Damn you Sandberg, always one step ahead :)

I picked it up yesterday and am about 3/4 of the way through, and although I'm enjoying it I find that there are too many contrived characters introduced, a chapter devoted to and then thrown away, such as the simple marine from the hinterlands with reactions equal to that of a Rixwoman.

I also find the pro-death stance, that seems to have been cribbed directly from Fukuyama, of one of the main heros rather irritating. Particularly as so far all the immortals seem to be painted in the worse possible light.

Prehaps the later books will introduce immortals from the other cultures that arnt power crazed anti progressives. If not at least they'll be a fun read, even if not an exactly ground breaking one.

Adam,

You're in luck. The duology is in fact complete. The sequel "The Killing of Worlds" is already in publication. I've read it already and it meets and exceeds "The Risen Empire".

Wednesday, 08 September 2004

The first book lacked worthy material, omitting perhaps the interface descriptions and the rotary pump heart of the Rix soldier. The whole first chapter especially annoyed me. The author spent so much effort detailing orbital insertion of a micro-minature UCAV squadron, and he still ends up with a text that reads like the first chapter of "Starship Troopers" strained through a stack of last year's Aviation Week or Jane's Defense Weekly.

Ben makes a good point about immortals in science-fiction. Why do the characters tend to a stereotype of power-hungry and conservative? Exceptions do exist, (Zebrowski's "Macrolife", Sableford's "Architects of Emortality", Egan's "Diaspora", Haldeman's "Buying Time", etc.) but this particular set of traits: power-hungry, immortal, and conservative seem to make an especially memorable triplet.

Why do you suppose this is? Do people just prefer villains?

Wednesday, 08 September 2004

The first book lacked worthy material, omitting perhaps the interface descriptions and the rotary pump heart of the Rix soldier. The whole first chapter especially annoyed me. The author spent so much effort detailing orbital insertion of a micro-minature UCAV squadron, and he still ends up with a text that reads like the first chapter of "Starship Troopers" strained through a stack of last year's Aviation Week or Jane's Defense Weekly.

Ben makes a good point about immortals in science-fiction. Why do the characters tend to a stereotype of power-hungry and conservative? Exceptions do exist, (Zebrowski's "Macrolife", Sableford's "Architects of Emortality", Egan's "Diaspora", Haldeman's "Buying Time", etc.) but this particular set of traits: power-hungry, immortal, and conservative seem to make an especially memorable triplet.

Why do you suppose this is? Do people just prefer villains?

I think there are plenty of nice immortals in sf. I just finished Charles Stross' _Singularity Sky_, and here it was obvious that it was the pro-progress immortals who were sane and nice, while the anti-progress natural lifespan people were stupid and relatively evil. Other nice immortals can be found in Heinlein's immortal stories, Iain M. Banks, Simak's _Way Station_ and so on. But most of these nice immortals are protagonists. As soon as protagonists are immortal, immortality ceases to be a distinguishing trait that can be used to separate "good" from "evil" characters.

Usually villains are more interesting than heroes, since they have a greater freedom in what they can be. A villain might have wildly inconsistent or strange traits, making him odd or fascinating, but the hero is not allowed to be too inconsistent. We value "complex characters", but that is usually a code for being a believable rich character within the normal human sphere. A villain doesn't have to be inside it.

Of course, it is quite possible to write stories with heroes that are just as wild as villains, but in my experience they seldom work since there is a need for the reader to identify himself with the hero - unless the reader is supposed to identify himself with some external observer just watching the drama unfold.