Permanence

Rating:
Summary: A recommended read
Review: "Permanance" is Karl Schroeder's followup novel to his amazing "Ventus," and it doesn't come close to that stunning debut novel. It tells the story of Rue Cassells, who discovers an interstellar object that turns out to be an abandoned alien artifact, and her friend and onetime lover Michael Bequith, an assistant to a truly nutty professor, who comes along for the ride.

The tale is jagged, confusing, jumbled. Its characters do what they do because Mr. Schroeder wants them to, not from any sort of internal motivation--at least none discernible to me. The science is dippy: tool-making species, intones Michael's boss, Professor Herat, in a plot stopping interlude, are doomed because their tool making is a compensation for their failure to adopt to their environment (duh). There's FTL, but it doesn't work everywhere and not everybody has it (but they all want it), but everybody bops around free of the problems of time dilation, etc. etc. (eh?).

There's a villain, of course, Admiral Crisler, who used to be a scientist (oh please!) and he does everything but twirl his cape and go bwaa haa haa. (Anyone? Anyone? Whiplash? Whiplash?)

You'll probably stay till the end; there's some good space opera here and the final invasion of Crisler's domain is well-done. But maybe you'll feel exhausted rather than elated when you reach the final page.

This book is so unfocused (especially compared with the author's debut novel) that you may wonder how it came to be. I have an idea. I think that Mr. Schroeder's editor asked him if he had anything else in the pipeline post-"Ventus." Voila! Mr. Schroeder pulled this out of his drawer (or out of his computer?) and the editor set to work trying to make something coherent of it. But there was just no way.

Ah well, maybe next time Mr. Schroeder will deliver a winner. For sure he's capable of it.

Rating:
Summary: Cardboard characters and unengaging plotting
Review: I bought this book following a paper enthusing about some of its ideas in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS Jan/Feb 2005). Unfortunately, I have to agree with earlier reviewers who have highlighted a pedestrian writing style, implausible 'characterisation' and character motivation, and the unengaging 'by numbers' plot development.

I abandoned the book at page 78 as unreadable, not something I do often. My advice to the author is to read the books which you just can't put down, and really think about how their authors achieve that effect. Even in plot-driven stories, the characters have to be real and must be able to invoke empathy from the reader.


Rating:
Summary: Amateurish and artificial
Review: I'm sorry to say, I couldn't bring myself to finish this one. The ideas behind the novel are somewhat interesting; not fascinating, just enough to make you go 'Hmm.' Once you marvel at the civilization Schroeder built around brown dwarfs, all you're left with is a poor plot that is childish and amateur.

There's something annoyingly artificial about the way the characters are written. They go along with mad ideas just because the plot requires a crew for the protagonist's quest. The events that litter the book seem dangerous on the surface, but feel like book-padding, and are never really engaging.

One example is Max, the protagonist's cousin. He somehow shows up at the start of the novel, and conveniently turns out to be very rich, which conveniently solves the heroine's problems. Not only is he rich, but he also conveniently won the lottery, so there's nothing to explain about it. Such events occur at a maddening frequency, painfully linking what certainly sounded like good plot points in a synopsis.

I hate to downright bash a novel, but this one should have been reworked and re-edited before it hit the shelves.

Rating:
Summary: Space Opera, Grand Scale, Permanence for Space-Faring Humans
Review: Karl Schroeder is a fairly new Science Fiction author ("Permanence" is only his second novel in this genre). The author writes on an epic scale, and has big ideas that are liberally scattered throughout his novels. I bought this book because of an automated recommendation from Amazon.com, and I am glad I did.

"Permanence" is both the name of a space-age religion and the desire of a space-faring humanity, in a universe where no civilization is truly permanent. The protagonist is a young girl, Rue, who escapes from her abusive brother, discovers an alien spaceship, and goes on to have world-shaking adventures involving the ship and its alien technology. The author's use of high technology in his stories is easy and natural, for example, shared virtual reality (inscapes) and nanotechnology are seamlessly integrated into the way of life for Rue and her contemporaries.

The plot of "Permanence" revolves around a clash between the Cycler Compact (worlds united by spaceships capable only of slower-than light travel) and the Rights Economy (worlds united by faster-than light spaceship travel). The scope of the plot spans numerous planets and living environments, with aliens and alien cultures and concepts. The plot involves a clash of cultures, economies, politics, philosophies, and religions. The book is chock full of new ideas and concepts.

I read "Permanence" straight through from start to finish. It was a thoroughly engaging read with a satisfying ending. The only reason I am giving this book 4 stars and not 5 is that the author's characterization still needs a bit of work, as the emotions and thoughts of some of the characters are slightly juvenile. Nonetheless, it was a very enjoyable read, and I hope the author continues to put out excellent hard Science Fiction, well into the future.

Rating:
Summary: Space Opera, Grand Scale, Permanence for Space-Faring Humans
Review: Karl Schroeder is a fairly new Science Fiction author ("Permanence" is only his second novel in this genre). The author writes on an epic scale, and has big ideas that are liberally scattered throughout his novels. I bought this book because of an automated recommendation from Amazon.com, and I am glad I did.

