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Adventure in Planetary Space
Dave Walker is a newly-minted spaceship engineering officer, aboard his first vessel: a clapped-out tramp freighter near the end of its useful life. While not much, it gets him off Earth, his life’s ambition. His other reason to make a pierhead jump to this ship? His stepfather is trying to kill him.
“Summer’s End,” a science-fiction novel by John Van Stry, is set in the near future, several centuries from the present. Humans reside throughout the Solar System, but Earth still dominates, especially in terms of population.
There is one world government on Earth. Ostensibly a republic modeled on the United States, in actuality it is an oligarchy, run by the elies, the upper-class elite. Most of the world’s population are doles, supported by the government for the votes that keep the elies in power. Dave is prole, the fraction making up the middle class. The only ones on Earth that work, their labor keeps the planet running. They work whether they want to work and for what the government gives them. Or else. That is why Dave wants to leave Earth so badly.
Dave’s mother is an elie. After a brief marriage to his father she abandoned both husband and child to return to her elie family. She since remarried; her new husband Is running for office. Dave, was a gang member in his teens. Dave’s juvenile criminal record is a potential political embarrassment. Dave has to go.
If that were Dave’s only problem, things would be good. Even in his early 20s, Dave is a hard man. But he also has to learn his trade in a worn-out, undermanned vessel, deal with a new environment, and cope with criminals and space pirates. He also has to find a way to get his real family – father, stepmother, and younger half-brother and half-sister – off Earth. His half-brother is a genius; Earth has laws against geniuses leaving.
The result is a fast-paced adventure story. Van Stry has populated “Summer’s End” with a fascinating collection of characters and settings. The action takes place on the overcrowded Earth, habitations on asteroids and planetary moons and in deep space. Floating cities on Venus and extensive polities on Mars are hinted at.
“Summer’s End” is reminiscent of the best of Jerry Pournelle’s tales set in the Solar System prior to faster-than-light travel. Van Stry sucks readers into the action early and keeps them reading to the last page.
“Summer’s End,” by John Van Stry, Baen Books, 2022, 352 pages, $17.00 (Trade Paperback), $8.99 (Ebook)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Published in Literature
Clapped-out like a Bridgeport?
Worn from age or heavy use. The ship requires constant repairs.
It does sound very Like Jerry
Waiting for the fictional part.
The 200-400 years in the future bit?
When did “several centuries from the present” become “near future?”
When you compare it to Azimov’s Foundation series, Poul Anderson’s Van Rjin-Flandry series, Piper’s Federation-Empire of Man series, or Heinlein’s Future History series.
In reality he can smoke all the crack he likes so long as the big guy gets his 10%.
Right now I’m reading Gun Runner by John D. Brown and Larry Correia. In that one gigantic corporations collude with governments to quash the little guys. Earlier this year I was reading Jerry Pournelle’s Falkenberg’s Legion series, which I described as thoroughly 70’s science fiction, in that its chief concerns were overpopulation and (in a buzzword) asymmetric warfare. Then I think of the 80’s cyberpunk stuff which assumes the whole world would be bought by Japanese Zaibatsu. If I go back to the 40’s science fiction the main reoccurring villain seems to be human ignorance.
A lot of the modern Sci-fi I read assumes that the natural state of man seems to be an oligarchy pretending to be a republic. That’s not a good sign.
Speaking of science fiction of days gone by, a great deal of the romance leaked out of the genre when we learned there were no swamps on Venus.
Well, yeah, but they are being replaced by cities that float at the one-atmosphere level in Venus’s atmosphere.
Remove the space ships and…