Firstflight
Firstflight is a futuristic sci-fi novel by Chris Claremont, 1987. I didn't know what Chris Claremont was famous for until I looked him up. I've never really been into the X-Men, saw the first movie, thought "ehhh." I thought the same thing of this book. It wasn't very different from the books by Cary Osborne, especially terms of what I liked and didn't like about the heroine.
Firstflight is told in third person but completely from the POV of Lt. Nicole Shea, who is an astronaut in the early 21st century (about 2030). She is just starting her career, flunked a training test but apparently did well anyway and was given another chance, her first mission. This book took care of the problem I often have with futuristic stories, "isn't it too early for us to be this advanced?" by saying that a scientist had made a huge breakthrough in figuring some thingie out in how to go faster than the speed of light, and mankind made a giant leap. It's already possible to fly all around the solar system and (I think) a neighboring system, but no alien contact has been made yet. So far so good.
Nicole's crew on her first mission (which I think is basically taking scientists along to map stuff and do some studies, it was in the beginning of the book and quickly things moved to other problems) are an interesting set of characters. One woman doesn't seem to like Nicole, there are a couple of friendly giants, there's one guy Nicole is attracted to, there's another guy who's her old friend, another woman Nicole slowly bonds with.
The pacing of the story was good, it was rarely too slow or too fast. Well, a few times it was slow or fast and I had to go back and re-read, but that's probably just me. The science seemed fine, according to my limited knowledge. And Nicole is pretty dynamic, starting out as a capable astronaut who makes many mistakes, gets embarrassed, doesn't really like violence, and is often uncertain of other people's motives, to someone more confident, able to commit violence when necessary, able to make better decisions in terms of her job. I wasn't too fond of Hana, whom Nicole bonds with, but she also became a pretty good character.
The crew eventually makes First Contact with some aliens. The aliens are pretty good. This comes up around halfway through, so I won't really go into it. There are some stuff about the aliens, and the nature of the first contact, that I haven't read or watched elsewhere, so it's *probably* original.
The cons. The first and main thing that bothered me, that bothers me in apparently every fucking strong-female book I read, is that Nicole has casual sex. In the course of the story it isn't all that casual, though not a very committed relationship either. Her old friend in her crew is someone she slept with a couple of times but "nothing earth-shaking," so they just went back to being friends. Hana also starts something with this guy but says it's only casual. Why? Why? I know I'm not the only person who disagrees with this type of sexual ethics. I know a woman can be a strong person and in control of her sexuality without behaving this way. I'm still looking for that role model, I guess. I mean you know, somewhere other than Middle Earth.
Another con is that the guy Nicole is attracted to is ugly. He's not described as such, but the way his features are described -- and pictured on the cover, pretty accurately -- is to me unattractive. This guy and her sexual behavior is pretty much all that makes me unable to identify with Nicole, but they're pretty big deals. I liked reading about Nicole maturing as an astronaut and a fighter, but the romance scenes were ick.
Hahaha. The sex scene (don't worry, you know it'll happen) was kind of funny because in the last paragraph there were too many spelling and punctuation errors. Kind of detracted from the story, all right, but on the other hand I kind of liked the distraction.
I hated that relationship and was glad it ended. It was portrayed sympathetically, but I didn't feel it.
Sometimes the author tried to be PC, a little too. He tries very hard to show us how sweet and perfectly normal same-sex relationships are, but it isn't written well. He first has Hana talk about a relationship that ended badly and keeps talking about how obvious it was that Hana and her girlfriend were deeply in love. A page later, he talks about a couple of guys who were obviously made for each other, their relationship was wonderful, better even than Nicole's parents. Okay, we get it. These relationships are every bit as loving as heterosexual, sometimes even more so, etc. He tried a little too hard to get this across and it didn't work well.
There were betrayals in the book, but they weren't a huge deal. There were no major twists or anything; just characters who were portrayed as bad from the very start.
Lastly, one little storytelling problem had to do with the character Canfield. In the beginning, Canfield talks about how a scientist made the faster than light thing work, blah blah blah. She explains a little too much of the history of space exploration for it to be natural; the explanations are for the reader's benefit, but it doesn't work with a character who's having dinner with other characters who already know all that. And in the end of the book, she goes on and on about Nicole's place in space exploration, it's her time. It's just better suited for the narration, not character dialogue.
I think the science was fine, but sometimes it was hard to follow. The description of the structures of a spaceship, or an asteroid, or where Nicole is in a hall or room in relation to people she's fighting or whatever, were difficult to understand. I sometimes got lost. I guess he's no Zahn, but hopefully the next books will be better.
So yeah. I don't know if I'd read it again, but I'm interested enough to read the other two in the trilogy. Partly because I already have them. I hope I like them better.
It's 9 PM. I'm going to sleep.
EDIT: (February 16), I found a good review here: http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/downloads/OtherRealms/20-11.txt
This said it better than I could: "There's a gritty realism here I like. About the only thing I didn't like was the sex, which seemed contrived, artificial, and sort of wedged into the story in an unrealistic, mainstream-fiction sort of way."
Why couldn't I have thought of the word "contrived" before? Maybe because I've seen it so many times. I don't agree with the rest of the review, that the sex isn't overdone, or that the book is successful. I think the sexual part keeps it from that. Also, I'm not sure if by "sex" he means just that sex scene, or the whole relationship (which spans a good deal of the book). It's the whole thing that annoyed me. It was also, indeed, unnecessary and artificial. It added nothing to the plot or the characters.
