The Back End Of Erehwon

I have stacks and stacks of books I have never read before.  I have a massive lists of books I have never read that I want to read.  There are thousands of unread books out there for me to discover...but sometimes a girl just has to go back and reread a book.  To this end I just finished rereading Nimisha's Ship by my beloved Anne McCaffery. With this authors death, no new books from her are forth coming so I have to get my fix by rereads and this one fit the bill this time around.  Let's get to it shall we?  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

This story is set in the world we were introduced to in the novelette The Coelura, though one does not have to read it to understand what is going on as the stories are completley seperate.  The world is set in the future after Earthlings have colonized a good chunk of their quadrent of space.  This future world is a highly stratified world in which the First Families are at the top of the totem pole and secure their place with what are called body-heir's, a child born by contract to inherit the name, line, and most of the assests of the great families.  Lady Nimisha Boynton-Rondymense is one of these body-heir's, scion of one of the top families in the known galaxy.  She also shows a disturbing, non-aristocratic pentient for designing space ships.  Her biological father, who is not only First Family, but owns a most succesful shipyard leaves it to her upon his death.  This inheratance allows Nimisha to design the ultimate ship.  Unfortunalty while testing the ship on her own she is caught by a wormhole and flung across the universe, away from here mother, daughter, friends and civiliazation in general.  She lands on a liviable, if inhospitable planet she names Erehwon, because a) it is in the back of nowhere and b) after a book by the same name by Samuel Butler (the bookworm in me loves this!).  She meets up with survivors from a previous wreck and with the significant resources her ship brings, makes the planet habitable.  The survivors also find a group of aliens called the S'him whom have also survived the wormwhole and work with the humans to found a new society.  Meanwhile back on the other side of the wormhole, Nimisha's daughter, mother, and her former co-workers have built another advanced ship and take it to find Nimisha.  Eventually the survivors are found, but decide to stay, along with some new recruits to colonize the new world.

This book, as with all Anne McCaffery books, has so many layers it is hard to put into words.  It is a science fiction book set in the future with space travel and advanced technology.  It is a social commentary on class, government, military, and survival systems.  It is a romance, a survival tale, an inventors story.  It is all of these and more.  I am always amazed at the coherancy in which the author writes.  What do I mean by this?  I mean she writes her worlds to make sense, she studies and puts in enough scientific detail to make the story seem plausible, all the while making us fall in love or hate or exasperation with the various characters.  This book hits all the sweet spots, world building, character and story. The contrast between the civilized galaxy and the wild primative Erehwon shows both sides in their best and worst lights, highlighting why we need some structure and resources, while at the same time showing the pointlessness of certain types of formality.  I will say, this is one of the few romances in the Anne McCaffery books I am not totaly into, it seemed rushed and progressed from perfect strangers to total love without a whole lot of in between, which is not how she usually writes them, but to be honest it felt a bit shoehorned into the overall story.  I loved seeing the various ways the survivors and the S'him learned to communicate and work together.  I loved the contrast of the two worlds, I loved the various characters, who all had their own personalities, talants and specialties.  I even liked how the overall book was set over about 40+ years, the author making the time skip foward to the important parts.  Ms. McCaffery even put in a plausible longevity treatment to make the extended time line plausible.  Ok this rambling is pretty rambly and incoherant so I'm gonna give it a rest and hope that you all read the book and understand what all this gibberish means.  I recommend this book to anybody who likes a good story, a lighter scifi book, or Anne McCaffery in general.  I give it 7 out of 10 AI Helms.

How technical do you like your scifi?  Do you get sick of me saying the same happy things about Anne McCaffery?  Should I get more then 2 hours of sleep before I start ramblings?