There are five stories in the Ephialtes Shorts Collection. . The first story tells of Mars seceding from its colonizer, USAN (read Earth). The writer tells about the evolution of a loose Mars Security System established by Earth on Mars, and how it and its main characters evolve into a military service. The story signals the theme of revolution, takeover and independence of a distant country from its distant colonizer.
The second story tells of a Research Assistant on Mars Venkdt Agronomy. Kim is asked to plant some plants outside the dome. There are stories of strange things going on. She has a supernatural experience being touched, apparently by a ghost. A big problem is to develop plants which can be resilient to low pressure.
The third story centers on a dystopian USAN, with a dictator at the helm and protests involving killing by the armed forces. A strong anti-protest male character rants against protesters until he finds out that the killing of several protest leaders by Government forces was deliberate.. He has to dig deep for information; and in himself to deal with his father’s death ‘in the line of duty”; and with the protest movement, which he joins. Values do change in the face of information and death. Such persons go on to be heroes and martyrs (!?).
The fourth story (set on Mars) is the fullest and best of the lot. Pride, strength, character, determination; loss of limbs; pain; love; and other experiences coalesce around this female character (Kris) which for me makes her a major character. She mixes superhuman effort with the human failing of being afraid of her fear, as she moves from one stage to another trying to regain her place in the military unit, despite her physical deficiencies. She falters but she moves on, and gets her job back. She still must wait two years to see if the necessary procedures on her are completely successful; but she is ready. I love this story, and with confidence, I see her a star character placement.
The fifth story is about a legendary scientist wondering whether his well-known cleverness is the result of genes or gene editing. In the story, he does not find out. But he is a top researcher, and no doubt in some book he will.
The author says he wrote these stories so that they look forward and backward to the trilogy. The stories are cast within the wider story of interplanetary war between Unites States and Nations (USAN) and Mars. The author says the wider story (books) is probably essential to the stories, but not vice-versa. So he advises to read Ephialtes before reading the shorts.
I must admit to be somewhat confused about the connection. I guess that this may be because the stories themselves (notwithstanding the overall contest of inter-planetary war) have no individual context. So there are questions: Were the stories born out of incidents occurring in the books, or are they précis versions of book content? Were they extensions of minor actions of minor characters of the books? Each story contains content that would be a welcome diversion from the main theme of war - the human element. I believe that Kris’ story would star in any ‘military experiences’. Her behavior is ‘Medal of Honor’ category, as she becomes and creates a legend. Having said all this this, I think that the literary quality of the stories (and I presume the books) is quite solid, and the stories are interesting.
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