From rec.arts.sf.written Thu Sep 10 14:13:18 1992 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!decwrl!csus.edu!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: McCollum: Sails of Tau Ceti Message-ID: Date: Sat, 05 Sep 92 23:52:36 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Lines: 37 I've enjoyed most of Mike McCollum's books, but the last one -- Clouds of Saturn -- was weak, and the latest one -- Sails of Tau Ceti -- is even weaker. It's the twenty-third century, and a huge sub-light alien ship is arriving with the survivors of the (unexpected) Tau Ceti nova. The aliens ask for asylum on Earth, and persuade one of the crew members of the ship which first meets them to serve as their advocate. They persuade her to take the job by letting her in on their deep dark secret. But the book is a house of cards. While one of the plot devices requires that the date be two and a half centuries in our future, half a century would be more convincing in most respects. Worse, there is no convincing reason for the aliens to have taken on the advocate they did, except to provide the author with a viewpoint character, there is no convincing reason for her to keep their secret, and it is implausible that the aliens would understand humans so well except for they key blind spots. The characterization is very shallow -- even that of the character whose viewpoint we follow for 98% of the story -- precisely because what the characters depends not on their characterization, but only upon the whims of the author. This book appears decades too late: It's gadget fiction, except that the gadgets don't occupy much of the book; it's puzzle fiction, except that it's inconceivable that the key portions of the puzzle wouldn't have occurred to the analysts on both sides; it's science fiction, except that neither the science nor the fiction is very interesting. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope