Overthrowing Heaven [Hardcover]

Mark L. Van Name (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2009

It began as a favor to a woman trying to get away from abusive husband.

Jon Moore grew up in a prison laboratory. When he escaped with nothing but his body's nanotech enhancements and more anger than even a long lifetime could wash away, an entire planet died behind him.  Memories of the things he'd done still haunted him; because of them, he often ended up helping those in need.

 

His kindnesses frequently didn't work out well. This one really didn't work out well.  It hurled Jon and Lobo, the intelligent assault vehicle and Jon's only friend, down an accelerating, ever more dangerous spiral involving:

 

·         Private armies and government covert ops teams

·         A courtesan who always seems a step ahead of him

·         Rival superpowers that define Good in terms of their own advantage and Ethics as whatever doesn't get in the way of their Good

·         And a brilliant, amoral scientist to whom human beings are just more experimental animals--and who might be Lobo’s creator.

            Jon and Lobo take the reader on a headlong rush through armed enemies and untrustworthy allies and encounter what just might be the worst danger their partnership will face: the truth.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mark L. Van Name, whom John Ringo has said is "going to be the guy to beat in the race to the top of SFdom," has worked in the high-tech industry for over 30 years and today runs a technology assessment company in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. A former Executive for Ziff Davis Media and a national technology columnist he's published over a thousand computer-related articles and multiple science fiction stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the Year's Best Science Fiction. Jon & Lobo stories have appeared in a Baen anthology and Jim Baen's Universe.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Baen; 1 edition (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439132674
• ISBN-13: 978-1439132678
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #988,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark L. Van Name is a writer, technologist, and spoken word performer. As a science fiction author, he has published four novels (One Jump Ahead, Slanted Jack, Overthrowing Heaven, and Children No More) as well as an omnibus collection of his first two books (Jump Gate Twist); edited or co-edited three anthologies (Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology, Transhuman, and The Wild Side), and written many short stories. Those stories have appeared in a wide variety of books and magazines, including Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, many original anthologies, and The Year's Best Science Fiction.

As a technologist, he is the CEO of a fact-based marketing and technology assessment firm, Principled Technologies, Inc., that is based in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. He has worked with computer technology for his entire professional career and has published over a thousand articles in the computer trade press, as well as a broad assortment of essays and reviews.

As a spoken word artist, he has created and performed two shows: Science Magic Sex, and Wake Up Horny, Wake Up Angry. He also frequently leads humor panels at SF conventions.

For more information, visit his Web site, www.marklvanname.com, or follow his blog, markvanname.blogspot.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hero reminds me of a knight errant, April 4, 2010

By 

P. Gibbs (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Overthrowing Heaven (Hardcover)

I think many of the previous reviewers have neglected the ethical dimensions in this story. Yes, the book looks a lot like military SF but the author transcends the sub-genre. How the hero usually avoids "unnecessary" killing (even "bad guys"), while (in his inner dialogue) demonstrating moral outrage at the depravity of his enemies, all add up to the central theme of this novel. The superhero with his super fighting machine has a soul. His ethical qualms are not hindrances but part of his self-identity. Despite that he's still willing to follow the old Texas adage of "Some people just plain need killing" when confronted with an evil SOB.

I'm reminded of the two most morally serious and least appreciated television series in recent memory: Josh Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. If it had not been killed by the soul-less "suits" who run the studios, Whedon's Firefly series would have given us the same challenging exploration of a science fictional (vs. vampire-fantasy) universe as that done by the more commercially successful Buffy.

Mark Van Name has hit his stride as a storyteller and as a writer in his third novel. The characters are engaging and the plotting is sufficiently convoluted. Most importantly the morally serious sensibility of the hero now provides a nucleus for the story that elevates it above its origins as genre fiction. In the first book, One Jump Ahead, Jon Moore obtained title to a jump-gate capable flying battle machine by the name of Lobo, when he took it as payment for a mercenary trouble-shooting job. His customer didn't realize that Lobo was not an imitation Predator Class Assault Vehicle but the real thing with an artificial intelligence with unplumbed capacities and a boundless supply of sarcasm.

The two of them function as a team for "courier missions." Contemplating the antecedents for the convoluted plots, I would hearken back to the old "Paladin" TV western from the 1960's and the Travis McGee detective novels of John P. McDonald. The heroes from two disparate genres are both archetypes of the modern knight errant figure who nominally is in it for the money, but whose quests only incidentally ever end up making any money.

Heaven in this book is a planet with a Disney World sort of amusement park that is filled with genetically engineered creatures. Dragons do fly through the air around the arriving guests. Jon is hired to penetrate the operation because under the cover of its "normal" operation the planetary government is sponsoring a scientist who is conducting human experiments that kill children in failed attempts to create super-humans.

An interplanetary government hires Jon to infiltrate the operation, rescue the mole inside it who's lost contact with her spymasters and then exfiltrate with the captured mad scientist and secret agent onboard Lobo. The woman who is assigned to him as the local talent/liaison has another mission for him: rescue her young son who was kidnapped to be a test subject. The rest of the plot I'll leave to the reader. I don't believe in "spoiler reviews."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars faster than the speed of light, June 4, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Overthrowing Heaven (Hardcover)

Of all people, nanotechnology enhanced soldier Jon Moore should have known first hand by now that good intentions lead to hell especially if a beautiful damsel in distress is involved (see ONE JUMP AHEAD and Slanted Jack). Still, he started off with just trying to get the femme fatale away from her abusive spouse over the objection of his only friend in the universe, Lobo, his artificially intelligent Predator-Class Assault Vehicle.

One thing leads to another manipulation of Jon while Lobo shakes his engine in disgust as his good deed definitely gets him punished. The Central Coalition, whom Jon knows to avoid having a bad history of "cooperation" with them, has him searching for renegade scientist Jorge Wei, who allegedly is conducting banned nano research on children. Jon and Lobo head to Heaven where Wei is allegedly performing his illegal tests cocooned inside a very popular humongous tourist spot, Wonder Island, a place impossible to enter without permission;. Super soldier Jon and super assault vehicle Lobo no such boundaries, but what awaits them is the results of bioengineering.

The third Jon-Lobo outer space odyssey is identical in tone to the previous novels as the story line is faster than the speed of light, the action never stops, and some of the key characters are two dimensional from the same cookie cutter. Anyone who appreciates space opera at an incredible acceleration will enjoy the latest escapades of the universe's greatest soldier and his sidekick.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Flinx again!, September 19, 2010

By 

KermitK (Olympia, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Overthrowing Heaven (Jon & Lobo) (Mass Market Paperback)

After three books the main character still lives in angst, fear and confusion all of the time. He has a super power (programmable nanites) but he is too afraid and stupid to make use of it - not even once in this whole book! He is supposedly almost 100 years old but can't figure out how to relate to women as well as a teenage boy would. He can't decide whether to risk his life about what he cares for or to hide in fear somewhere. This book reads like a Hollywood script for a Star Wars movie or something even more shallow.

The final straw is at the end when his best buddy and fighting partner who he trusts his life to daily admits his own nanite enhanced background but Jon is not able to come clean about the exact same thing in his background. This series makes the awful series about Flinx (who has to take a vacation from his angst every other book but never figures out that it travels with him) look almost intelligent.

I won't be following this series any more!