Customer Reviews

Eclipse

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Being a big reader of mostly SF, I keep 10-15 unread books at any given time and when I finish one, I flip through all of them to see which grabs me then. One recent evening after finishing Glasshouse, I opened Eclipse and it really grabbed me so I read it nonstop until finished later in the night. It is this good and tense. While I enjoyed Orbital Burn too, this book put Mr. Bedford on my buy on publication list, so I eagerly wait his new novel. The synopsis of the book gives a good description of the story which is pretty much independent of the earlier book, though set in the same universe, but the strength of the book is in the 4 main characters (the junior officers, the exec and the captain), their personalities and interaction. Of all the characters, the captain and some of his life trajectory as recounted (read the book to see how) struck me as so well done that you could really image him and his torments. Very, very good.

Liviu

Eclipse is K. A. Bedford's second published SF novel, following Orbital Burn (2004). Though set in the same universe as the earlier novel it shares none of the characters or story-line (aside from a couple of references to the "Kestrel event") with that work and can be enjoyed without having read the previous book.

Eclipse opens about forty years after the events described in Orbital Burn and 150 years after the Earth was mysteriously destroyed by forces unknown. Humanity is spread across the remaining planets and moons of the sol system as well as nearby stars. James Dunne, 21, a newly minted graduate of the Royal Interstellar Service, is about to take up his first duty on the starship Eclipse. He meets an attractive female graduate while waiting to board and soon finds himself plunged into an environment of steadily increasing horror, institutionalised bastardry, intraservice rivalry and corruption, and is faced with the threat of a new war. He also becomes involved in humanity's first contact with an alien race. Dunne has to deal with a deeply disturbed and vengeful captain and a psychotic and sadistic executive officer who is out to break his spirit at any cost. Meanwhile the reader gradually finds out details of Dunne's family history and gains insight into why he joined the service and why he feels compelled to stick it out while his world collapses around him, and his future looks increasingly bleak.

The story comes with several interesting SF ideas, such as injectable computer "headware" for command, control, communication (and hacking) aboard ship and cheap biologically engineered "disposable" humans of limited capabilities--used when a robot is not enough, and a real human is too much, for the job at hand. Then there's the "virtual queen" who seems to engender as much, or as little, loyalty in her subjects as any flesh and blood royal.

Eclipse starts out like a fairly typical Heinlein-inspired "military SF" story but it soon veers off into altogether darker, more interesting and dramatic, territory. Set almost entirely aboard the starship Eclipse the story appears to leave some loose threads hanging around towards the end (I got the impression there's much more to Dunne's father's disappearance/death, his mother's remarriage and his brother's tragedy than we find out in this story) and I can't help wondering if Dunne's story will be continued in the future. At the end of Eclipse I was left uncertain if the weakly godlike aliens were the same ones that appear in Orbital Burn. Either way the story arc feels unfinished. We can but hope.

Eclipse is an accomplished and engrossing tale that plays on the darker side of military service and human nature. It won the Aurealis award for the best Australian SF novel of 2005.

It is a widely held belief in many kinds of artistic endeavours that a second effort is often a let-down, especially when the first is notable. Well, K.A. Bedford's "Orbital Burn" was notable, and I was pleased to discover that this second effort of his is even better.

Others above me here have given a nice synopsis of the story, so I'll just say that you should be careful if you have a heart condition; this book is a pulse-pounder that's guaranteed to raise your heartrate.

Killer cover, killer story ... what more could you ask for?

Captain Rudyard of Eclipse was a man who didn't like disruptions. And James Robert Dunne, 21 and a fresh graduate from Royal Interstellar Academy, was about to join Her Majesty's Starship. What he wanted is to travel and chart unexplored space. What he didn't expect, was the academy standard flushed though window the minute he was under command of the Captain. In fact, he was about to be found be shown how to not to "rock a boat". Enter his worst nightmare. An officer career at the farthest reaches of known space that was not to be. And they wanted a volunteer for first contact alien vessel that sneaked near the Earth. Guess who would be selected?

The lead figure Dunne had high expectations after the academy only to see that the ship was commanded by a despot. Not only that but the close staff of Captain were more the same bigotry. The story is about first person experience of how it is to be hazed in military. Unfortunately that subject has been gnawed to the bone elsewhere in the literature. The dialogue is abrupt, fitful, thoughts are not expressed in full before another scene with exclamation marks are punctuated. An example: "You all right? ... That's b*it! James? ... That's so?" The plot twists where an alien encounter is introduced and discarded short after to be replaced by military politics scene, seduction of young officer by a high ranking female Fleet commander, spy games and assassin are quirky and only loosely jointed. The technology about various headware installments and ship minds is fascinating but the ending about a super alien appearing from nowhere to remove Earth is too sudden development.