Firstflight is told in third person but completely from the POV of Lt. Nicole Shea, who is an astronaut in the early 21st century (about 2030). She is just starting her career, flunked a training test but apparently did well anyway and was given another chance, her first mission. This book took care of the problem I often have with futuristic stories, "isn't it too early for us to be this advanced?" by saying that a scientist had made a huge breakthrough in figuring some thingie out in how to go faster than the speed of light, and mankind made a giant leap. It's already possible to fly all around the solar system and (I think) a neighboring system, but no alien contact has been made yet. So far so good.
Nicole's crew on her first mission (which I think is basically taking scientists along to map stuff and do some studies, it was in the beginning of the book and quickly things moved to other problems) are an interesting set of characters. One woman doesn't seem to like Nicole, there are a couple of friendly giants, there's one guy Nicole is attracted to, there's another guy who's her old friend, another woman Nicole slowly bonds with.
The pacing of the story was good, it was rarely too slow or too fast. Well, a few times it was slow or fast and I had to go back and re-read, but that's probably just me. The science seemed fine, according to my limited knowledge. And Nicole is pretty dynamic, starting out as a capable astronaut who makes many mistakes, gets embarrassed, doesn't really like violence, and is often uncertain of other people's motives, to someone more confident, able to commit violence when necessary, able to make better decisions in terms of her job. I wasn't too fond of Hana, whom Nicole bonds with, but she also became a pretty good character.
The crew eventually makes First Contact with some aliens. The aliens are pretty good. This comes up around halfway through, so I won't really go into it. There are some stuff about the aliens, and the nature of the first contact, that I haven't read or watched elsewhere, so it's *probably* original.
The cons. The first and main thing that bothered me, that bothers me in apparently every fucking strong-female book I read, is that Nicole has casual sex. In the course of the story it isn't all that casual, though not a very committed relationship either. Her old friend in her crew is someone she slept with a couple of times but "nothing earth-shaking," so they just went back to being friends. Hana also starts something with this guy but says it's only casual. Why? Why? I know I'm not the only person who disagrees with this type of sexual ethics. I know a woman can be a strong person and in control of her sexuality without behaving this way. I'm still looking for that role model, I guess. I mean you know, somewhere other than Middle Earth.
Another con is that the guy Nicole is attracted to is ugly. He's not described as such, but the way his features are described -- and pictured on the cover, pretty accurately -- is to me unattractive. This guy and her sexual behavior is pretty much all that makes me unable to identify with Nicole, but they're pretty big deals. I liked reading about Nicole maturing as an astronaut and a fighter, but the romance scenes were ick.
Hahaha. The sex scene (don't worry, you know it'll happen) was kind of funny because in the last paragraph there were too many spelling and punctuation errors. Kind of detracted from the story, all right, but on the other hand I kind of liked the distraction.
I hated that relationship and was glad it ended. It was portrayed sympathetically, but I didn't feel it.
Sometimes the author tried to be PC, a little too. He tries very hard to show us how sweet and perfectly normal same-sex relationships are, but it isn't written well. He first has Hana talk about a relationship that ended badly and keeps talking about how obvious it was that Hana and her girlfriend were deeply in love. A page later, he talks about a couple of guys who were obviously made for each other, their relationship was wonderful, better even than Nicole's parents. Okay, we get it. These relationships are every bit as loving as heterosexual, sometimes even more so, etc. He tried a little too hard to get this across and it didn't work well.
There were betrayals in the book, but they weren't a huge deal. There were no major twists or anything; just characters who were portrayed as bad from the very start.
Lastly, one little storytelling problem had to do with the character Canfield. In the beginning, Canfield talks about how a scientist made the faster than light thing work, blah blah blah. She explains a little too much of the history of space exploration for it to be natural; the explanations are for the reader's benefit, but it doesn't work with a character who's having dinner with other characters who already know all that. And in the end of the book, she goes on and on about Nicole's place in space exploration, it's her time. It's just better suited for the narration, not character dialogue.
I think the science was fine, but sometimes it was hard to follow. The description of the structures of a spaceship, or an asteroid, or where Nicole is in a hall or room in relation to people she's fighting or whatever, were difficult to understand. I sometimes got lost. I guess he's no Zahn, but hopefully the next books will be better.
So yeah. I don't know if I'd read it again, but I'm interested enough to read the other two in the trilogy. Partly because I already have them. I hope I like them better.
It's 9 PM. I'm going to sleep.
EDIT: (February 16), I found a good review here: http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/downloads/OtherRealms/20-11.txt
This said it better than I could: "There's a gritty realism here I like. About the only thing I didn't like was the sex, which seemed contrived, artificial, and sort of wedged into the story in an unrealistic, mainstream-fiction sort of way."
Why couldn't I have thought of the word "contrived" before? Maybe because I've seen it so many times. I don't agree with the rest of the review, that the sex isn't overdone, or that the book is successful. I think the sexual part keeps it from that. Also, I'm not sure if by "sex" he means just that sex scene, or the whole relationship (which spans a good deal of the book). It's the whole thing that annoyed me. It was also, indeed, unnecessary and artificial. It added nothing to the plot or the characters.