Orphanage [Mass Market Paperback]

Robert Buettner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

When earth needs heroes, whom will we call to valor? When mankind's enemy is beyond our worst imagination, who will be our champions? Will we pick the brightest and the toughest? Or the ones with nothing left to lose? War is an Orphanage Mankind's first alien contact tears into Earth: projectiles launched from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, have vaporized whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like eighteen-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man's first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede. They have one chance to attack, one ship to attack with. Their failure is our extinction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A rousing tale of courage. Above all, Buettner reminds us that war brings with it a terrible price. -- BookLoons

"A witty, fast-paced, and solid military story …. The vibrant voice of Jason Wander engaged me from the get-go." -- Karin Lowachee, author of Warchild and Burndive

"All told, Orphanage is an impressive debut by an author with admirable storytelling skills." -- Sffworld.com

"I enjoyed it, it kept me up till o-dark thirty finishing it, and I’m looking forward to the sequel." -- Sfrevu.com

"ORPHANAGE is raw and real -- and a hell of a good read." -- —New York Times Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson, coauthor of Dune : The Machine Crusade

"You just don’t want to put the book down." -- The Dragon Page.com

"[E]ntertaining homage...Buettner shows the Heinlien touch." -- Denver Post

Fast, sharp, this future war tale rings with the authority of a writer who knows the Army …inside out." -- Gregory Benford, author of Beyond Infinity

I'm sure Robert Heinlein would have enjoyed this exciting homage to Starship Troopers. . .believable as it is terrible." -- Joe Haldeman, author of The Forever War

About the Author

I began writing fiction in 1994. Opposing counsel who read my briefs would argue I was doing so long before that. Born July 7 long ago on a small island situated between the Hudson and East rivers, I grew up in Cleveland and eventually slid west to Colorado. A flirtation with the Military Academies lasted as long as it took Annapolis’ recruiters to decide that small tackles could protect Roger Staubach – but not that small. I earned a B.A. from the College of Wooster, with Honors in Geology, then studied as a National Science Foundation Fellow in Paleontology at the University of Cincinnati. I left Cincinnati with a Juris Doctorate and an Army Intelligence Lieutenancy, both unmarketable credentials as Vietnam wound down. During those years, I worked in mining as a rig hand and prospector in the Sonoran desert of Southwest Texas and the mountains of Alaska and worked my way through law school as a petroleum geologist. I practiced law for international energy companies internationally and in the American West while I served out my Army-Reserve Intelligence Commission. Some Cold War oil-employee reservists did spy, an avocation I disclaim. Of course, as the CIA's Kim Roosevelt wrote about a former intelligence officer, "He claimed he had left that field entirely . . . but neither I nor anyone else who knew of that interruption in a life . . . would ever feel sure of that." When I'm not lawyering or writing, I run marathons, climb mountains, snowboard and scuba, all as ineffectually as I spied. I currently practice law in the Colorado Rockies and have published in the field of natural resources law. Orphanage is my first novel and its sequel will appear in the fall of 2005. The voice of Orphanage's protagonist, Jason Wander, who returns in Aspect's September, 2005 sequel, Orphan's Destiny, owes much to Kip, Robert A. Heinlein's spacefaring soda jerk from 1958's "Heinlein Juvenile" classic, Have Spacesuit Will Travel. Jason springs as well from J.D. Salinger's adolescent cynic, Holden Caulfield, of 1951's classic, The Catcher in the Rye. Orphanage is a conscious homage to Heinlein's 1959 Hugo and Nebula Award winner, Starship Troopers, and to Joe Haldeman's 1974 winner of the same awards, The Forever War. Orphanage steers an apolitical, post-9/11 course between Cold Warrior Heinlein on the right and Vietnam Vet Haldeman on the left. Though Joe might argue I veer more toward our common ancestor. My fascination with massive spaceships grew first from Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, which first appeared in, incredibly, 1941 and from A.E. Van Vogt's The War Against the Rull, another classic assembled from five stories published between 1940 and 1950. On the historical side, the scenes of outnumbered infantry arrayed in defense echo the Action at Rorke's Drift during the Zulu War, vividly described in Ian Knight's 1980 history, Brave Men's Blood - The Epic of the Zulu War, 1879. They also draw from the Union defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, famously recounted in Michael Sharra's 1974 Pulitzer-winner, The Killer Angels. If my writing can be said to have a style, it surely derives from the advice, if not the work, of Mark Twain, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway and William Strunk, Jr., author of 1935's The Elements of Style.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Aspect (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446614297
• ISBN-13: 978-0446614290
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,386,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Buettner's best-selling debut novel, Orphanage, 2004 Quill Award nominee for Best SF/Fantasy/Horror novel, was called the Post-9/11 generation's Starship Troopers and has been adapted for film by Olatunde Osunsanmi (The Fourth Kind) for Davis Entertainment (Predator, I Robot, Eragon). Orphanage and other books in Robert's Jason Wander series have been translated into Chinese, Czech, French, Russian, and Spanish. Robert was a 2005 Quill nominee for Best New Writer.

In March, 2011 Baen books released Overkill, his sixth novel, and in July, 2011 his seventh, Undercurrents. A long-time Heinlein Society member, he wrote the Afterword for Baen's recent re-issue of Heinlein's Green Hills of Earth/Menace From Earth short story collection. His own first original short story will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Armored, edited by John Joseph Adams.

