August Books 15) The Dream Millennium
15) The Dream Millennium, by James White
Managed to finish this on the ferry today while fielding children and enduring a very rough Irish Sea crossing... Rather an interesting little novel by this unjustly neglected Irish sf writer; central character (as so often with White) is a doctor, but this time in charge of a crew in cold-sleep on a colonisation starship. Through his dreams during the centuries in cold sleep he (and as it turns out the rest of the crew also) recapitulate evolution, in a way that reminded me of both Stephen Baxter's recent Evolution (reviewed by me last year) and Roger Zelazny's little-known novel Bridge of Ashes, except that I think White pulls it off better than either. His bleak near future from which hero is escaping sounds awfully like only a slight exaggeration of early-70s Belfast (book published in 1973). One other odd bit of writing ahead of its time - hero meets his love interest while treating her as a patient for self-harm. This is unfortunately balanced by a very weird jibe at homosexuals (which looks as if it may have been mangled from something more sensible by an editor).
ObLJ: White's granddaughter is a livejournal subscriber (indeed on my friends list); if I don't point this out in the body of this entry someone else will certainly add it as a comment.
Managed to finish this on the ferry today while fielding children and enduring a very rough Irish Sea crossing... Rather an interesting little novel by this unjustly neglected Irish sf writer; central character (as so often with White) is a doctor, but this time in charge of a crew in cold-sleep on a colonisation starship. Through his dreams during the centuries in cold sleep he (and as it turns out the rest of the crew also) recapitulate evolution, in a way that reminded me of both Stephen Baxter's recent Evolution (reviewed by me last year) and Roger Zelazny's little-known novel Bridge of Ashes, except that I think White pulls it off better than either. His bleak near future from which hero is escaping sounds awfully like only a slight exaggeration of early-70s Belfast (book published in 1973). One other odd bit of writing ahead of its time - hero meets his love interest while treating her as a patient for self-harm. This is unfortunately balanced by a very weird jibe at homosexuals (which looks as if it may have been mangled from something more sensible by an editor).
ObLJ: White's granddaughter is a livejournal subscriber (indeed on my friends list); if I don't point this out in the body of this entry someone else will certainly add it as a comment.