One (1) star. Written in 2006 the innovative ideas, like headware that can be hard ejected, is best in the book. Only the constant bullying and beating of Dunne wears down quickly. The weak, or lack of intelligent, dialog is problematic as it contributes so little to the story. The non-dialogue sections are good but when persons talk to each other, it's close to porridge. The constant shift of plot goals is sprawling. They various paths rather feel like ideas in progress that are plucked out of nowhere to get continuation from current point to the next. The many underdeveloped episodes lacking depth fly by in a whimp. Great promises are constantly stalled by the flickering moments. Like having a bumpy ride in dirt road with a sports car: in spite of all the power mourning under the hood, it is hard to enjoy the ride.

Reading K. A. Bedford's blog gave me a sense for how I thought his novels would be. This sense was largely incorrect, at least for Eclipse, which at times is an almost inverse reflection of the author's ostensible personality (as manifested in his blog). Eclipse is replete with violence and sadism. Notably, the accounts of these topics do not suffer (too much) from the B-grade movie treatment they often receive from bigger named authors. Indeed, the standard of writing in Eclipse generally exceeds that of much contemporary popular speculative fiction. Even so, while Eclipse is set in a future naturally intended to reflect the world or universe as it is for us today, there are instances when dialogue, behaviours or attitudes seem anachronistic. Interestingly however these instances function as bridges between the future as depicted in Eclipse and the present, and in doing so facilitate conscious reflection upon one of the novel's themes (and one of the more important themes of speculative fiction): to what extent will the fundamental aspects of humanity be altered by further technological advancement and enhanced understanding of the universe? This theme is effectively traversed by Bedford, though it is with resignation that he foresees no inherent change for the better. This unfortunate, though eminently understandable, outlook is highlighted by his suggestion that improvement can come only through exogenous intervention, a theme unto itself which Bedford will hopefully explore.

Having read the author's first effort, "Orbital Burn", I was looking forward to his second, and was more than adequately rewarded. This book reads like the very best of Frederik Pohl (it reminded me in many ways of "Gateway") yet in some parts is more innovative. The technological themes of "Orbital Burn" are brought through and used in imaginative ways, and the characters (another of the author's strengths) are fully-realised - the heroes and villains are sympathetic/despicable yet complex, and the line between the two is rarely completely clear, which makes for a thoroughly interesting read. Most pervasive is the relentlessly increasing sense of claustrophobic suspense which builds almost from the first page right until the climax. You just can't put it down.

The towering masterpiece of this book is a particular central section which describes the starship captain's memory of one of his experiences as a cadet through the eyes of the protagonist, who is plugged into the captain's brain through some neurotechnological wizardry. I won't spoil it for you by going into detail, but this part of the book was simply staggering in its ability to make the reader feel as though they were experiencing the events being described. A world-class piece of descriptive writing. I had to read that particular section of the book four times, it was that good.

The ending feels rather incomplete, as the deus ex machina appears and forces a too-hasty conclusion to the tale, albeit in an unusual and novel manner. It feels as if there were a rush to finish the story, where a more fully-explored denouement would have felt more satisfying. This is not enough to dampen my enthusiasm for this excellent book - I will be purchasing Mr. Bedford's next title with eager anticipation.

'Eclipse' won Australia's top SF award, the Aurealis Award for 2005, with this novel, his second. His first novel, 'Orbital Burn' was a finalist for the same award in 2004.

I am not well read in the science fiction genre, but I know good books and this is one of them. I really enjoyed reading this book, and look forward to more stories from the same universe that KA Bedford has created in his first two books.

Others have summarized the plot, so I won't speak about that, but I will say that I like my novels with real-life grit and characters that I can believe really exist. Eclipse has that gritty feel, while still taking you on an invigorating journey through the stars. A++

I'm not really a science fiction fan. Ray Bradbury is my only must-read in the category. KA Bedford, however, manages to pull out some of Bradbury's fair dust and give us a book that speaks to the deepest, darkest parts of humanity. The technology is important, but it's only one factor in the incredible evolution of the main character.

If you've never read SF before, this is the perfect book on which to cut your teeth.