Children And Farmers...In Space

I have just enough time to throw together a quick rambling today so lets get right to it shall we?  Today's ramble is brought to you by The Children of Hamlin by Carmen Carter and is one of the early Star Trek: TNG books.  After the not so enjoyable experience of my last Star Trek book, I turned to one my favorites when I was younger, and I still very much enjoy it.  I am going to assume everybody reading this knows enough about the show that I don't need to rehash and will jump into the synopsis.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

The USS Enterprise gets a distress signal and diverts from it's current mission of delivering a group known as the Farmers to their new home planet.  They get to the distressed ship just in time to rescue a small number of people from the ship.  Turns out that the ship was carrying Andrew Deelor, a Starfleet operative and his mysterious companion Ruthe.  Deelor was on the ship to work negotiations with a reclusive species known as the Choraii.  The aliens live in a loose society of traveling ships made of a bubble like structure and are willing to destroy whole civilizations for the smallest amounts of metal which is crucial to their survival.  It was this need for metal that brought the Choraii to the Federations attention in the first place.  They massacred every adult on an outpost known as Hamlin and all the children disappeared.  Now thirty five years later they have discovered that the children were taken by the Choraii and have had children of their own and Deelor's job is to negotiate for them back.  The Choraii are very difficult to negotiate with as their language is music based and they do not use visuals. Through out the negotiations the crew has to deal with the Farmers who not only eschew technology but are very vocal about being stuck on the ship.  A child and an older man are traded from the Choraii ship. The young one does pretty good once they figure out how to deal with him, but the older one eventually ends up dying.  When approached Ruthe says it is because he grew up in a world so different that being "rescued" was too much of a shock.  With the humans rescued, the ship heads to the Farmer's new world where they discover another massacre similar to what happened at Hamlin.  They also discover that the only child on the world is missing.  They track down the Choraii ship responsible and Ruthe negotiates for the child.  The trade turns out to be Ruthe for the child.  Ruthe was a child that had been "rescued" around 11 years of age and has been secretly searching for what she considers her home ship ever since.  There is much discussion about the ethics, morals and rules when it comes to this complicated situation, but in the end everybody has to move on.

I have always enjoyed this book, ever since I started reading them at the age of 10.  I think I liked this one so much because it featured children and Dr. Crusher, two of my favorite things at the time.  I still enjoy it for it's portrayal of such an alien species, culture and environment and  how one has to think a different way when dealing with them.  There is all the things that make Star Trek...well Star Trek in this book and as a huge fan I love it! The allusion to the story Pied Piper of Hamelin with the children being taken, the music being how the aliens communicate (Ruthe uses a pipe to "talk" with them) and the children's reluctance to leave the Choraii environment is very well done without being to extremely blatant.  The writing is pretty good, it flows nicely and switches between characters very smoothly.  There is not too much character introspection, and the author did not try and read too much into very established characters.  This book gave me the perfect combination of familiarity with my beloved Enterprise and loved characters and a bit of the exotic and alien with the absolutely strange and wonderful Choraii.  This is why I love SciFi, this is why I love rereading old favorites and this is why I love Star Trek.  Over all a solid entry into a wide and varied series.  I give it 7 out of 10 grapes and recommend it to anybody who loves this show/series as much as I do.

Mental Quest

By the end of today I will have driven over 18 hours in four days, I have also finished some more books, so that kind of makes up for it.  One of the books is Yurth Burden by Andre Norton and is the second book in the duo book Children of the Gates.  I liked this one better then the first one in this duo, which is surprising 'cause when reading the descriptions the first one sounded much more appealing, but that just goes to show you why you should read all kinds of books.  as always SPOILERS AHEAD LOTS OF SPOILERS!

The Yurth are beings with significant mental powers that live an ascetic life in the unforgiving mountains.  The Raski lack the mental powers of their planet mates, but many live a much richer life then the Yurth.  The Raski hate the Yurth, most believe it is because the Raski fear and covet the Yurth's mental abilities, but it is not known when, or why this hatred was born.  We meet Elossa, a young Yurth who is on a pilgrimage that all Yurth make when they enter adulthood. This quest is one that changes the Yurth who have gone on it in some way, laying upon them a burden of knowledge that is not shared or talked about.  She follows an inner sense far past any where she has been before.  As she is traveling she finds that she is being followed by a Raski and at one point saves his life.  Eventually the two end up in a ruined city with one end dominated by a partially buried giant sphere.  When Elossa approaches it, it opens. Stans, the Raski informed her that he was the last descendant of the king who had ruled in the ruined city and that he was bound to find out what happened and take revenge. Unable to stop him, Elossa allows him into the sphere.  When she enters a voice tells her the story of her people.  Apparently the Yurth are a star faring race that roamed the universe in their giant sphere ships.  At some point the ship is damaged and through user error the ship crash lands on the city of the Raski, destroying it and spreading some sort of madness which results in the Raski reverting back to a medieval style of living.  The Yurth in penance for the unforeseen destruction take an oath to never again rise to the stars and to live an asture life.  They are scanned with a beam that somehow makes all this possible, while imbuing with the mental powers they currently have.  The Raski in their madness blame the Yurth for their reduced way of life and have hated them ever since.  Stans and Elossa decide that since this happened centuries ago that both sides are to blame, and both sides need to move on.  They decide to team up to try and convince both sides to let the past go and move on.  On their journey back, they encounter a cave of what I can only describe as evilness.  They find the old king, who had survived the destruction of the city by foul means and destroy him.  The story ends with the two of them deciding to continue their quest to get their respective races to move forward.

 I think I liked this book better because it made a lot more sense then the other book in this duo.  I really really liked the idea of exploring the various feelings and result that the unintentional destruction set off.  It was nice to have the "aliens" be a race of conscientious beings who felt so bad about their mistake that they doomed not only themselves but all of their decedents to try and make up for it, instead of the normal nefarious destructive aliens.  I loved how Elossa and Stans came to the conclusion that no matter what happened in the past, it was the responsibility of both races to move on and live their lives.  The pacing was interesting because their was a lot of introspection mixed with KAPOW pieces of action.  It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but I liked the mix.  The only real issue I had with it, is that we get the big reveal about half way through the book and then the rest of the book is the whole evil king thing...which I thought was not really nessecary.  I would have much preferred to see Elossa and Stans go to their people and start to try and heal all the wounds from the past.  This is defiantly a science fiction book written in the good style of the 70's which I love.  It is a bit trippy, a bit thinky, a bit spacey, a bit of everything I love about the old school science fiction.  I would give this book 7 out of 10 sargons!

What is your favorite style of science fiction?  Does science fiction always have to take place in the future?  Why did I wait so long to read Andre Norton?