The Ethos Effect

Rating:
Summary: unintentional ethics
Review: The book describes a good portion of biography of mass murderer - twisted childhood, life of a loner in the military, unexpected and unearned raise by mysterious and haunted by his past billionaire, witnessing the genocide-suicide committed with the use of alien technology by his mentor, self-justifications and thrist for revenge and finally the crime itself. Very helpful in understanding how Bin Ladins evolve, otherwise pretty boring.

Rating:
Summary: Ethics in a Technocracy?
Review: The Ethos Effect is a sequel of The Parafaith War. In the previous volume, Major Trystin Desoll was a Major in the Eco-Tech Coalition forces. The Coalition was hard pressed by the superior numbers of the Revenant forces that were attacking Eco-Tech worlds. Desoll undertook a dangerous mission to assassinate a Revenant admiral and archbishop, but added a spin of his own that led the Revenants to believe that the death was an expression of divine wrath. This apparent act of God resulted in a cessation of the war and a rewriting of the Revenant holy writ.

In this novel, some two centuries later, the Revenants have again become expansionist and are crowding the Republic of Tara and other small polities in nearby systems. Commander Van C. Albert is a veteran ship commander in the Taran Republic Space Force who had been responsible for the destruction of the Vetachi, a renegade terraforming vessel that had been rampaging among the commercial ships within that sector. Unfortunately, the renegade had been stalking the Regneri, a colony ship, and the resulting explosion caused an errant torp to launch from the renegade and destroy the other ship. Since then, Albert has been relegated to older ships and smaller commands.

Albert's current command, the RSFS Fergus, is preparing to jump to its next station when it receives an urgent message to change destinations to Gotland in the Scandya system to replace the RSFS Collyns. Further orders will be sent by courier to Gotland. Revising their jump coordinates, the Fergus transits to Scandya and is immediately attacked by an unidentified warship. Albert's crew quickly responds to the attack and destroys the other ship.

Albert sends a battle report by message torp back to headquarters. When questioned by the local self defense forces, Albert admits detecting unusual emissions from further outside the system, but denies any other knowledge. When the Fergus achieves orbit around Gotland, a courier brings a replacement commander for the Fergus and orders for Albert himself to be reassigned as the the Naval Attaché in the local Taran embassy. He is to replace a fellow officer who was killed in a sailing accident.

Since Albert has not been receiving the plum career assignments, he has little training or knowledge of his embassy duties. However, he starts gathering information from the records, other embassy staffers and his counterparts in the other embassies and the Scandyan SDF. He is well and thoroughly ignored by the Revenant Naval Attaché, but cooperatively received by his other peers and forms a good working relationship with the Second Secretary in his embassy. From the information received from various sources, he begins to wonder about his predecessor's death and the situation in Scandya.

Then Albert foils an assassination of high Scandyan government officials and is severely wounded. Although eventually restored to full health, he is recalled to Tara, where he is presented with a high award, promoted to Commodore, and retired from the service. He soon finds that he is too highly qualified to work as a pilot, but still doesn't want to become a desk jockey.

During this time, he is offered a job by Trystin Desoll, now managing director of Integrated Information Systems, a developer of proprietary business intelligence for multisystem corporations and governments. The job has the title of senior director and will involve piloting one of the IIS courier ships as well as acting as a consultant to planetary managers and clientele.

When Albert finally accepts the job with IIS, he is provided with training on the corporation's proprietary systems and then sent on specific assignments. From the business intelligence gathered by IIS and his own observations during these assignments, Albert begins to see a very dark and dangerous pattern emerging. Apparently IIS is attempting to counter this pattern, but things are looking bad.

Albert also discovers that Desoll has close connections with the Farhkan aliens. They seem to be interested in human affairs, but refrain from too close relationships with most humans. Desoll seems to be an exception.

This story continues to examine the ethical questions raised in the previous volume regarding interference in other societies. The Farhkans believe that such interference will corrupt their own society. Desoll has interfered once before in Revenant society with mixed results. So how can one society justify massive interference with another?

In contrast with the Farhkan viewpoint, the Revenants know that they are only obeying the will of God, so have no qualms about completely disrupting another society. The Taran Republic seems to be developing an ethic of survival at all cost, which justifies any degree of intervention in another society and even their own. Are these the only alternatives?

Highly recommended for Modesitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of social conflict and personal ethics.

Rating:
Summary: Ethics in a Technocracy?
Review: The Ethos Effect is a sequel of The Parafaith War. In the previous volume, Major Trystin Desoll was a Major in the Eco-Tech Coalition forces. The Coalition was hard pressed by the superior numbers of the Revenant forces that were attacking Eco-Tech worlds. Desoll undertook a dangerous mission to assassinate a Revenant admiral and archbishop, but added a spin of his own that led the Revenants to believe that the death was an expression of divine wrath. This apparent act of God resulted in a cessation of the war and a rewriting of the Revenant holy writ.

