Subject: Prograde Reviews--Roger Zelazny & Thomas T. Thomas:Flare

From: [email-masked] (Humphrey Aaron V)
Date: 18 Mar 94 02:22:01 GMT

Roger Zelazny & Thomas T. Thomas:Flare  [some spoilers]

_Flare_ is, essentially, a disaster novel.  Big solar flare happens,
disrupts lots of stuff on Earth.  The catch, in this case, is that it's
2081, and the sun has been quiescent for 80 years.  No sunspots, no flares.
People have forgotten how dangerous solar flares are, for the most part;
radiation shielding for the settlements off Earth is considered an 'extra'.

One scientist, the _only_ current sun scientist, is manning a
Mercury-orbit space station to observe the sun.  He _happens_ to see a huge
sunspot pair start up, and the flare start out.

The book is very fragmented.  The closest we have to a plot involves the
scientist, and his grad student on Earth who's trying to convince anyone that
there's danger.  But most of the book focuses on specific incidents
related to the flare--the Moonwalkers who get a big radiation dose and a
bunch of static on their headphones, the ship carrying trillions of tons of
methane from Titan, the millions of people using VR headsets who get fried
(including a fair chunk of people in the stock market)...  All of the
individual vignettes are interesting, but together they don't make a
coherent plot.

The writing is great; it's not Zelazny style as I know it, so Thomas must
have some nontrivial share of it, as well as apparently supplying the
impeccable scientific knowledge behind the book.  I enjoyed reading it.
But it has no plot.

Also, as a disaster novel, it has a more-than-usual share of the
cautionary tale in it.  It depicts graphically the hazards of cost-cutting,
and of relying too much on technology without a less sophisticated, but
more reliable, backup.  For instance, planes of 2081 have consoles
accessible only via VR; after the flare, one pilot ends up having to look
out the _window_ to try to see the ground, while the other responds to her
spoken directions, wearing VR goggles to operate the instruments.  There's
also a jibe about the administration who won't listen to the doomsaying
scientist who happens to be right...

If you like hard SF and Analog-type stuff, you'll like the book.  In that
way, it's more Thomas than Zelazny...

%A Zelazny, Roger
%A Thomas, Thomas T.
%T Flare
%I Baen
%C Riverdale, NY
%D September 1992
%G ISBN 0-671-72133-X
%P 344 pp.
%O Paperback, US $4.99, Can $5.99

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