Robert is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and National Science Foundation Fellow in Paleontology. As attorney of record in more than three thousand cases, he practiced in the U.S. federal courts, before courts and administrative tribunals in no fewer than thirteen states, and in five foreign countries. Six, if you count Louisiana.

He lives in Georgia with his family and more bicycles than a grownup needs.

Home Page: http://www.robertbuettner.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Homage to Heinlien, December 19, 2005

By 

Steven R. McEvoy "MCWPP" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Orphanage (Mass Market Paperback)

"We crabbed shoulder to shoulder down the cargo nets to our landing craft bucking in the Channel, each GI's bilge -and-sea-soaked boots drenching his buddy below. In that moment I realized that we fight not for flags or against tyrants but for each other. For whatever remains of my life, those barely met strangers who dangled around me will be my only family. Strip away politics and whatever or whenever, war is an orphanage."
-Anonymous letter fragment, Recovered on Omaha Beach,
Normandy, June 1944.
Orphanage begins with this quote but it began a long time ago. This book is written in homage to Science Fiction Greats Robert A. Heinlien, and Joe Haldeman, who each wrote political commentaries on War set in science fiction stories. Heinlein wrote his original Starship Troopers in 1959, and Haldeman wrote his The Forever War in 1972 and revised it in 1975. Each of these books follows a young man from basic training through to great battles to attempt to save the earth from aliens, as does our story.
Our grunt is Jason Wander, a young man mad at the Universe, his parents were killed in the first meteor impact. After a few run-ins with the law because of anger and lashing out after his loss, he is given the choice to serve prison time or in the military. At some point in his training he goes from being apathetic, to deciding to become a good soldier. His adventure lead him to the moon where he is the first human to encounter the slugs who are trying to wipe out all life on earth, then onto Ganymade where the first major conflict of this war begins. Ganymade is the outpost in our solar system for our alien enemies that we are being bombarded from. During the heroic battle as the force of 10,000 is knocked down to a few hundred, he is promoted time and time again, for succeeding and rising to the occasion. Field promotions are hard earned for they come at the loss of good men and women, and with each promotion you become responsible for more lives. Can he take the pressure, can he save earth, read it and find out.

126 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A fun read, even if it does use every cliche of the genre, November 30, 2004

By 

Chris Lee Mullins (Highlands Ranch, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Orphanage (Mass Market Paperback)

Like the other reviewers, I really enjoyed "Orphanage". But having read "The Forever War" and "Starship Troopers" recently, I couldn't help but notice that most every major plot point or character stereotype in "Orphanage" was lifted from those two books.

Talented space pilot who happens to be the main characters friend? Check (Starship Troopers). Human handlers psychicly and emotionally attached to a robot/dog scouting the front lines? Check (Starship Troopers). Main character emotionally attached to a female who gets wounded on the front lines? Check (Forever War). Evil aliens thowing large objects at Earth in order to soften us up? Check (Starship Troopers) Main character haunted by the death of a family member who happened to be at ground zero when said object hits Earth? Check (Starship Troopers). Main character part of the first assault wave against the aliens, only to be handed a crushing defeat? Check (both Starship Troopers and Forever War). Main character's military mentor tries to rejoin the front in time for battle? Check (Forever War).

This list goes on and on, right down to the manner in which Jason Wander ends up in the military, with some minor variation. Granted, there are some trademark cliches of the genre that are simply unavoidable. But really, this seems a bit much. "Orphanage" reads like the redheaded stepchild of both of its superior forebears. There are some original elements to it, as Jason Wander becomes attached to military intelligence unit scouting a crashed alien Projectile on the moon. Or earlier on as Wander is sent into the remains of Pittsburgh searching for Projectile debris (including a subplot involving Wander's almost-psychic ability to find said debris, which is never followed up on).

Again, "Orphanage" is a good read, and I am genuinely anticipating the sequel, which is promised in the author's biography. Hopefully, the sequel will be more original than this first volume.

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 2004's best Sci Fi novel!, December 20, 2004

By 

Rhys Pool (Atlanta, Georgia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Orphanage (Mass Market Paperback)

I kept reading reviews all over the net claiming Orphanage was the novel of the year, of the decade, this generation's Starship Troopers. Right. I know books. I know Heinlein. So I appointed myself as a Truth Squad and plunked down $6.99 to set the record straight.

Twenty-four couldn't-put-it-down hours later, I reveal The Truth to you all: The reviews are right. Orphanage may be the definitive military coming-of-age story of the Post-9/11 generation. Easily 2004's best SF novel, but it is fast, funny and accessible enough that general-fiction readers can gobble it like Grisham or Grafton.

Orphanage is the story of smart, underacheiving teen Jason Wander, who grows a chip on his shoulder as big as Jupiter after alien bombs kill his mother and millions of others. Jason comes of age in the infantry and winds up "one of the lucky orphans who in one hour will save the human race or die trying." His infantry division must invade Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, and destroy the Alien outpost that is sending the bombs. They have to win with pasted-up antiques. Each time you think things can't get worse, they do.

Halfway through, I thought I loved this book because it was fast, funny, superbly-written entertainment. When I finished it, I realized that I loved it because I would never look at soldiers the same way again. And today that matters.

Warner Books released Orphanage as a low-profile, mass-market, genre paperback. As The Word gets out, my $6.99 for that first-printing paperback is going to look like an investment.