In this novel, some two centuries later, the Revenants have again become expansionist and are crowding the Republic of Tara and other small polities in nearby systems. Commander Van C. Albert is a veteran ship commander in the Taran Republic Space Force who had been responsible for the destruction of the Vetachi, a renegade terraforming vessel that had been rampaging among the commercial ships within that sector. Unfortunately, the renegade had been stalking the Regneri, a colony ship, and the resulting explosion caused an errant torp to launch from the renegade and destroy the other ship. Since then, Albert has been relegated to older ships and smaller commands.

Albert's current command, the RSFS Fergus, is preparing to jump to its next station when it receives an urgent message to change destinations to Gotland in the Scandya system to replace the RSFS Collyns. Further orders will be sent by courier to Gotland. Revising their jump coordinates, the Fergus transits to Scandya and is immediately attacked by an unidentified warship. Albert's crew quickly responds to the attack and destroys the other ship.

Albert sends a battle report by message torp back to headquarters. When questioned by the local self defense forces, Albert admits detecting unusual emissions from further outside the system, but denies any other knowledge. When the Fergus achieves orbit around Gotland, a courier brings a replacement commander for the Fergus and orders for Albert himself to be reassigned as the the Naval Attaché in the local Taran embassy. He is to replace a fellow officer who was killed in a sailing accident.

Since Albert has not been receiving the plum career assignments, he has little training or knowledge of his embassy duties. However, he starts gathering information from the records, other embassy staffers and his counterparts in the other embassies and the Scandyan SDF. He is well and thoroughly ignored by the Revenant Naval Attaché, but cooperatively received by his other peers and forms a good working relationship with the Second Secretary in his embassy. From the information received from various sources, he begins to wonder about his predecessor's death and the situation in Scandya.

Then Albert foils an assassination of high Scandyan government officials and is severely wounded. Although eventually restored to full health, he is recalled to Tara, where he is presented with a high award, promoted to Commodore, and retired from the service. He soon finds that he is too highly qualified to work as a pilot, but still doesn't want to become a desk jockey.

During this time, he is offered a job by Trystin Desoll, now managing director of Integrated Information Systems, a developer of proprietary business intelligence for multisystem corporations and governments. The job has the title of senior director and will involve piloting one of the IIS courier ships as well as acting as a consultant to planetary managers and clientele.

When Albert finally accepts the job with IIS, he is provided with training on the corporation's proprietary systems and then sent on specific assignments. From the business intelligence gathered by IIS and his own observations during these assignments, Albert begins to see a very dark and dangerous pattern emerging. Apparently IIS is attempting to counter this pattern, but things are looking bad.

Albert also discovers that Desoll has close connections with the Farhkan aliens. They seem to be interested in human affairs, but refrain from too close relationships with most humans. Desoll seems to be an exception.

This story continues to examine the ethical questions raised in the previous volume regarding interference in other societies. The Farhkans believe that such interference will corrupt their own society. Desoll has interfered once before in Revenant society with mixed results. So how can one society justify massive interference with another?

In contrast with the Farhkan viewpoint, the Revenants know that they are only obeying the will of God, so have no qualms about completely disrupting another society. The Taran Republic seems to be developing an ethic of survival at all cost, which justifies any degree of intervention in another society and even their own. Are these the only alternatives?

Highly recommended for Modesitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of social conflict and personal ethics.

Rating:
Summary: A textbook for those with eyes to see.
Review: Years ago, when I read Richard Bach's "Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah", the main Character reads a passage from Donald Shimoda's handbook for Messiahs': which states, " You only teach what you need to learn". In "The Ethos Effect", non-sequiter issues pop up to disturb the thematic flow for L.E. Modesitt Jr. to wrestle with in this otherwise fascinating work on politics, economics, the apathetic citizenry and the high level Crowd Mentality of bureaucracies.(i.e., a government is not made of leaders, only followers.)

In his latest book, Modesitt's hero has forgone fruit and cheese, is a bit more sedentary and sounds like he has grown a paunch with too many Pale Ales. Cold. In seven years, Van Albert, Director of IIS who has the nous to run an entire arm of the galaxy hasn't yet found the courage to kiss his favourite lady and seems to stumble over his own feet in an 'aw shucks' attitude towards women. What is happening to Modesitt's heros?.They seem to be metamorphosing into the sorry state of vacillating, women fearing, blame-my-mommy wussys. Are our heros too comfortable in Utah? Our hero doesn't need to cut and run at the sight of a skirt. He needs a real woman; a team mate which would develop the other half of the thematic yin/yang cosmic potential. In this brilliant and timely treatment of the dangers of political correctness/apathy/appeasement, the author contradicts his own thesis by inserting some comfy appeals for normalizing same-sex marriage.(Yawn) Is RFS Commodore Van C.Albert an androygne? This book's hero is not Major Jimjoy Earl Wright, by a long shot.

The "Ethos" thesis has enough scope to provoke a sequel which would develop Modesitt's fledgling recognition of telepathy, superior beings (The Farhkan), Ethics as guidelines for *infinite* economic/spiritual expansion, morals as generated by village-mentality policy, maturation of his archetypically adolescent heros into dynamic men and women whose character grows, demonstrating self-knowledge while leading humanity into a new era of higher, nobler games instead of inversion back into the worn-out snake-pit culture of gender suicide.
It's there. We wait.