Coming Home to the Moon

Apollo's Outcasts
Allen Steele
Pyr Books
Hardcover, $16.95, 330 p.
ebook  $9.99 Kindle Nook

Jamey Barlowe was born on the Moon, in the lunar colony Apollo, but has lived almost all of his life on Earth.  For his sixteenth birthday, he's going back.

He doesn't know this, and it's not the sort of birthday surprise you want to have.  Jamey's father works for the International Space Consortium.  Dad has just become a wanted man along with a number of his coworkers.  They signed a petition protesting a position taken by the Vice-President.  The President has just died, allegedly by assassination, and the new Commander in Chief is rounding up her political enemies. 

Jamey and one of his sisters, along with the children of several ISC employees, are hurriedly evacuated.  Jamey's other sister gets bumped from the ride to make room for a girl named Hannah. 

Jamey doesn't realize just how much his life is about to change, nor how much he's about to be forced to grow up.  None of the kids do.

Ruby Serenades the Creative Fire Home

The Creative Fire:  Book 1 of Ruby's Song
Brenda Cooper
Pyr Books
Trade paperback, 351 pg $17.95
ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook
Cover art by John Picacio

Every now and then events conspire to keep you from accomplishing simple tasks, such as reading a book.  This one took me exactly a month.  Normally, I could finish a book like this in days.  But it's been one of those months.  Days have gone by when I haven't been able to get any reading done, and much of it was due to pesky little stuff that had to be dealt with so it would go away.

It wasn't because I didn't enjoy the book.  I did.  Revolutions on generation ships are a staple going back to Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky.  It's a narrow subgenre, but one I enjoy.

The basic set up is this:  The Creative Fire is a generation ship that is heading home to the planet Adiamo.  The crew has grown into a caste society in which the castes are delineated by color of uniform.  Ruby Martin is a grey, one of the workers on the lowest levels of the ship.  One of the disenfranchised.  She and her friends Onor and Marcelle are about to graduate from school and become adults.

Ruby is in a garden when the sky literally opens and a man falls down from an upper level.  The Creative Fire is beginning to show the strain of centuries in space.  This particular pod on the ship is breaking apart.  The man, Fox, is a blue.  Ruby knows they exist, but until now the only other color she's seen are the Reds, security forces which are junior league gestapo.

Her conversation with Fox makes her want more than a life of drudgery enough to challenge the status quo.  Although much of the ship's history has been deliberately hidden from the greys, Ruby knows she won't be the first to fight for freedom.  She hopes unlike some of her predecessors, she lives to enjoy that freedom.

Report on Fencon

Fencon VII/Deep South Con 49 was held in Dallas (well really, Addison), TX on September 23-25.  While I can't say that a good time was had by all, a good time was certainly had by me.  Everything had a steampunk theme, with many of the guests being steampunk authors.

As usual, there was much more on the programming than I had time to attend.  I didn't make it to either slide show by the artist guests, Vincent DiFate or Stephan Martiniere. Not because I don't like those artists.  I do.  It was just that there were other things conflicting with their slideshows.

Rather than try to sum up the whole convention, I'll hit some of the high points of the events I attended, then post some pictures.