Guardian [Hardcover]

Joe Haldeman (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Ace Books (2003)
• ASIN: B001GDPUVY
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Joe Haldeman has served twice as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good historical fiction; a bit thin on the science fiction, December 30, 2002

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Guardian (Hardcover)

It is difficult to imagine that the author of this also wrote the Forever War. Though it has been over 25 years between the two. Nonetheless, the latter is exemplary hard military science fiction. But what about this book?

Its descriptions, told in the first person, of the late nineteenth century in the United States, are wonderfully done. They span the Civil War to the Alaskan gold rush. Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. But unlike say Jack Finney's "Time and Again", there is little intrigue here. Rather, we see society through the eyes of a single woman trying to raise her son. The constraints and norms it imposes on her seem so confining to us, but she describes them matter-of-factly, which deliberately adds to the dissonance that the author intends between the subject's experiences and ours.

Read this if you want some understanding of what it meant to be female and not wealthy or powerful in that United States.

Ah, but what about the SCIENCE fiction? A little sparse. Such as it is appears only in the last quarter or less of the book. The first three quarters is straight historical fiction, though within which, the subject keeps alluding to this mysterious thing. Slightly annoying. When it finally does happen, it is rather hokey. Bloody risible, actually. I found it unconvincing and simply not up to the author's standards in his earlier books.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interestingly-offbeat sort-of-SF novel, March 13, 2003

By 

Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Guardian (Hardcover)

This interestingly-offbeat sort-of-SF novel starts off as a late 19th century memoir, 'as written by' the protag-lady circa 1952. Rosa Coleman moves to Kansas to escape an abusive husband, then moves on to Alaska when the brute find out she's in Dodge City -- a town Haldeman picked, no doubt, with malice aforethought [note 1]. The 'memoir' is well-researched and pretty good, but has no special sfnal frisson until Rosa is led on a galactic fantasy-tour by an Alien Guardian disguised as a Tlingit Raven shaman... [note 2]

It wouldn't be fair to reveal how Raven got involved, so let's just say that many-worlds is the law in this universe, with interesting consequences. Haldeman's writing is as good as ever (a relief after Forever Peace), and the galactic-tourist scenes with Raven and Rosa are as thrilling and strange as the encounters with the weird continuity-guardian in The Hemingway Hoax [note 3] -- high praise indeed.

The spirit-guardian out-of-body trip leader was a pretty common conceit in 19th century proto-sf, and Haldeman specifically identifies a Flammarion novel [note 4] as a parallel work to his. A somewhat similar book, that ordinary readers may have actually read, is Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus. Personally, I would have preferred more galaxy-touring and less history in Guardian, but I wasn't disappointed with the book at hand. And, at 231 pages, no great time-committment is required. Recommended.

I glanced through the online reviews for Guardian. About a third wanted more history and less SF. Another third wanted more SF, and the rest were happy with Haldeman's chosen mix. Um, Publisher's Review panned it as "odd and unsatisfying". So YMMV.
____________
Note 1). -- town of a thousand bad cliches. Yup, she got the hell out of Dodge...
Haldeman used to live nearby, in Oklahoma (and grew up in Alaska).

Note 2). Raven has roughly the same position in Northwest Coast mythology as Coyote does in the American Southwest, or Loki in Nordic myths.

Note 3). They also make more sense than those HH scenes.

Note 4). You won't be surprised to hear that John Clute has a copy of the Flammarion in his personal library. Ah, it's Lumen, newly-translated by one B. Stableford...

"Haldeman must be commended for his meticulous recreation of period America."
--Paul di Filippo, **CAUTION -- SPOILERS**
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue296/books.html

Review copyright 2002 Peter D. Tillman

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing enough to prove hard to put down, March 8, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Guardian (Hardcover)

Readers might anticipate a story of an encounter with alien powers from the description - and might be disappointed. In reality this is the story of Rosa, a woman who escapes an abusive husband and journeys across country with her child in post-Civil War days, to make a new life for herself. While the hints of encounters with a world-changing alien lie throughout the story line, it's only in the final third of the account that any science fiction elements shine through. Guardian is still engrossing enough to prove hard to put down, despite its lack of emphasis on the alien experience itself.