The Starry Rift

Item: The Starry Rift
Rating: 2
Author: Mark Cheverton

★★★★★

✒️ James Tiptree Jr. (1986)
🛸 Frontier, Space Opera
🖌️ Uncredited
✨ 2/5

A composite novel featuring three linked stories set at humanity’s galactic borderland. This was a disappointing first Tiptree read for me having expected better. The SF encyclopedia says her best work was in the 70s so maybe I just started in the wrong place.

The only neat thing to do ⭐⭐

The concept of a symbiotic relationship between golem-like animals and a brain parasite that acts as the controlling intelligence is an intriguing concept, and I liked the exploration of the consequences of such an encounter for humanity. However, I found it hard to suspend my disbelief in the teenage spacefarer out alone on her first adventure, which tainted a thought-provoking high concept with a YA delivery.

Good night, sweethearts ⭐⭐⭐

A deep space rescue reunites two old flames, but all is not as it appears as pirates strike. Raven is a war veteran come salvager who I quickly warmed to. His classic heat-of-the-action problem-solving is believable and enjoyable as the action ramps up and hard decisions and sacrifices have to be made.

Collision ⭐

This story has so many flaws. Surprisingly, for being written in the 80s, it’s a technologically analog space opera. This lack of imagination makes the world-building feel like a thin pasted-on veneer - a key plot point has the aliens using a hose to serupticiously siphon out fuel from a spaceship’s fuel cap! Structurally, the time jumps in the narrative are poorly handled; the first contact descends into farce as the humans cavort around in hastily crafted alien costumes, and tension is often created by irritating incompetence.

The alien civilisation has almost identical technologies except for video, so we have the ridiculous notion of building a galactic trade of FTL tech for video tech. The denouement has some ridiculous orbital mechanics, a convenient falling of the alien warship’s environmental systems just as they arrive, and wraps the story up with a deus ex machina.