Earth Rise [Hardcover]

William C. Dietz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2002

William Dietz returns to the world of DeathDay with EarthRise, as Alex Franklin, the puppet president in the service of the occupying Saurons, experiences a change of heart-and transforms from a collaborator into a secret agent in an underground war of resistance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This concluding sequel to Dietz's Deathday (2001) contains the same wide cast of characters whose recognizability (burnt-out pro, canny vet, manipulative pol with sincere heart, etc.) is balanced by their better-than-average depth of portrayal. Yes, Alexander Franklin is a devious politician with ambitions. But he is also an African-American U.S. president who mourns his wife's death and is willing to accept a reputation as a collaborator in order to organize the resistance movement against the insectile Saurons. Yes, the more noble humans and equally enslaved Ra 'Na defeat the arrogant Saurons in the end. But not everyone is motivated by selfless ideals, and even the good guys around Franklin make a hard (and immoral) choice, using the Saurons to decimate the white supremacists who also fight to overthrow the aliens. The author includes some interesting speculation on the nature of race relations and class divisions, giving his Saurons three separate genetic castes operating in a rigid social hierarchy. The commentary on human race relations is full of satiric insight. Surprisingly, this tale of worldwide alien invasion centers on only four locales. The sense of confinement, however, does help build an atmosphere of captivity, which aids considerably in reader identification with the plight of the human characters. Unfortunately, Dietz's plot-central alien reproduction seems unlikely, while his humans are rarely confronted with the problems of reconciling their real differences of belief.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

William C. Dietz is the author of over 20 science fiction novels, including By Blood Alone and By Force of Arms. Dietz has been variously employed as a surgical technician, college instructor, news writer and television producer.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Ace Hardcover; 1st edition (September 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441009719
• ISBN-13: 978-0441009718
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,050,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William C. Dietz is the best-selling author of more than thirty science fiction novels some of which have been translated into German, Russian, and Japanese. He grew up in the Seattle area, spent time with the Navy and Marine Corps as a medic, graduated from the University of Washington, lived in Africa for half a year, and has traveled to six continents. Dietz has been employed as a surgical technician, college instructor, news writer, television producer and Director of Public Relations and Marketing for an international telephone company. He writes full-time and lives with his wife in Washington State. For more information about William C. Dietz and his work visit: williamcdietz.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Skip This Earth Invasion, April 28, 2004

By 

DED (Bethel, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earth Rise (Hardcover)

'Aliens Invade Earth' is probably one of the most prevalent story ideas in the history of science fiction. At this point in time, an author had better have some new twist to the subject and write it well in order to justify going down this well worn path. Unfortunately, Mr. Dietz's twist isn't good enough for me to recommend it to others.

'Earthrise' is the sequel to 'Deathday.' I'd received 'Earthrise' as a gift, discovered it was a sequel, and decided that I should see if I should buy the first book. Almost all of the reviews I read of both books rated them both at fair or poor. After reading a summary of 'Deathday' I realized that I didn't need to read it before 'Earthrise.' I picked up enough from the summary to know what the scene was: Earth had been invaded by insectoid aliens and was now enslaved.

Dietz's twist was that the insectoid aliens were racist. In their hierarchal society, black bugs ruled, brown bugs were warriors, and white bugs were slaves. As such, when the bugs enslaved humans, they categorized them that way as well. For example, the black governor of Washington state is picked by the bugs to be the US president.

So why did the bugs (who call themselves 'Saurons' - not too obvious that they're bad guys) invade Earth? They needed to reproduce. Apparently the entire species reproduces asexually at death, giving rise to a nymph that carries the genetic memory of its parent. It's an intriguing concept but every single bug all at the same time? That sounds far-fetched to me.

In 'Earthrise', the President leads a resistance movement to take back Earth at the point when the bugs are spawning their nymphs. The humans are aided by another slave race that the bugs have brought with them through space. They're called the Ra 'Na. Their physical description makes them sound like otters, but they're a technically adept race who know more about the functioning of the bugs' starships than they do.

