Teaser

Change is coming to the stars. A new method of transportation threatens the livelihoods of all those who trade between planets. Can anything be done to save these careers, or are the once proud traders doomed . . ?

Review

After a depressing drop in quality with Flight of Honour, I am happy to say that the third and final book of the Far Stars and Future Times series is a return to form. I suspect this is in no small part due to it not being an expanded version of a short story, but whatever the case, I’m happy to see it. Being the final volume, Skinner unsurprisingly pulls together elements from the first two. The location comes in part from Flight of Honour, while Moses Callaghan, protagonist of The Shattered Stars, plays a supporting role. It’s a great way of keeping the universe coherent while forging ahead to tell an entirely new story. You could read this as a standalone and lose none of the thrills, but those little connections between books add a certain extra something.

For such a short book, Skinner dives deep into a surprisingly complex topic. Trade economics might not sound like everyone’s idea of an entertaining narrative, but for me that stuff is golden. Most space operas just assume that intergalactic trade will happen, and brush away all the nitty gritty details. Not McEnroe. More thought goes into how trade works in this book than I’ve seen in entire series by other writers. McEnroe is one of few authors who recognises that improvements in transportation can have a devastating effect on those reliant on the old ways.

This gets to the core of the book, which is actually quite bleak if you stop and think about it. Our heroes are not trying to improve their lot in life. They’re trying to escape the collapse of their entire way of life. Lately I’ve been listening to Billy Joel’s ‘Downeaster Alexa,’ and there’s a lot of thematic resonance between the two works. The march of progress is inevitable, but just because this change is for the good of the many, it doesn’t mean that nobody is trampled underfoot along the way. It’s a powerful lesson that sometimes we can’t fight against change, but must simply find a way to survive it.

Like a lot of books I’ve been reading lately, Skinner does suffer from a surfeit of characters. About half the book is dedicated to recently bankrupted merchant Chavez and his new life as a hunter. The other half is scattered through a half-dozen perspectives from various businessmen, traders, and spacers. It could easily have been thickened out a little without losing any of the momentum. Maybe if a few characters had been combined to cut back on the excess, the book would have been the stronger for it. Admittedly, however, having so many perspectives does drive home the scale of change facing the characters.

McEnroe’s only work outside of the Far Stars and Future Times trilogy appears to be a pair of Buck Rogers’ novels, which I’ll freely admit to having little interest in. That essentially means my time in his literature is at an end. In spite of a weak middle volume, I consider this time well spent. These books may be short, but they’re crammed with great ideas and fun characters. Well wort picking up if you come across a copy in the wild.

Book Stats

• Far Stars and Future Times (#3)
• Published in 1985 by Orbit
• 198 pages