Customer Reviews

Thevoyage of Night Shining White

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This very slim volume is part of Roberson's Celestial Empire series, which has been explored in several short stories and a couple of novels, including "The Dragon's Nine Sons". The setting is an alternate near-future Earth in which the Western powers never rose to prominence because a powerful Imperial China beat them to the punch. Now, the empire is sending a ten-ship fleet to begin colonizing Mars, having achieved mastery of Earth (except for those pesky Aztecs of the Mexic Empire).

The plot is somewhat reminiscent of "The Cold Equations" in that something goes very wrong on "Night Shining White", a tiny and isolated spaceship completely on its own, and the solution involves a major human cost. It's nothing spectacularly original (and has basically been dealt with sooner or later in every long-running sci-fi TV series). The twist that Roberson brings to it is the Chinese characters, and how they came to be there, and how their varying philosophical backgrounds (Taoism, Confucianism, et cetera) come into play.

It's a reasonably interesting treatment on the theme, and a nice introduction to the setting developed further in later novels. Fans of Roberson will want to pick it up, but it's not quite striking enough to be recommended for your run-of-the-mill sci-fi reader.

Fantastic. A Heinlein space adventure, by way of Master & Commander, set in a space-bound imperial China. One of my favorite stories of the year and one day, I'm sure, of all.