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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A jumble book, June 9, 2003
"Permanance" is Karl Schroeder's followup novel to his amazing "Ventus," and it doesn't come close to that stunning debut novel. It tells the story of Rue Cassells, who discovers an interstellar object that turns out to be an abandoned alien artifact, and her friend and onetime lover Michael Bequith, an assistant to a truly nutty professor, who comes along for the ride.The tale is jagged, confusing, jumbled. Its characters do what they do because Mr. Schroeder wants them to, not from any sort of internal motivation--at least none discernible to me. The science is dippy: tool-making species, intones Michael's boss, Professor Herat, in a plot stopping interlude, are doomed because their tool making is a compensation for their failure to adopt to their environment (duh). There's FTL, but it doesn't work everywhere and not everybody has it (but they all want it), but everybody bops around free of the problems of time dilation, etc. etc. (eh?). There's a villain, of course, Admiral Crisler, who used to be a scientist (oh please!) and he does everything but twirl his cape and go bwaa haa haa. (Anyone? Anyone? Whiplash? Whiplash?) You'll probably stay till the end; there's some good space opera here and the final invasion of Crisler's domain is well-done. But maybe you'll feel exhausted rather than elated when you reach the final page. This book is so unfocused (especially compared with the author's debut novel) that you may wonder how it came to be. I have an idea. I think that Mr. Schroeder's editor asked him if he had anything else in the pipeline post-"Ventus." Voila! Mr. Schroeder pulled this out of his drawer (or out of his computer?) and the editor set to work trying to make something coherent of it. But there was just no way. Ah well, maybe next time Mr. Schroeder will deliver a winner. For sure he's capable of it.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic, wide-screen space-opera with a sharp hard-sf edge., January 17, 2004
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Permanence is set in the 25th century, when humanity has
settled dozens of extrasolar planets -- the so-called "lit worlds" -- and
thousands of brown-dwarf colonies -- the halo worlds. All the
colonies were linked by big, NAFAL [note 1] starships, each travelling
a fixed circuit of worlds -- the cyclers [note 2]. The cyclers never stop, as
the energy cost to boost them to relativistic speeds is, well,
astronomical. Ultralight shuttles transfer passengers, crew and cargo at
each port. Permanence is a quasi-religious order set up to support the great
starships, and to preserve human civilization for the indefinitely long
future. It's a noble and admirable organization, which has been
seriously disrupted by the recent discovery of FTL travel -- which, it
turns out, will only work near a full-size star. FTL travel is *much*
cheaper than the sublightspeed cyclers, so the halo worlds' economies,
and the Cycler Compact, are near collapse. It gets worse -- the lit worlds
are joining the new Earth-based Rights Economy, an aggressively-
centralized property-rights setup that forbids any non-commercial
transactions. Hmm -- could this be socially-conscious Canada vs. the
great, grasping Colossus of the South? (The halo worlds are cold, too...) Meadow-Rue Rosebud Cassells lit out from Allemagne station when
her bullying brother got to be too much. Enroute to Erythrion, Rue
discovers, and files a claim on, a new comet. [Minor *SPOILER*
warning -- but no more than is on the dust-jacket.] Her claim is denied
-- her 'comet' is really a spaceship -- but then reinstated: it's not
a *human* spaceship, and it doesn't answer calls, though the drive is
still working. Rue must take physical control of the ghost ship to make
good her claim, but Powerful Forces want the ship for themselves... The framework of the novel is Rue's growth from scared kid to
respected starship captain. I like bildungsromans, and this is a good
one. But the real power of Permanence is the good old sense-of-
wonder techstuff: "[The colonies] swarmed like insects around
incandescent filaments hundreds of kilometers in length. Each
filament was a fullerene cable that harvested electricity from
Erythrion's magnetic field... The power running through the cables
made them glow in exactly the same way that tungsten had glowed in
light bulbs... on twentieth-century Earth." I love this stuff. And it's
even plausible -- see Schroeder's neat website, kschroeder.com At times Permanence may remind you of Ken Macleod's political SF,
though Schroeder is much less in your face (which I prefer). You'll
see nods to Pohl's Gateway, Norton's Forerunners, Brin's and
Pellegrino's hostile-universe Fermi-paradox ideas... Schroeder's still
looking for a distinctive voice, which is pretty standard for a
writer's early books, and anyway he s/t/e/a/l/s *borrows* from the
best... Schroeder's very good at delivering the short, sharp shock: Rue's
poor, then she's rich! Oops, bad claim, poor again. Wait, she's rich
after all! This 'Perils of Pauline' plot structure works pretty well for
most of the book, but was wearing thin towards the end. Again,
these are sophomore-book teething problems, easily forgiveable
within the terrific story (and backstory!) that Schroeder's got to tell.
