Tag: British

Review: Xeelee Redemption

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Xeelee Redemption

Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee Redemption is not one of his finest literary moments. What it offers in both theory and practice isn’t any better than his other, better books. And it’d have to be to make up for the huge retcon that ranks as one of my least favorite of all time. Not that the rest of the book is anything special, given that the plot consists entirely of worldbuilding opportunities.

Anyway, after the Baxterian infodumps and excuse plots, the reader finally gets the chance to view a semi-retconned[1] actual physical Xeelee. And it’s just a space bug. Not Exultant’s so totally beyond lesser comprehension beings that effectively are whatever piece of technology they put their Clarketech spirits into, but just a slightly unconventional space bug.

Disapoint.

[1]The term “retcon” is hard when time travelers in universe are constantly changing everything, but it is a distinction.

Review: Resplendent

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Resplendent

A collection of previously published short stories, Resplendent is Stephen Baxter at both his best and worst. It covers the Xeelee universe from start to finish, in every time and every era. The good news is that Baxter gets to show off his worldbuilding. The bad news is that Baxter gets… to…. show… off… his… exposition.

Besides the infodumps, one big problem is that what the main characters do has to be ‘relevant’ somehow. You can’t just have Bill the monopole gunner getting killed, he has to fire the shot which changes the tide somehow. This Great Man-ism is at odds with the weaving larger than life scope of the settings.

Also Baxter is terrible at naming characters and keeps reusing names. So yeah, this book is a mixed bag.

Review: Vacuum Diagrams

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Vacuum Diagrams

Stephen Baxter’s Vacuum Diagrams is a series of linked stories intended to tell the Xeelee from cradle to grave. I mentioned before that like Harry Turtledove, his writing style is a lot more suited for that. And like Turtledove, this is still uneven. There’s attempts at coherent arcs, including a later one where primitive humans have to escape their stone age prison the Xeelee built for them (it makes sense in context), but those really don’t work so well.

Others are basically just “here is a thing. Here is a description of a thing. Here is a character who exists as a camera to show you the thing.” Baxter has managed a sense of wonder and splendor a lot better. Here the scope is so big that it feels tiny. Going billions of light years to a megastructure/portal is done so often that it feels like running an errand (and I’m talking about the human characters, not the aliens).

Some of this has been retconned by later books, although “retcon” isn’t really the best word when time travel exists in universe. Either way, this is not one of Baxter’s biggest hits.

Review: Xeelee Vengeance

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Xeelee: Vengeance

I wanted to like Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee: Vengeance, a tale of time travel, Clarketech, and the most alien aliens that ever aliened.

Unfortunately, this book has one problem. One central problem that is common to all extreme setting-first stories. One central problem that it does absolutely nothing to try and fix: Namely it’s mostly exposition about worldbuilding and speculative physics and whatever. So we get a ton of detail on this futuristic Earth (and Baxter’s other stories), the aliens (and Baxters other stories), every little quirk and thingy (and Baxter’s other stories) and even… Baxter’s other stories. The problem is that if you’ve read a decent amount of the other stories, none of the twists or mysteries work.

When we finally get to the showdown between protagonist Michael Poole and the time-warped Xeelee nightfighter, the book has already dragged on forever and even that drags on forever as well. It’s conceptually interesting but the execution is just terrible. Like “have a detour of padding to reference the John Carter of Mars books” terrible.

Thing is, as an eager worldbuilder myself, I can understand why Baxter did what he did. But as a reader it becomes hard to like it. You have to balance, and this was intentionally unbalanced.

Review: Eastern Front 1945

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Eastern Front 1945

An Osprey book on the air war in WWII’s final year, Eastern Front 1945 is about the often-overlooked in the west clash in the eastern skies. It basically does every Osprey book thing right. While it’s not the most detailed, it provides an excellent overview of the somewhat different air war (ie, where the P-39 shined even as it flopped in other theaters).

One thing I particularly liked was how the book accurately showed the air campaign’s influence on postwar Soviet/Russian doctrine. Instead of a “big blue blanket” smothering every enemy in its tracks, it was focused on targeted air superiority and supporting maneuver formations. Which led to February 1945 when the Luftwaffe actually regained air superiority for a time. ( In short, they pulled more or less every propeller fighter away from the fruitless bomber interceptions and were were able to operate from intact developed airbases while the Soviets were worn and had their field strips wrecked by bad weather)

It’s a good look at both Soviet air doctrine being successful and at the eastern air war.

