Customer Reviews

Deepdrive

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I've been a fan of Jablokov's ever since reading his first short stories in Asimov's a few years ago. I really liked his first novel, Carve the Sky, which was "baroque" and artsy, and his third novel, Nimbus, a kind of post-cyberpunk story. And I've liked a lot of his short stories.

Deepdrive is his latest novel. It is set in a busy, well-imagined future. The solar system is occupied (mostly benignly: or at any rate humans have adapted) by several different species of aliens: the Bgarth are burrowing on Venus, assisting with its terraformation; the Gunners are on Mercury, shooting at the Sun; the Ulanyi are on Earth, living in symbiotic relationships with nomadic human tribes. And there are plenty more. But none of the aliens will give humans the secret of the "deepdrive", which allows faster than light travel. An alien from another species, the Vronnans, has showed up, apparently a refugee from his own people, and he is holed up on Venus. Rumor says he wants to be rescued, and he might have something important, even a deepdrive, to trade. Sophonisba Trust assembles a team, somewhat ad hoc, to go after the Vronnan. The novel follows her and the members of her team, as well as the Vronnan, as a series of disasters propels them willy nilly towards learning more than they might want to know about Vronnans, the lost Martian slowship interstellar expedition, their own motivations, and how Ulanyi, Gunners, and other aliens tie into this. And also, maybe, the secrets of the deepdrive.

It's all pretty cool, and well-imagined, distinctly "Bruce Sterling-esque" (particularly reminiscent of some Shaper-Mechanist stuff, like "Swarm"), and certainly exciting, and yet ... It never quite won me over. I dunno why. Maybe it was too hard to follow all the threads. Maybe I didn't quite believe in most of the characters (Soph was well done, also her ex-husband Lightfoot, but I was never convinced by the beautiful lesbian Ambryn Chretien or the big bodyguard Elward Bakst, both of whose motivations and abilities seemed to change to whatever the plot required). But, I'm sort of worried, is my "Sense of Wonder" dulling? What I mean is, I think maybe 20 years ago all the cool stuff, the aliens, the biotech, the plots within plots, would have overwhelmed me and carried me along. And it didn't do that for me now.

On balance, I'd still recommend Deepdrive. But I can't give it full marks.

The first half is wonderfully hyperkinetic, and I REALLY think Jablokov did a great job in world-building. But the latter half felt hurried and, oddly enough, anti-climactic. The last 20 pages are a particularly confusing batch job which left me severely dissapointed. Probably because the beginning of this book had tons of potential.

I really wanted to like this book and did enjoy his vision of elaborately symbiotic aliens, but his story is fruitlessly convoluted. Despite much redundant exposition, it ends up reading like a whodunnit in which you don't really know what the crime was. Some judicious editing could have brought this book to the usual magnificence one expects of Jablokov. Still, it's worth a read.

I usually don't give too much of a chance for boring books.. If they bore me after 80-100 pages, I stop reading the book, often never returning to it.. Ever since I've started reviewing books in Amazon, I've made a conscious decision to try and finish all the books I've started reading. But here I failed! The book has such an interesting premise.. The solar system, inhabited by many different races. Humans trying to obtain a "deepdrive" which all the other aliens have. And it is an interesting premise! However, the story just doesn't make any sense at times. I found that I couldn't understand what was going on. Why did this character do that? What happened right now? What do the aliens want? What is going on here?? I agree that the aliens were very interesting.. but there just wasn't enough to grab my attention. and I did try.. I suffered through 150 pages (1/2 the book). One last thing, the book is called "Deepdrive", and according to the book reviews it's about getting a "deepdrive", the one thing humans don't have. As I mentioned - I'm halfway through the book, and there is still no explanation that "getting the deepdrive is the purpose of the book". Or what is a deepdrive, etc. I guess the author assumed we'd all read the book reviews to find out the background to the story.. To summarize, I gave it 2 stars mainly because it does have some interesting ideas.. but the rest is just plain bad.

DEEPDRIVE, while well-written, suffers from the kitchen-sink syndrome. Just a few pages into the book the reader is exposed to a dozen aliens and a human or two and all sorts of dangerous political situations. Even though I'm a sci-fi fan from way back, this was just too rich for me and I just couldn't get into it.

I generally only dabble in space opera in favor of harder sci-fi, and this one went too far for me. Too disjointed, nebulous plot line for the first half of the book, and the ever-present hard to remember names. I couldn't bring myself to finish it, but will try again some day, at which time, for the sake of the die-hard S.O. fans, I might be able to improve this review. For now, never again.

When I was a kid, not that long ago, one could still read, without too much suspension of disbelief, science fiction set in the Solar System, where people traveled around from Mars to Venus and met fun and interesting alien species. Alas, NASA killed off that genre. But Jablokov makes a fair attempt to revive it with Deepdrive.

His gambit is to imagine a future where the Solar System has been colonized by not one but 11 alien species. (You don't meet most of these creatures--do I detect the beginning of a series?) They've settled down in various places--some burrowing under Venus' terraformed crust, some swimming in the seas of Ganymede, some tunneling into various asteroids. When's the last time your read an SF book where there was something worth visiting going on on Mercury?

