Customer Reviews

Silent Runners: A Sampler

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Silent Runners: A Sampler is a collection of stories brought together with a simple technique of internal memos within the a large corporation. I found the stories to be very good, with some quicker to read than others. They all come together into the climax story and a short end story that sets up for a possible sequel. For me, the best story was the story of the Pupfish, a species in which most members refuse to accept the fate that is clearly spelled out for them. One member refuses to accept this and seizes on ter only chance for survival.

I had a few minor quibbles and found one minor fault with the story, but I don't think any of them detract from the book as a whole. The quibbles are with the grammatical errors in one chapter and that one character changes names within one chapter. Another minor quibble is the sometimes overly cute character and location names (a planet with pseudograsses named "Fescue"?) The minor fault is that I would have preferred to have more on the descent of Golden Antareas into becoming a deity to her followers, from her perspective.

In weaving these disparate stories together, the author has only a few pages to set you into a totally different environment and culture, which is done very well. It is very easy to get really into a chapter and not want it to end. The first chapter starts off with a bang and should get you hooked.

Silent Runners is an unforgettable tale of a future conflict with chilling implications for today. The earth has grown uninhabitable because of industrial pollution, but industry, embodied in the interstellar monopoly Cyclone Pharmaceuticals, seeks to perpetuate itself on worlds of other stars. Ecological protestors, fearing that these worlds will share the earth's fate, turn militant. In star-spanning ecological warfare, neither side learns in time that the lessons of the earth's past may not apply to worlds of the future.

Helen Davis tells Silent Runners in an innovative style of short stories linked by news releases, sermons, e mails, and poems. In this innovative style she never loses sight of her characters. Well-developed individuals strive, grow, triumph, or fail as they move through the stories to their savage conclusion. Central to the characters' growth is their wrestling with personal faith amid an impersonal universe that tests everyone's beliefs. The most memorable of the characters is the most alien, yet most engaging: Tzzamir, who fights a lonely battle to save ter species from extinction from a dying star. Tzzamir's quietly heroic struggle will leave no reader unmoved.