So why the need for slaves? Well, the bugs have this millenial tradition of building great pyramids where the spawning is to take place. And tradition dictates that slaves have to haul large blocks of limestone into place, no superior technology allowed. Once the pyramids are built, the bugs plan on killing all but a handful of slaves, just to make sure that no one attempts to kill the nymphs while they're still vulnerable.

There are alot of questions that I have regarding the bugs. Do they have an endoskeleton capable of supporting their massive exoskeletons? If not, why don't they collapse under their own weight? How did this spawning technique arise? And why only one nymph? If a whole species is spawning at once how did they come to their present size? Why weren't they eaten by predators on their homeworld millenia ago? Maybe the answers to these questions are in the first book.

As for writing style, Dietz jumps all over the place. One page you're in Washington state, the next you're in Guatemala, and then you're in space on the bug ships. And so many characters are introduced that few stand out. Just as one character starts to be developed, he/she disappears for 40 pages. The end result is that the characters seem like cardboard props on a cluttered stage.

I was leaning towards a 2 star rating but the ending was a letdown. I kept waiting for the book to build up to a climax but it never really happened. When it ended I actually said, 'That's it?!' The whole book reads like a series of events just strung together. There's no ebb and flow of drama. I never got the impression as I read certain events that they were pivotal moments in the book. It's only now that I've finished it that I can realize them for what they were. It was like driving over speed bumps when I should've felt like I needed to swerve to avoid fallen boulders on a mountain pass.

In summary, if you're looking for a good alien invasion story, pass on this one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Consistently Annoying, April 2, 2004

By 

Kevan Dunsmore (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earth Rise (Hardcover)

I was about half way through the first book when I read the reviews on this site. I wondered why most of them were negative. Sure, the action is confined to a small part of the world, the aliens are one dimensional and the good guys are stereotypical. But, for all that, I found myself enjoying it. That was until I hit the last third of the book. At about that point, I noticed that Dietz used the phrase "the fact that" and "given the fact that" every second paragraph. It really started to bug me and I found myself mentally rewording his sentences whenever I came across that particular piece of laziness.

I bought this book because I wanted to see if it was as bad as the reviews depicted. Once again I found that the story was acceptable but this time saw that Dietz continues in the same patterns he fell into at the end of his previous effort. OK, he branches out a bit and adds "that being the case" and "and so it was that" to his repetoire of stock phrases but it happens that often that I wonder if anyone bothered to read, let alone edit, his manuscript. Even the characters, human and alien alike, start saying "the fact that" and "given that" by about half way through the book. It happens that often that I began to wonder if it was some sort of joke.

Aside from the poorly written nature of this series, the one thing that annoyed me more than anything else was this: the Saurons live a long time. Every so often they die and a "nymph" takes their place, inheriting its ancestors' memories. One of the Sauron characters does some ground breaking research near the end of this book and discovers how to allow Saurons to have more than one nymph. From that I deduce that under normal circumstances, Saurons only have one nymph. How did the species propagate at all?

Ultimately I found this book extremely annoying. Don't buy it. Instead poke yourself every 5 minutes with a pencil or other sharp object. The end effect is the same and you'll have saved yourself a few bucks.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ho-hum evil aliens destroy civilization and then get zapped, May 24, 2003

By 

Douglas De Bono - Author of No Safe Harbor (Minnetonka, mn United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earth Rise (Hardcover)

I bought this book because I bought the first book (yeah, I know not a real good excuse). You have the evil Sauron, which are basically beetles on steroids, The Ra Na, which a furry little dwarfs and a collection of human refugees.

Humanity has been reduced to 3 billion souls. The only kind of religious fever that could survive in this apocalyptic world are white racists.

Most of the action is confined to a revolt on the rbiting fleet and what remains of Washington State. (I don't know what happened to the rest of the world, but the last time I checked there were people in Asia, Africa and Europe).

Of course, the bugs (as they are called) have a weakness, and the good guys manage to wipe them out.

There are good aliens-invade-the-earth-and mankind-wipes-them-out books, this just wasn't one of them.