Sunday, July 16, 2000
Title: This Alien Shore
Author: C.S. Friedman
Publisher: Voyager
This Alien Shore sets out a future of space colonisation for us - Earth has become over crowded and her children have spread across many planets. Unfortunately the means of travel was found to be unsafe - radiation introducing mutations to the human structure. Horrified by this, Earth has cut off her colonies in an act of supreme xenophobia. The colonies survived, with each having its own mutation - each a human variant. One of these variants holds the key to safe travel and with that sets about joining all Earth's descendants regardless of how alien they have become. This includes Earth itself despite elements of continuing xenophobia and hatred in turn for what they did.
Earth remains corporate and competitive and can't sit comfortably under the monopoly of the Guild's space travel. Jamisia seems to be the key to breaking that hold, experimented on by the corporation which has adopted her. But she escapes from a hostile take over into space, awakening other voices in her head and dedicated pursuit. Meanwhile a lethal virus is corrupting the Guild's code and a race against time is being carried out to stop the rogue programmers. With the two sides of the story driving each other - joining and clashing .
Friedman presents a strong thriller with This Alien Shore. The spread of the Lucifer virus, matched by the hackers on its trail, with the determination to find who the real culprits are and destroy them. While the question of who is after Jamisia and what the hardware inside her head can do is crucially linked in the bigger picture. A bigger picture which paints a complex alien culture - tiered and detailed - political and technical. Fleshed out with "text" quotes at the start of each chapter - all contributing to the complexity of the Gueran/Guild culture - their coding, the intensity of their face painting that speaks volumes and their mastery of the anniq the space between space.
An intense and well-driven book, full of brain ware and cyber culture on a space opera scale. Characters mix well with history and detail fitting in the well-paced and engaging plot. As far as I can gather this is Friedman's first SF novel, following previous Fantasy works. With that she certainly proves her capability with This Alien Shore.
RVWR: PTR
July 2000
