human settlements, including pollution, starvation and resource depletion. The Prescott family had certainly earned its trillions. Far from being evil capitalists, the family were contributing massively to the future of the human race. They'd developed several entire industries, and created hundreds of refinements of others, not to mention being the vanguard of development of the mining and smelting techniques...The frothing socialists who hated the wealth simple couldn't, or didn't want to, understand that they benefitted directly from all this development, which only came about because Bryan Prescott was willing to stake his existing fortune on a bet some decades back."

More good action, and we get to know the Ripple Creek operators a bit better, too.

Rogue by Michael Z. Williamson

Rogue is the sixth book in the Freehold series, and continues the tradition of action and adventure established early by Williamson. We return to the story of Kenneth Chinran, from The Weapon. Chinran has been psychologically damaged by his experiences in the war against Earth, and has disappeared from everyone's radar with his and Deni's daughter, Chelsea. He has been working as a male escort occasionally and running his own machine shop for a variety of clients, until he is discovered by Naumann again after he thwarts a robbery attempt at a local pizza joint in a manner that is an unmistakeable trail to someone with his skills.

Naumann recruits him, reluctantly, to track down and eliminate a former member of the team he took to Earth, who is now accepting independent assassination contracts. The political fallout that would ensue if it was discovered that an ex-military specialist from Freehold had gone freelance would be a bad thing. Chinran and his sexy sidekick, Silver, that Naumann assigns to help him, travel to the planet Caledonia, where they are in time to disrupt Randall's assassination of a prominent economist, but fail to stop the second attempt or capture the rogue agent.

They head off to Mtali in hot pursuit, and are unable to fulfill the mission there, then to Nova Rossia where Randall keeps one step ahead of them making mob hits, then to Earth, scene of Chinran's original crimes. Eventually the trail leads back to Freehold, and a final confrontation. Lots of blood, bodies and inventive assassination methods in this one, and perhaps some peace for Chinran's tormented soul at the end, leaving Williamson to move on to the focus on his Ripple Creek characters.

Better to Beg Forgiveness by Michael Z. Williamson

Loosely tied to the Freehold stories, Better to Beg Forgiveness is the tale of a band of mercenaries tasked with protecting the president of a backward, "third world" planet. The leader of the executive protection detail is Alex Marlowe, a former captain in the USMC. Rounding out the group, we have Aramis, a young, brash, and slightly insecure Army vet, Elke, the lone female on the team, an explosives expert - who seems to get almost an orgasmic pleasure from blowing things up, Jason Vaughn, Marlowe's deputy and sidekick, Horace "Shaman" Mbuto, the team medic, and Bart, their heavy weapons thug and German wet Navy vet.

One of the things that keeps this novel interesting is the interplay between these characters as they get to know each other - their employer, RippleCreek, has formed the team ad hoc for this assignment, and only a few of them have worked together before. Aside from a little bit of maturing on the part of Aramis, the youngster, there's really no change in their basic natures throughout the novel, however.

When they begin to guard Balaji Bishwanath, in the nation of Celadon on the planet Salin, they find a situation that is definitely fubar. The scenario is eerily similar to that obtaining in many sub Saharan nations, where the UN forces, the military and the State Department are allegedly working towards the same goal, a stable nation, but where their actual goals are widely divergent.

The detail soon comes to respect Balaji for his integrity, intelligence and honor, and when he is inevitably abandoned by the multinational forces, they undertake a quest to get him off planet to safety, and to a place where he can also communicate to the galaxy at large the truth about what's happening on Salin. The journey is long and fraught with difficulty, and the group fights a series of engagements along the way.

Unfortunately, I didn't find this book as entertaining as Freehold, Contact with Chaos and The Weapon, and it seemed to end rather abruptly, as if Williamson had simply stopped when he fulfilled his contractual page count obligation.

The Weapon by Michael Z. Williamson

The Weapon is another book in the Freehold series. We step back here in time to the period before the UN invaded Freehold, described in Freehold. When the situation was dire, a group of undercover operatives from Freehold wreaked havoc on Earth's population and infrastructure through terrorist acts. This is the story of their leader, Kenneth Chinran.

Chinran enlists in the Freehold armed forces, and we get to follow along with him as he goes through basic and advanced training, culminating on becoming an Operative, something like our modern day Delta Force, except probably even better equipped and tougher. He is sent on missions to various planets, either alone or with forces of varying sizes, and faces challenges of varying degrees.

The book is full of political commentary, comparing the Freehold governing philosophy with that of the UN, which rules Earth and a number of other planets.

"Their (The UN) definition of civil rights was what the Roman Legions gave their subjects - the right to complain, pray and do nothing. We defined freedom as the right to be stupid. If you aren't allowed to ruin your life because of the 'greater good of the whole', you aren't really free, you're a cog."

