Customer Reviews

Night Sky Mine

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

 

 

This is a novel which touches on bits and pieces of things which could be far more interesting, but it never really goes anywhere special. It felt more like a juvenile book than the author's other work- I'd recommend it for precocious junior high students.

I was often annoyed by the very poor editing of this book. It's rife with grammar and spelling mistakes which essentially act like reading speed bumps. The author also has a habit of inserting lengthy statements into the middle of sentences by hyphenating them - often at awkward places, and often several lines in length, in fact sometimes quite a bit longer than this one, making sentences rather hard to follow- when a separate sentence would be much cleaner. By the end of the book, I was pretty tired of having to reread the beginnings of sentences due to this.

Another bad habit which pops up throughout the book is the unexplained use of made-up words. Apparently the author feels that to stop and explain every new term would bog things down, which is true, but instead of limiting her use of meaningless words, she just throws them around and lets the reader's imagination go at them. While this is fine to some extent, there is too much of it in this book. There are lists of names of cyberspace denizens which serve no purpose at all. On the other hand, I would have liked more description of some of the terms, like "hypothecary". The main character is studying to become one, and the reader learns a bit about it through her actions, but still many questions are left unanswered. The reader would have been better served by more description of the important terms and less use of the meaningless ones.

The cyberspace concept here is fairly original, although like almost every other cyberspace in SF, it's too far removed from the reality of electronic information to be believable to anyone with a technical background. The portrayal of software personified as flora and fauna is an interesting one in concept, but the execution goes wa! y too far in giving data the attributes of physical objects or creatures. Too many times I found myself wondering why things would have developed the way they had in the book.

Like most of the author's protagonists, the main characters are gay, although unlike some of her other work, that point is irrelevant to the story. This book isn't about gay characters, it's about characters who happen to be gay. Unfortunately, these gay heroes are all pretty one-dimensional. Except for Ista, the main protagonist, practically no background is given for any of the characters. Even Ista's origins are a mystery to both the characters and the reader. Likewise, the only growth or development any of the characters experience in the book is the occasional reference to Ista's budding romantic feelings towards her friend Stinne. Even this doesn't go anywhere- the situation between them is basically the same at the end of the book as at the beginning.

All in all, this book was a decent effort, but no single aspect of it really held my attention for very long. Even the ending was something of a letdown- it felt like the author wasn't sure how she should end it and ended up leaving too much unresolved. It screams "sequel". Unfortunately there are too many books on the shelf better than this one for me to continue with this story.

In Melissa Scott's best novels, the background - the world setting - is much more interesting than the plot. This is especially true in Night Sky Mine.

In the far-future universe of the book, programs are no longer written, they're bred. They've been equipped with replication, attack, and defense code, and they live in the invisible world, preying on and interbreeding with other programs to form new ones. In the wildnets, programs interbreed at will, and are subject to evolutionary pressure - the wildnets are essentially a virtual ecosystem. Unfortunately, this opens up both the possibilities for useless or undesirable programs and the outside chance that a superprogram will evolve.

Ista, the main character, is an apprentice hypothecary, one who harvests wild program and analyzes code. She's lived for almost all her life in the coporation-owned Audumla system. She knows nothing of her antecedents; at age two, Ista was the sole survivor of a mineship attack, and was adopted by her rescuer. Without knowledge of her parents, she is not a legal citizen, so when she meets two men who are investigating mineship disasters, she has to help them. Together, they expose an illegal wild breeding effort and put themselves in danger.

The characters are likeable and fairly realistic. Ista is a streetwise adolescent, but definitely still not fully adult, and by far the most full-fleshed of the characters. The relationships between the characters are, at least in the first half, both believeable and understandable. (For example, Sein and Justin, the two men, fight the way long term couples fight.) In the second half, the characters are subsumed by the plot, which is unfortunate.

Good Scott novels leave you wanting to know more about the world, the setting, and this one is no exception. Although the plot is interesting enough to hold attention, it's really just a framework for exploring the universe. The book would have been better had the plot been more complex - and the book quite a bit longer - but it's a great SF read nonetheless.

I enjoy good science fiction that draws me into its story; conjuring mental images of times & societies made alive with fertile description. In all fairness to Ms. Scott, I finished the book, still wishing I knew Ista better; her real personality; her 'supposed' lesbianism, rather than meager hints leaving her so distant and unknowable. Other characters materialized without emotional believability; internally thinking, but seldom expressing or speaking their desires in ways which helped anything. Perhaps this was intended. NSM's society felt so lonely! Thank goodness for near-mother's love... this I understood. The linear plot lacked pending danger, even though disaster was often implied... it never coalesced into suspense or close call. The "page-turning urge" never developed. It seemed even Ms. Scott was looking for a direction it might go, at times. The descriptions ended up being as sterile as her unimaginable creature/programs in the virtual 'wildnet'. (Object oriented programming gone amok!! OOPs! Since when was 'breeding' accomplished by eating? So unromantic for the chogsets!)) In retrospect, only so much can be left to the reader. For even the imagination must start from some tangible 'known' before describing an 'unknown' or the 'demogorgon' will overwhelm the part of the brain that 'cares.'

"Night Sky Mine" is an OK sf, mystery novel, but not Melissa Scott's best work. The story is written from the perspective of a girl-child (Ista Kelly), and a gay, couple of auxiliary, policemen. In the mystery, they converge on solving the disappearence of ore-mining ships in a neighboring asteroid belt.

Scott is a master (mistress?) of creating societies on the edge. "Trouble, and Her Friends" is a good example of edgy, sf wound-up in a cyberpunk future. The scenery and the culture layed-out in "Night Sky Mine" were similarly excellent.

However, in "Night Sky Mine" the author tries to mix the cyberpunk with the space opera. Like oil and water, they didn't mix well. In particular, the changes in point of view were not well handled. I found them confusing rather then compelling. I could never distinguish between either of the two gay cops. In addition, I found the tech to be just a little corney.

"Night Sky Mine" is OK sf, but pass if up if there is something else on the shelf.

I don't recall which Melissa Scott book I picked up first - start anywhere, and you're good to go. I've read most of her work, and Night Sky Mine is one of the best.

Scott's writing is subtle. The reader has to just accept things as they're given, without interpretation. My experience is that all the pieces are there, but the worlds she drops you into are pretty well removed from "present reality," so you have to do a lot of acceptin' before the story wraps. After gradually building up her structure, Scott wraps her story whiz-bang-pow. Most satisfying. Might not be to everyone's taste, but it works for me.

Highly recommend.

Melissa Scott has a habit of writing novels that are well put together and thick with possibility and meaning. Skilled in presenting conflict and resolutions that seem human in a future universe, this novel presents a solar system with; asteroid mining, computer programs that evolve, a strangely abandoned asteroid and child, that comes together in a well crafted mystery that asks some of the eternal questions about the meaning of humanity, and the interaction of self and society.

I was unfamiliar with the book when I bought it... and after reading it, I'm still unfamiliar with it.

The other reviews rightly point out that most of the characters are pretty 1-dimensional. The two gay male characters... (let me look up their names)... Rangsey and Tarasov, might as well be 1 person - they were so identical that I couldn't tell which of them was talking at any given moment. This despite the fact that we have a whole chapter to get to know them.

The main protagonist, Ista, is really the only interesting character, certainly the only character that's developed, but her relation to the other characters goes pretty much unchanged until the last page in the book.

As for the story... I kept waiting for it but it never really materialized. Despite the fact that we travel with the characters between several stars, live on a giant space-station, explore a giant derelict and get pursued by an organized crime ring I never really felt engaged with the story. The characters are all totally chaste. In fact, I don't remember a point where anyone so much as touches anyone else. It was like an ABC after-school special set in space.

The concept of genetically-evolving software was probably more interesting in 1996. As an engineer, it just irritated me. Apparently, writing software in the distant future is exactly like playing a video game.

There were also some technical flaws that drove me nuts. The author has a bad habit of jumping from one character's mind to another without warning. I kept having to backtrack and make sure I knew which character was reacting, thinking or talking. The book could have used a little more editing.

So, over-all: Some interesting ideas here and there. But I wouldn't recommend it.

One of the strengths of Melissa Scott's science fiction is her ability to create a technologically complex world and then fill it with all the social nuances of a real society through her complex characters. In her latest book, Night Sky Mine Ms. Scott has once again created engaging characters that I would love to hang with.

Within this world the complexity of computer programs has progressed past the point of human understanding and the programs themselves, called hammals, have taken the next evolutionary step towards Artificial Intelligence by breeding, exchanging with, and scavenging other programs. The habitat for these hammals became known as the invisible world, a vivid three dimensional icon-filled world interpreted and displayed via the lens.

Tarasov Sein, an officer in the Patrol, and his Union lover Rangsey Justin are posing undercover as members of the Traveler class and investigating the strange disappearances and destructions of Mining platforms in the system's astroid belt. The relationship between Tarasov and Rangsey is genuinely real; they are each filled with their own class biases but are still deeply in love with each other.

Ista Kelly, a teenager who was found as a baby on an abandoned mine, is living on the Company-owned space station Agglomeration and studying to become a hypothecary, the profession of wrangling the hammals of the wildnets. Without parents and not enough money to buy legal identification she is stuck on the station. Her best friend and the object of her affection, Stinne, lives upstation with her family in the Company quarters. Together, in searching for Ista's history and parentage they cross paths with Tarasov and Rangsey's undercover operation. Can the foursome track down the mystery behind Night Sky Mines?

Melissa Scott has previously written Trouble and Her Friends and Shadow Man.

Night Sky Mine involves a society where computer programs have their own biology and biosphere, so must be carefully regulated, with only licenced experts allowed to deal with them, and trading in them is a crime. A young woman is apprenticed to one of these practitioners, and becomes involved in a case that two of the local police end up investigating.

A nearby asteroid complex has been abandoned, and no-one knows why. The police think there are higher corporate and political forces at work, here, and set out to discover what is going on.

I have not been disappointed in Ms. Scott'swriting abilities yet. Absolutely wonderful!!!At last, someone has created gay heroes who behave like "real" people. Not stereotypes.Her characters are real, her writing is clear.Your time will not be wasted.