Customer Reviews

The Sky Is Filled with Ships (U.K.)

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Thirty-three years after the first release of this book in 1969 readers such as me have recourse to a much larger tradition of science fiction. We have the benefit of hindsight that Richard Meredith didn't have when he wrote this text, and the lessons of the craft which are hopefully quite well known today were not available to him then. It is for that reason that perhaps we should not hold it against him that this is such a trashy book.

Reminiscent of the testosterone levels of Clive Cussler's fiction, The Sky is Filled with Stars is a Buck Rodgeresque novella populated with characters with a tendency to throw themselves suicidally into danger. The book's premise could work yet only as the background for a much larger canvas. The disintegration of an empire, for instance, is of a scope appropriate to the Foundation series and to Star Wars on a canvas populated with rich, interesting characters - not to a novella with one moderately bland character.

Some attempts to provide texture are what really stand out in this narrative, however - a Luna space port filling with refugees from across the Galactic arm; erotic dancers in a Terran Bar, and a futuristic Silicon Valley formed as the headquarters of the Solar Trading Company. However, the psychology of the age is barely explored (though the criticism could be levelled on many a speculative fiction text), and I'd have a high hope that after a couple of millennium, the human race may have matured. Instead, this story could be set today if it weren't for space travel. Ursula Le Guin argues in her essay anthology, Language of the Night, that there needs to be a `voice' in fantasy - characters can't simply say "I told you so" while holding a sword and staff, or wearing pointy ears. Likewise, I think science fiction needs to feature characters doing more than holding a laser gun or the controls to a space fighter.

I confess that I went into `Stars' looking for a trashy science fiction book - one with all the familiar conventions and lots of big explosions. It looks like I got what I wished for.