Customer Reviews

Signs of Life

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

 

 

Cherry Wilder's novel "Signs of Life" details the events surrounding the emergency landing of the crew of the Serendip Dana, a World Space Organization "transport" on it's way to Arkady. Presumably Arkady is a human planet somehow associated with the World Space Organization, which the reader can infer is an institution based on Earth that manages at least one "transport", the Serendip Dana. As to what exactly they were transporting we can't be entirely sure, at one point livestock are mentioned and there are a whole lot of reguler crew, silver cross members (repair crew organized along traditional military ranks), Auxiliary Support personal (andriods) and a media team accompanying a high ranking member of a popular religious movement.
EDIT: I know now that the name probably came from the "Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations (SERENDIP)" project started in the seventies by the SETI organization. This adds a little more depth to the world and I thought it worth mentioning.

There, you now know everything there is to know about the Wilder's Universe outside of the planet of Rhomary. Seriously, that's it. The entire rest of the novel has to do with how the survivors interact with each other (and much later the natives) after crash landing. The survivors split into more or less two groups, the regular crew who are more or less normal and the silver cross members who being more "military" are made stereotypically disagreeable, violent and power hungry.

None of the characters change much over the course of the novel. And after the crash landing Wilder doesn't really throw any external challenges their way so you can't really blame them. It's just 300+ pages of social drama.

So why two stars instead of one? For starters I found Wilder's writing style in Signs of Life to be refreshingly different from the mainstream. Alot of times she makes the reader fill in details within the storyline that normally would need to be explained by the author. The world is kept vague enough that whatever you imagine will fit with the storyline. It was almost like I was helping her write the story, this grew tiring after a while but I enjoyed the change.

If your a Cherry Wilder fan or really enjoy reading about social dynamics in fictional environments, this book my be right for you. If you are detail oriented or believe sci-fi requires high entertainment value and should contain interesting new concepts, ideas, ways of looking at things, etc., then I would advise passing this book up.

I hate people who don't explain their abbreviations. It took me thirty pages to realise that Oxper was an abbreviation for Auxuliary Personnel, and that this meant anderoids. I couldn't figure out the difference between Silvos, Silver Cross and the people wearing silver suits. I eventually figured out that Silvo was an abbreviation for Silver Cross and that they wore blue suits while the Crew, who are not silver cross, wear silver suits from time to time. Confused? Welcome to the club.

I eventually got fed up trying to work out silly little enigmas like these, I lost whatever plot there was, failed to identify with any of the characters, and so the book has been dropped, unfinished. This, from me, is a testament to a bad book. I have finished some pretty bad stuff in my day, I am a finisher, and for me not to finish, the book has to stink like a skunk in a farting contest. Peeyouw!

"Signs of Life" is well written, but is overly dependent on a story universe I know nothing about.

In addition, Wilder introduces a lot of characters. Some of these characters were rather interesting (like the androids), although most just further diluted the story. I think the reader would have been better served with a simpler presentation providing more background.

If you have been following Wilder's work in other books or magazines you will probably get a lot out of this book. I've never read anything by this author. As such I was as much a castaway as the survivors of the "Serendip Dana".

I picked this up and read the back and the blurbs and it sounded like it would be interesting, if not a good read. Unfortunately, this book was bad from the first paragraph on. There were so many names and characters just thrown at me, I could hardly tell when the story started to advance. The immediate establishment of the military guys bad, us civillians good, was also irritating, since neither side was able to prove themselves anything other than their labeling. I was so confused after the first sixty pages, I had to give up. The book had gone from confusing to impossible to follow. At that point, I'd already lost interest in the characters, since I could hardly tell what was going on, and could have cared less about their fates.

I tried really hard but couldn't make it past the first third of this book. I kept waiting for the passengers and crew of the doomed spaceship to show some sort of reaction to having their ship fall out of the sky, but they seemed to treat it like a fire drill. As far as I know the plot was great, but the writing style was too muddy and confusing.