Which is: classic, wide-screen space-opera with a sharp hard-sf edge
-- my favorite kind of SF! Folks, this is the good hard stuff, which is
never in oversupply. So if you haven't yet tried Schroeder's brand of
thinking-being's hard-sf adventure stories, Permanence is an
excellent place to start. Then you can go back and pick up on last
year's Ventus, which might even be better. They're both terrific
books. Happy reading!
_____________
Note 1.) Not as Fast as Light, an Ursula K. LeGuin coinage. Or is it
Nearly as Fast? And did you know that her ansibles are an anagram
of lesbians? 2.) The cyclers are the neatest part of the backstory -- see
Schroeder's website for the
details, which are interesting of themselves (for spaceflight buffs like
me, anyway) and spoiler-free. I was a bit disappointed that the cyclers
had become obsolete by Permanence time -- well, sort of -- and I hope
that Schroeder returns to earlier times in the future history of the
Cycler Compact. And I wouldn't be surprised if Ventus turned out to be
in Permanence's future... Review copyright 2002 by Peter D. Tillman
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Exhilarating in parts, frustrating in parts, September 23, 2002
Permanence, is at once exhilarating and frustrating. Exhilarating because it attacks a truly worthwhile larger SFnal theme in an original fashion, coming to original conclusions; and because it is packed with clever technological and scientific notions, and with some awe-inspiring vistas. Frustrating because much of the impact of this is dissipated by the unconvincing characters, and by an overwrought plot complete with sneering cardboard villains. The good outweighs the bad, I think: this book is fun to read and thoughtful, and its resolution is believable. But it falls short of its potential. The two main characters are Meadow-Rue Cassels, a young woman from a poor comet-like world who stumbles across a valuable object that may be of alien origin, and Michael Bequith, a scientist and monk who helps study the ruins of alien races. The book also concerns some political machinations between the richer worlds linked by Faster-Than-Light travel, and the older, decaying, "Halo" worlds linked by Slower-Than_Light "cyclers". Also central to the book is the pursuit of the goal of "Permanence": the formation of a culture with the prospect of permanent existence. Rue's discovery, of a hitherto completely unknown alien artifact, may be a key to this goal. The eventual explanation of the nature of the artifact is very interesting. Furthermore, the conclusions reached about the prospects for true "Permanence", and about the differences between an STL culture and an FTL culture, are also nicely handled. In addition, there is a neat alien race, and a fair amount of very clever tech. Set against these positives is a set of villains who seem mostly motivated by the generalized desire to oppress and kill other people, the rather fuzzily described "Rights Economy", a not quite convincing or sufficiently involving love story, characters that don't quite come to life, a rather flabbily-structured plot, and some annoying woo-woo mysticism in the description of Michael Bequith's "kami". In other words -- Permanence has got many of the strengths of the best Hard SF, and many of the weaknesses as well. Which means, if you're a fan of Hard SF, this book is definitely for you. Schroeder is playing in Vernor Vinge's league, and if Vinge is still the champ, Schroeder is definitely a promising newcomer.
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