From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: "Starfarers" series by Vonda N. McIntyre
Date: 2 Sep 92 23:47:10 GMT


                      STARFARERS by Vonda N. McIntyre
                      TRANSITION by Vonda N. McIntyre
                       METAPHASE by Vonda N. McIntyre

                      Book reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Ursula K. LeGuin describes this as "the most important series in
science fiction."  It's not that good,  but the series does have a lot to
offer.  It's a mix of old-time space opera/alien contact with modern-day
politics and futuristic sensibilities thrown in.  (It is similar to some of
Michael Kube-McDowell's works in this regard.)  This is a mixed blessing.
While I think it's a good thing to have alternate family structures in a
novel set in the future (the Republican Convention notwithstanding!), I
found the picture here overly optimistic in their acceptance.  And would ALL
the main characters be bisexual?  In spite of my reservations about the
total believability of this, I found the characters to be complex and
fleshed out enough to be involving rather than just vehicles for the alien
contact plot.  And the ship and its adventures bring back some of that sense
of wonder from the old space operas.

     In STARFARERS we meet the crew of the Starfarer, Earth's first
interstellar craft (and biosphere).  Earth politicians are trying to convert
the craft to military use, so the crew decides to leave by jumping into
another star system by following cosmic thread before this can happen.  In
the process, they take along a few unwilling "crew members" who happened to
be there when the ship had to leave.  Oh, and Earth has fired an atomic
warhead at them and their artificial intelligence net has been sabotaged....

     It's not spoiler to say that they solve these problems--if they hadn't
there wouldn't be TRANSITION and METAPHASE.  In TRANSITION the Starfarer
meets aliens (sort of) and *again* has its net sabotaged, and ends by having
to jump to yet another star system or be stranded....  In METAPHASE there
are yet more adventures, the alien squidmoth, and a jump to ANOTHER star
system at the end....

     If by now you see a certain cyclic nature to the series, you're right.
To call this a series is, to my mind, inaccurate.  It's a single story of as
yet indeterminate length, with each book picking up where the previous one
has left off.  So unlike some other series (such as Bujold's "Barrayar" or
McCaffrey's "Dragon" series), you cannot read individual books or read the
books out of order.  (Well, you can, but it would be like reading the
chapters in a novel in random order, and the story would not be the better
for it.)  Strangely enough, it also reads like something that would show up
on television, though television tends to stay away from series in which the
order matters--it's harder to syndicate them after their first run.  Still,
the limited set of main characters, the episodic nature of their adventures
(combined with the on-going theme of exploration), and so on make me wonder
if this isn't at least influenced by the structure of television series.
(McIntyre is no stranger to television-related material, having written
several "Star Trek" novels.)

     So my recommendation on this has to be somewhat tempered by the fact
that this is an open-ended series.  If you like your stories to have a
beginning, a middle, and an end, this is probably not for you.  The
"Starfarers" has a beginning, a lot of middle, and no end in sight.  If you
can accept that structure, I would recommend the series.

%A      Vonda N. McIntyre
%T      Starfarers
%I      Ace
%C      New York
%D      April 1989
%O      paperback, US$3.95
%G      ISBN 0-441-78053-9
%P      280pp
%S      Starfarers
%V      1

%A      Vonda N. McIntyre
%T      Transition
%I      Bantam Spectra
%C      New York
%D      January 1991
%O      paperback, US$4.95
%G      ISBN 0-553-28850-4
%P      290pp
%S      Starfarers
%V      2

%A      Vonda N. McIntyre
%T      Metaphase
%I      Bantam Spectra
%C      New York
%D      September 1992
%O      paperback, US$4.99
%G      ISBN 0-553-29223-4
%P      353pp
%S      Starfarers
%V      3

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com