Very libertarian in flavor.

On undercover operations:

"I actually hae the ideal build for an Operative. Depending on dress and presentation, I can look like a skinny, wirey laborer; a slim academic; a lean, handsome businessman; a career military officer or adminstrator or a shaggy college punk. Huge vid show muscles and chiseled features are unneccessary and a hindrance. The sniveling geeks will be the death of you."

Oh to have known this when I was young.

I had to laugh when I read this:

"I've found that there's very few personnel problems that can't be resolved by a suitable application of a  boot to the head."

Some political ranting that sounds all too familiar:

"They (the UN) even taxed shit. Not directly, but there was a tax on the water and sewer service, even though a theoretically private company handled the task. Yes, they recycled it for minerals, energy and fertilizer, just as we do. Yes, they then sold it. So why tax it? Apparently, just because they could. There was even a news load where some mouthpiece for policy recommended a tax on something, I didn't catch what, on the grounds that 'it's one of the few things not yet taxed for revenue.'"

On the subject of banks:

"They do it with user fees. The more they've been restricted from charging interest, the more fees they charge, and then some...Late payment fee. Early payment fee. Payment by comm processing fee. Payment in person processing fee. Automated payment fee. Penalty for paying ahead on the account, penalty for excessive activity, penalty for insufficient activity, charge for business transaction, charge for personal account transaction, statement charge, monthly service charge, annual account charge, withdrawal charge, deposit charge, transfer fee, service representative consultancy fee, cash transaction fee, NSF fee, overdraft charge and negative balance charge..."

He wrote this before Dodd-Frank. How many of these fees does your bank charge?

About the Earth news services:

"It's not 'news', it's 'Entertainment,' with a capital 'E.' The have so little content padded by some much repetition, crap, half-assed speculation by experts who know dick and hawking of worthless merchandise, it's hard for a rational person to pick out the few gems of actual intel."
Michael Jackson, Natalie Holloway and Casey Anthony, anyone?

This is a really good story about a man who dedicates his life to serving his planet, even when it takes him past the edge of his humanity. Good action, fun political brain teasers, and a strong central character keep this one lively.

Contact with Chaos by Michael Z. Williamson

I was excited to pick up this book by Williamson, which is once again set in his Freehold universe. It is, as one might guess from the title, a novel about first contact with an alien race. A ship owned by Halo Materials Group (HMG) of Freehold discovers a planet in the 107 Piscis system that they are hoping to mine for materials is already inhabited. While it can't be exploited in the ordinary slash and mine fashion, it could be a figurative gold mine for the company, but the first contact experts, such as they are, must be brought in first to determine what effect cultural contamination might have on the residents of the planet.

An expedition is hastily mounted, led by Citizen Mark Ballenger, a former corporate negotiator now working (as the nearest thing to an ambassador to aliens) for the Freehold government, to first survey and then possibly make contact with the Ishkul (as it turns out they call themselves). Mark has a little competition in the system, as a diplomat from the UN, Nurin Russ, soon arrives in system, as well, hoping to woo the Ishkul to trade with Earth and its allies, rather than Freehold. Mark and Ambassador Russ come to an accomodation fairly rapidly, and are able to work together to defend the Ishkul against the rapacious robber barons. The only corporate ships allowed in the system at first are HMG and DHS, one of their main rivals.

The Ishkul are at first thought to have only a neolithic level of technology, but it fairly soon becomes apparent that that impression was mistaken. The planet has almost no elements in the metals category of the periodic table present, and so all of their technology has developed without metals. However, the humans find out that the aliens have already created wood-framed telescopes with ground crystal lenses, and they become aware of the humans' presence in the system quickly and invite contact by drawing geographic and mathematic symbols, like the Pythagorean theorem, on the planet's surface.

Williamson does a fantastic job of doing something that SF authors used to routinely (with varying levels of genius) do - take a hypothetical situation and explore all of the philosophical, cultural and technical aspects of it while telling an entertaining and perhaps educational story. His descriptions of the Ishkul's methods of achieving what turns out to be the equal of 20th century technology in many areas without having the use of metals are fantastic. Sort of like building an alternate history of the industrial revolution that uses glass, resins, wood, steam, water power, biochemistry and genetic engineering rather than Earth's somewhat brute force approach.

His primary alien characters, the ambassadors appointed by the largest nation on the planet, Vlashn and Somle, have fully developed personalities and agendas of their own, which play against Mark and Nurin's desire to move slowly and not contaminate their culture with any hint of how humans got where they are. Some fantastic conversations and twisty intrigues ensue, and there's a truly great surprise at the end. Williamson has done a great job with this book, and I'm hoping to find some more of this genre and caliber soon.

The Hero by John Ringo and Michael Z. Williamson

I liked Michael Z. Williamson's first novel so well that I thought I'd check out something else by him. The only thing I had handy was this collaboration by Ringo and Williamson, so...