"Permanence" is both the name of a space-age religion and the desire of a space-faring humanity, in a universe where no civilization is truly permanent. The protagonist is a young girl, Rue, who escapes from her abusive brother, discovers an alien spaceship, and goes on to have world-shaking adventures involving the ship and its alien technology. The author's use of high technology in his stories is easy and natural, for example, shared virtual reality (inscapes) and nanotechnology are seamlessly integrated into the way of life for Rue and her contemporaries.

The plot of "Permanence" revolves around a clash between the Cycler Compact (worlds united by spaceships capable only of slower-than light travel) and the Rights Economy (worlds united by faster-than light spaceship travel). The scope of the plot spans numerous planets and living environments, with aliens and alien cultures and concepts. The plot involves a clash of cultures, economies, politics, philosophies, and religions. The book is chock full of new ideas and concepts.

I read "Permanence" straight through from start to finish. It was a thoroughly engaging read with a satisfying ending. The only reason I am giving this book 4 stars and not 5 is that the author's characterization still needs a bit of work, as the emotions and thoughts of some of the characters are slightly juvenile. Nonetheless, it was a very enjoyable read, and I hope the author continues to put out excellent hard Science Fiction, well into the future.

Rating:
Summary: A good, solid scifi read, but not very reader friendly
Review: My main criticism of this novel is similiar to the others: Schroeder's writing style is lacking. While the ideas are intriguing and his main characters convincing, the writing style is dull and anonymous. It seems that Schroeder's too caught up in his ideas and characters to bother writing good, accessible text. It's not an uncommon plight among scifi writers, but it's irksome in the case of Permenance, since it's a good enough storyline that you really wish you could sit down and sink into it for a few hours at a stretch. Unlikely that anyone could do that, though, with such uninviting text.

It's not that I didn't enjoy reading Permenance -- I did, in a way, and I look forward to reading another novel by this author -- but as philosophy and theology scholar, I have experience with dense, unwieldy text and thus can be a far more patient and tolerant reader than many others. So if you're not so tolerant and patient, you're probably better to pass on this one. The other misgiving I have is that the storyline gets sidetracked by a lot of needless political fussing among the characters. In such a straight-forward plot, once the author has established the roles of protagonist and antagonist and who's allied with whom and so forth, it's best to keep any political dialogue pithy and concise. Otherwise the the story gets bogged down, as it down in this novel, particularly in the four section, just when you're really wishing for this thing to start wrapping up.

Negative criticism aside, this novel offers a very engaging story that intertwines some current scientific speculations, provoking religious/theological concepts, and rather cool scifi imaginings (I particularly like the "ferrofluid" idea). Hey, Schroeder even throws in a curious explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs. These things are this novel's saving graces, which is usually enough to float within scifi circles anyways. I mean, what's the point of reading hundreds of pages of this stuff if it doesn't proffer any cool conversation tidbits you can discuss to exhaustion with your equally geeky scifi pals, right?

Rating:
Summary: Interesting ideas, flawed execution
Review: Permanence offers the best and the worst of SF, all in one package. Schroeder compellingly explores the colonization of space, interaction with aliens, the future of intelligent life, and the search for meaning in a very large universe. He does so, however, with the flattest characters I've come across in some time, many of whom are completely useless to the story or the themes, a linear and ultimately disappointing storyline, some ham-handed attacks on capitalism, and a lack of depth in all areas. I'm glad I read Permanence, but I won't be passing it on to my friends.

Rating:
Summary: Not As Good As Ventus
Review: Schroeder's Permanence is about a young woman's discovery of a cycler -- a ship that goes a significant fraction of the speed of light while it travels in a big loop and is used for trade -- of mysterious origins. It doesn't take long for Rue Cassels and a handpicked, though motley, crew to discover that the mysterious ship is of alien origin...and that she's not the only one that wants to gain control of it.

Schroeder's Permanence leaves something to be desired, though not in the story itself. The story itself -- the alien ship and all the resulting discoveries relating to it -- is reminiscent of a Jack McDevitt novel. Where Schroeder's Permanence doesn't muster up is in the way the prose itself was put together. The first hundred or so pages the pacing feels all wrong...kind of fast, like Schroeder was rushing to get to the meat of the story. The characterization of the more minor characters leave quite a bit to be desired. I never got to know much of the crew Rue picks to join her in her rush to discover the alien ship's secrets. You just kind of meet them and then they become cardboard, shrinking into the background until Schroeder needs them to pop up occassionally. The novel's title, Permanence, comes from a future religion/social structure in which humanity is trying to put together a civilization that will survive the eons. But Schroeder only uses one primary character (Mike) to let us into this unusual idealogy of Permanence. While Mike does give us much to think about, I didn't really feel like it was enough to really get the overall picture of what Permanence really was supposed to do/be about.

Overall, this story was not nearly as good as Schroeder's previous book, Ventus. Ventus was wonderfully original; and the prose seemed much better structured as well. Ultimately, this novel feels like it was written in haste to meet an editor's deadline and if one chooses to read this book one should keep that in mind.