The aliens are intriguing, too--though they come in many varieties, mostly they seem to rely on biotechnology for most of their needs. Symbiosis seems to be the big galactic fashion, and the way humans fit into this ecosystem was compelling.

The characters are pretty three-dimensional, or at least solidly two-dimensional. In fact, their relationships give the book a lot of its drive, and when they split up roughly halfway through, things sort of slow down. Still, I did not find this a hard book to get through.

An ultimate Science Fiction Novel, an ultimate Adventure Novel, and an ultimate Novel, period.

Set centuries in the future (the cover flap claims it occurs in the 21st century, but it's obvious reading the book that considerably more time has passed between the present and the novel's time-frame)with eleven alien races now inhabiting the Solar System in addition to humanity, all of them towering above humanity in technological advancement, one aspect of which is that they each possess "Deepdrive" technology, the title of the book, the means to travel faster than light, and one of humanity's holy grails. These aliens are Truly Alien; among the more familiar-seeming are glowing 'Turtles' that now swim through the seas of Ganymede; Venus, in addition to being home to human cities now that it has a cooler surface and oxygen atmosphere, also has Bgarth, super-giant cyborg wormlike beings who terraformed the world and whose nerve cells interact directly with the 'reaction site' that produces Venus's new air - one character early on goes so far as to say that "in one sense, you can think of the current atmosphere of Venus as a Bgarth thought" (talk about exotic concepts in sci-fi!). Other species, in both physiology and culture are as alien or in some cases even more so, and most seem to have large cults of human acolytes, even worshippers.

Human society too is dynamically different; it's not just the Earth of today with awesome new technologies added in, and we see not only a picture of human culture at the time "Deepdrive" actually takes place, but we get glimpses of the changes it underwent through the previous centuries, including prior to first contact with the first extraterrestrials to enter the system. In fact, we get tantalizing Glimpses of so much - different aspects of what's going on on Earth; the situation on Mercury with its own alien colonizers; SO much, that this can't be the only book written in this continuity. It would be a great deprivation of literature if the author didn't carry on with at least a couple more books to explore some of what's been only hinted at. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I'd like to see this become a whole universe of novels, in the sense of how "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" and even Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" books are being done following their creator's passing on: different authors contributing different novels in different locales, different time periods, different species getting the spotlight, even totally different characters; the concept is so vast it could easily be done. I would love to see an entire novel taking place at the time of the legendary first contact. If more authors were to contribute to this full line (though Jablokov is obviously the first choice to write as many of the pivotal novels as possible)I would nominate Piers Anthony and Kathy Tyers, for starters. There is so much left unsaid and undiscovered, there is no limit as to how one could expand on this first entry. And the book has truly Shock ending that absolutely demands a direct sequel with the same characters.

As for the characters themselves, many of them seem at first to be not especially likable. But as you go further and deeper, they seem to have more redeeming characteristics than one might have expected, buried almost deliberately under ruthless exteriors. Human society has Not, despite the changes it's seen in the centuries, become a less brutal thing, and the surrounding universe, while now clearly full of all the wonder and more that pre-contact humans have dreamt it might have, is jarringly full of menace as well, and it's as if the people in this time era, even more so than today, have had to build up very hard exteriors just to emotionally survive. This is also true of certain alien characters the reader meets, although we don't get to know very many of them on a personal level (another reason why more books in this continuity are a necessity). Science Fiction novels don't tend to focus on 'destiny' as much as, say, Fantasy novels, but it's almost as if the Solar System (and perhaps more) is at some kind of metaphorical critical mass,
and fate is drawing together individuals (of different species) of usually checkered backgrounds but with the potential for nobility, for some grand purpose. Some Science Fiction readers may not like such a notion, finding it to be 'unscientific', but there should be more than enough 'Hard-SF' to make up for such departures even to the most dognatic of its fans. Besides, "Deepdrive" isn't solely a Science Fiction novel, it's adventure, in places it's freezing horror, it's speculative philosophy at its best, and it's one of The best novels ever written, genre or no genre.

320 pages, 11 alien species, 4 or 5 main characters, 1 or 2 memorable events. = 1 star.

If you've ever seen the opera "La Boheme," or even the musical "Rent," you know this story. Well, this story suffers from the same plot problem that La Boheme has -- all of the action is in the first act! After we leave Venus, a little before halfway through the book, we just have a long slow decline as the characters recombine and reminisce. I've never liked this plot, and am disappointed in Jablokov for resurrecting it.

I give him three stars though for three things that deserve special note : 1. His language, 2. His Science, 3. His Aliens. As always, Jablokov has a poetry of language and beauty of vision that gives his books a grace, indeed a tangible texture, that few other sci-fi authors achieve. You will remember this book as as much in your senses of touch, hearing, and taste as you do the story. Despite the near mysticism of the Deep Drive, Jablokov remains rooted in hard science. He made me believe that people will live on Venus some day. No mean feat, that! A great planetary vision. Finally, Jablokov does a great job getting rid of the putty-head aliens from Star Trek -- His aliens are fully thought out, and yet emotionally understandable to humans.

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