I was a bit disappointed. It's possibly my own fault. I stopped reading Ringo's Posleen war series after about the fourth book, and that was quite some time ago, so there was probably a lot of background information that would have made this book make far more sense to me.

There were probably many interesting things in this book about the nature of the Posleen, Aldenata, and Darhel races that avid readers of the series have been puzzling over for years, but they were pretty much lost on me.

Ringo and Williamson spend quite a bit of time building the characters on a special forces team, letting us get to know them, perhaps to empathize with them. The team is sent to a world where the Blobs (a new enemy, as far as I can tell) have an outpost. Previous teams have failed to come back with any information.

The team discovers an ancient ruin of the Aldenata civilization, with some sort of mysterious artifact, which they remove and take with them. They also find the Blob outpost, and it turns out to be a decoy. They begin to head back to their waiting ship to return to the home worlds, when one of their number, Dagger, betrays and kills most of them with a neural grenade, intending to steal the artifact for himself, as it's potentially worth a billion credits.

What the heck? Why did they give us all this information about characters who were merely going to be cannon fodder after a short portion of the book?

The one alien member of the team, who can sense emotions and sometimes thoughts, if they are intense enough, a Darhel named Tindal, realizes the attack is coming just in time to grab the artifact and run. Another member of the team, Ferret, reacts just enough to avoid being killed, though he is somewhat crippled by the neural damage to his legs. From that point forward, the three of them play a cat-and-mouse game on the route back to the rendezvous point.

Dagger wants the artifact for himself, Tindal wants to take it to his home planet, where it can be studied by his people, and Ferret just wants revenge for his fallen comrades. Aside from the tension of them stalking each other for the next 150 pages or so, there's not a lot of meat to this novel. There were some interesting "reveals", perhaps, about the Darhel race, for those who have been following the series more closely.

I don't think this was either author's best work.

Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson

This was Williamson's first book, and was also the first book I read by Williamson. If it had been the first book I read on my Nook, I'd have hit the trifecta. All that set aside, the first half of this book seemed like a serious homage to Heinlein, mixed with libertarian philosophy, set nicely in the story of a woman's adaptation to a totally new culture.

Freehold begins when Kendra Pacelli, an NCO in the UN Peace Force, is falsely implicated in an embezzlement scheme, and forced to flee Earth. She seeks asylum on Freehold, and finds a society vastly different from the one she's left behind.

The Freeholders are definitely free market capitalists, with a touch of that old frontier spirit. The government on the planet is minimal, limiting itself to providing a military defense force, and some essential police and court services. Everything else is taken care of by contract between individuals, the courts resolve disputes about the contracts. The citizens of Freehold are also what we'd consider to be strongly in favor of 2nd Amendment rights, and nearly all of them go about their day carrying a firearm.

There are no social services to speak of, if one doesn't work, one doesn't eat. This is where the "frontier" mentality kicks in, though. When there is an accident or disaster, or when someone really needs help, friends, neighbors and strangers will jump right in to help. Social mores seem to be libertarian, in that whatever people want to do in the privacy of their own homes is basically ignored, and no intoxicants seem to be outlawed; Kendra runs afoul of a hallucenogenic cocktail when she's out on the town one night.

Kendra doesn't have enough money to pay for passage to Freehold from Earth, so she enters an indentured servitude contract. The contract is not particularly onerous, and even at semi-skilled wages, she should be able to buy herself out of it in just a few years. She takes a job right away doing landscaping work in one of the "public" parks on Freehold, which is actually more of a cooperative venture - the park is maintained and sustained by fees charged to vendors and groups renting space in it, and is a very popular gathering place for locals on days off and holidays.

Kendra is befriended by her neighbor, Rob, and he shows her the ropes on this new world. She also becomes friends with Marta, who has her own escort service. The three of them eventually become a menage a trois, but none of the sex is highly graphic, by today's literary standards.

Kendra's job ends when economic changes force the park to lay off some of its workers, and she decides to join the Freehold military. There's a pretty long segment in the middle of the book detailing her basic and advanced training that will seem all too familiar to anyone who's been in the military or even watched movies about basic training. Kendra makes the transition from a peacekeeper to a soldier.

So, there's a lot of not-so-subtle political commentary in this book, with its comparisons between Earth and Freehold, which I found interesting.

In the second half of the book, the UN trumps up some excuses to invade Freehold, to impose the Earth style of government on the poor, beknighted savages. Things get serious and bloody in a big hurry. Kendra, Marta and Rob, who is a pilot, end up in different areas fighting the UN forces, and don't know anything about the others' fates until very near the end of the book.

This was a great first novel by Mr. Williamson, and I believe I've got a bit of catching up to do on the rest of his stuff.