Review: Stuck On The Drawing Board

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Stuck On The Drawing Board: Unbuilt British Commercial Aircraft Since 1945

Passenger planes made in Britain followed an almost exactly stereotypical British pattern: At first bold and trend-setting, then fell behind due to both luck and skill, finally becoming just an international cog. The could have beens and never weres of this are shown in Richard Payne’s Stuck on the Drawing Board.

This is a fun, if niche, book for aviation enthusiasts. The big problem from the nature of the planes it describes. For passenger planes that are all essentially just tubes with different capacities, VTOLs and odd shapes are the absolute most different you’re going to get.

But this isn’t the book’s fault, and you’re left with a fun look at what could have happened before the 707 and its successors crushed any hope of a full-scale British aviation industry.

Review: Bloodlines (Warhammer Crime)

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Bloodlines (Warhammer Crime)

I love Warhammer 40k and have some connection to mysteries, so getting Chris Wraight’s Warhammer Crime novel Bloodlines was obvious. Then I started reading it and felt disappointed. Now as a mystery novel, it’s 51% all right. If this was a contemporary or original sci-fi mystery, I wouldn’t think much more of it.

The problem is that it doesn’t take advantage of its setting. Now I’m not expecting or demanding an Ultramarine and an Ork on every corner, but this just never felt like a Warhammer 40k novel. It felt like a basic post-Blade Runner dark sci-fi city mystery only with more skulls and 40k terminology. Which didn’t make the book bad but did feel it wasted its potential.

Review: Only War Core

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Only War Core Rulebook

Deciding to look back at the Warhammer 40k tabletop RPGs whose mechanics ended up adapted to Rogue Trader, the choice of Imperial Guard RPG Only War was not exactly a hard decision. Since that army has been my absolute favorite faction by a parsec from the moment I found out about the franchise, I was eager to see how playing them in a character game as opposed to a wargame worked out.

You can practically see the writers trying desperately to make the experience both true to the Guard’s limitations and playable/fun. I trust I don’t need to go into that much detail that an individual guardsman, even an elite one, is at or near the absolute bottom of the galactic food chain. There’s also the reason why Twilight 2000 was set in a scramble rather than in a war-their life is a very regimented existence with little chance for straying beyond orders.

Thankfully, the solutions are fun and interesting. Characters are part of a beginning chosen/created regiment that has set base gear and characteristics. NPC “comrades” are present to act as additional laser sponges-I mean, partners in war. More can be achieved, but only at the cost of chancing the logistics system (as unreliable and risky as it sounds). The regimental system itself allows for everyone from Tempestus Scion commandos to primitive worlders with swords and animal hides.

So yes, I recommend Only War to anyone who wants to be real serious and face the grim darkness of the far future without the need for power armor or super-enhancements.

Review: Pilot Error

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Pilot Error

The first Fuldapocalypse review of 2024 is of a nonfiction book by pilot and aviation commentary Sylvia Wrigley. Pilot Error looks at the plane crashes where it was obviously the pilot’s fault. And not being unlucky or something, but just really, really bad.

There’s a reason why most of the crashes in this book are private light planes and why many are not fatal. It’s because Wrigley is by her own admission trying for dark humor and some of the most horrendous crashes like the pilot trying to land blindfolded for a bet/dare on a flight with dozens of passengers are not funny but just horrifying.

So in this you get drunks, idiots, and drunken idiots. It’s enough to make you glad that 99.9999% of the people in a very demanding role are not like the ones in this book.

Review: If We’d Just Got That Penalty

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If We’d Just Got That Penalty

The words “Sports Alternate History” got me interested in the new Sea Lion Press anthology If We’d Just Got That Penalty. I read it-and the result was sadly as disappointing as the New York Jets season. (Which Jets season? Answer is “Everything since 1968 is valid”). So in the interest of fair and honest criticism, I’m giving an honest and (hopefully) fair review.

I’ll start out by saying that sports AH and short stories are an uphill climb. Sporting AH tends to be fairly trinketized due to the end result often plausibly nothing more than different results on a trophy or standings chart and the divergences just “if the ball only moved three inches to the left.” That being said, at best this has middling short stories.

At worst, there’s ones like a really convoluted pure exposition “tale” involving changes to both Haiti and various forms of “football”. It’s a sincerely well thought out and well-researched premise that ends up being executed in the worst possible manner. Others have the impression of being benchmarked against internet alternate history, which is kind of like benchmarking your isekai story against jumpchains or your basketball team against the Washington Generals.

SLP has made some good alternate history, but this unfortunately isn’t it.