Rating:
Summary: good, bad and ugly
Review: The author is intellectually entertaining with the cultural background of this novel, if you like that sort of thing, and I do, but that was also the novel's downfall.
As others have discussed here, the two human civilizations were separate because FTL ships couldn't be launched from brown dwarf stars, where the cycler humans live. Without revealing the ending, the author built a scaffold that supported the cycler civilization as "better" than the FTL civilization, then ...
No, I can't say anymore, except that, in the end (to solve a plot problem he had painted himself into,) he tried to have it both ways, and I can't image human beings accepting his solution when another exists.
All of the criticism from others about flat characters and "deus ex machina" solutions to problems, I agree with. Actually, the solution to the plot problem that I can't go into without revealing the ending is classic "deus ex machina."


Rating:
Summary: Classic, wide-screen space-opera with a sharp hard-sf edge.
Review: ___________________________________________
Permanence is set in the 25th century, when humanity has
settled dozens of extrasolar planets -- the so-called "lit worlds" -- and
thousands of brown-dwarf colonies -- the halo worlds. All the
colonies were linked by big, NAFAL [note 1] starships, each travelling
a fixed circuit of worlds -- the cyclers [note 2]. The cyclers never stop, as
the energy cost to boost them to relativistic speeds is, well,
astronomical. Ultralight shuttles transfer passengers, crew and cargo at
each port.

Permanence is a quasi-religious order set up to support the great
starships, and to preserve human civilization for the indefinitely long
future. It's a noble and admirable organization, which has been
seriously disrupted by the recent discovery of FTL travel -- which, it
turns out, will only work near a full-size star. FTL travel is *much*
cheaper than the sublightspeed cyclers, so the halo worlds' economies,
and the Cycler Compact, are near collapse. It gets worse -- the lit worlds
are joining the new Earth-based Rights Economy, an aggressively-
centralized property-rights setup that forbids any non-commercial
transactions. Hmm -- could this be socially-conscious Canada vs. the
great, grasping Colossus of the South? (The halo worlds are cold, too...)

Meadow-Rue Rosebud Cassells lit out from Allemagne station when
her bullying brother got to be too much. Enroute to Erythrion, Rue
discovers, and files a claim on, a new comet. [Minor *SPOILER*
warning -- but no more than is on the dust-jacket.] Her claim is denied
-- her 'comet' is really a spaceship -- but then reinstated: it's not
a *human* spaceship, and it doesn't answer calls, though the drive is
still working. Rue must take physical control of the ghost ship to make
good her claim, but Powerful Forces want the ship for themselves...

The framework of the novel is Rue's growth from scared kid to
respected starship captain. I like bildungsromans, and this is a good
one. But the real power of Permanence is the good old sense-of-
wonder techstuff: "[The colonies] swarmed like insects around
incandescent filaments hundreds of kilometers in length. Each
filament was a fullerene cable that harvested electricity from
Erythrion's magnetic field... The power running through the cables
made them glow in exactly the same way that tungsten had glowed in
light bulbs... on twentieth-century Earth." I love this stuff. And it's
even plausible -- see Schroeder's neat website, kschroeder.com

At times Permanence may remind you of Ken Macleod's political SF,
though Schroeder is much less in your face (which I prefer). You'll
see nods to Pohl's Gateway, Norton's Forerunners, Brin's and
Pellegrino's hostile-universe Fermi-paradox ideas... Schroeder's still
looking for a distinctive voice, which is pretty standard for a
writer's early books, and anyway he s/t/e/a/l/s *borrows* from the
best...

Schroeder's very good at delivering the short, sharp shock: Rue's
poor, then she's rich! Oops, bad claim, poor again. Wait, she's rich
after all! This 'Perils of Pauline' plot structure works pretty well for
most of the book, but was wearing thin towards the end. Again,
these are sophomore-book teething problems, easily forgiveable
within the terrific story (and backstory!) that Schroeder's got to tell.
Which is: classic, wide-screen space-opera with a sharp hard-sf edge
-- my favorite kind of SF! Folks, this is the good hard stuff, which is
never in oversupply. So if you haven't yet tried Schroeder's brand of
thinking-being's hard-sf adventure stories, Permanence is an
excellent place to start. Then you can go back and pick up on last
year's Ventus, which might even be better. They're both terrific
books. Happy reading!
_____________
Note 1.) Not as Fast as Light, an Ursula K. LeGuin coinage. Or is it
Nearly as Fast? And did you know that her ansibles are an anagram
of lesbians?

2.) The cyclers are the neatest part of the backstory -- see
Schroeder's website for the
details, which are interesting of themselves (for spaceflight buffs like
me, anyway) and spoiler-free. I was a bit disappointed that the cyclers
had become obsolete by Permanence time -- well, sort of -- and I hope
that Schroeder returns to earlier times in the future history of the
Cycler Compact. And I wouldn't be surprised if Ventus turned out to be
in Permanence's future...

Review copyright 2002 by Peter D. Tillman