FuschiaReads.

James P. Hogan
2000 Baen Books HB 346pp

“Sunday was cloudy but warm in Washington, D.C…”

Mr Hogan, a ‘..science fiction writer in the grand tradition..’ is a man with a message. No chance of missing that.

A Near Future Earth visited by the Hyadeans, - aliens who luckily look much like us but have advanced technology and Spock-like emotions. (Although those that go native seem to appreciate greatly the ‘sensuality’ of Earth Girls). This results in a few private concerns trading cheap earth labour/recourses/land for lots of cash – and bombing those ‘guerrillas’ who disagree out of existence.

This is an interesting premise with the potential to be a cool political/sci-fi novel showing the ways a government invents enemies as a method of increasing profitable arms dealing and by manipulating the media maintain control over a frightened population etc etc. With space travel and blue-skinned aliens.

Unfortunately, Mr Hogan prefers rhetoric and includes very little story of actual interest. About 20 pages in I got thoroughly bored, and proceeded to skim the rest. No spoilers here - the book fails to retrieve itself.

The characters are completely interchangeable – especially after the aliens learn proper English and drop that “..things there our publics are not telled….” rubbish. There is much financial dealing done by rich people gone bad – that pork belly buy low sell high lingo that quickly becomes dull & irrelevant (after the 8^th time any way) and even the characters themselves get confused.

In over 300 pages of stilted jargon and repetitive description (potted history of Bolivia any one?), not once does Mr Hogan let the story or his characters tell their own story. A double agent (picked that one up a chapter before its ‘announcement’) is not shown to be one – we are told she is one. Then told Again. And Again. The Hyadeans invented spaceflight as they base their science on facts rather than the Earthman process of inventing a theory and then attempting to squish reality into that theory. This is spelt out for us very clearly. In case we missed it we are told again. And again. We even have whole italicised chapters reiterating these details.

The story rushes through a series of increasingly complicated manoeuvres on the parts of our heroes Roland – a previous high flying friend of the aliens – and his ex-wife Maria – an operative in the resistance – whilst the world goes promptly to hell in a hand basket when the truth of the now alien-controlled government comes to light. The USA splits apart, Nuclear Attack in the Andes etc etc.

Luckily Australia has a history of minding its own affairs in regional issues and Cairns becomes a haven of utopian hippies, living a free life with the more sexed-up aliens and without government control.

It only takes two pages for Mr Hogan to get us out of the pretty mess those fascist capitalists got us into. Like I cared by this point. I was cheering for anyone able to nuke the site from orbit.

We have Aliens, Conspiracy Theories by the bucket, James Bond, Marxism 101. How could this be boring? Well, it is. Trust Me. Don’t waste your time - go plant a tree or take up pottery. That way we can all live Mr Hogans dream and not actually have to read this book.